Presenters and Rostas

📺 Watch our 1984 pop correspondent Jeremy Paxman inform @BBCNews viewers that Band Aid had entered the charts at number 1️⃣. #TOTP pic.twitter.com/9Y5KVtv0r8

— BBC Four (@BBCFOUR) November 17, 2017

In the One Day Of The Life Of Television book from 1988, Mike Smartt writes about volunteering to sit on the desks behind the newsreader on the second night of the new look Nine - it sounds like having to sit there was not a task greeted with much relish in the newsroom. He said that halfway through he forgot he was in shot and got up and walked across to pick up a paper, and the next morning, more people said "Saw you on the news last night" then they had done during the previous six months when he was actually reading it.

There was a clip on TheTVRoom, with him presenting with Sue Lawley

Sue Lawley and Nicholas Witchell were the launch and main presenters of the Six. Jeremy Paxman was the first stand-in presenter ever introduced to the line-up in that era. Paxman always in seat 2. Never the lead.

Subsequently, Frances Coverdale, Philip Hayton and Andrew Harvey became relief presenters after Paxman left.

A much reduced Six O'Clock News here from 1989 when BBC News was on strike:



Was this the only time Nicholas Witchell ever presented from this set? Also did Peter Sissons ever present from here?

Genome suggests that Paxo presented the Six between October 1984 and May 1985 - and that Philip first presented the bulletin later in May '85, with Andrew following in July.

Frances, meanwhile, only presented between February and November 1986. Of course, she was one of the main presenters on the News After Noon - as, indeed, was Moira.

Images from TVRoom suggest at least one other occasion for Witchell. https://thetvroom.com/ark/news/bbc-network-1980-00-generic-030.html

Which may have been the late on Christmas Eve 1988 as although it was Lisa Davidson down for all 3 on the genome i think there was a clip on TV Ark which proved that Nicholas Witchell did the late (probably due to the seriousness of the ongoing Lockerbie story at the time.)

I'd forgotten all about Lisa Davidson in fact.

Had a look on Genome. Looks like Witchell had a few stints on the Nine in 1990.

Also checked some other presenters, and going back to Revitt's post, It appears Andrew Harvey had a few stints on the nine in late 1993, so he's another one to add to the virtual era (if accurate).

Here's Jon Sopel presenting a Saturday evening bulletin on BBC2 late on in the virtual era (skip to 0:39):



Buerky presented the late bulletin on BBC1 that night, for the record.

As the one sensible YouTube commenter says, this bulletin was "clearly a leftover from the old days of News on 2/Newsview etc." And until the May '99 relaunch, it was usually presented by Moira.

Jon, meanwhile, was at the time a semi-frequent presenter on Breakfast News (as was). Genome also suggests that he presented the Six on a number of occasions in late '97 and early '98 alongside Martyn, Anna and Nicholas.

(Aside: the last headline mentions the introduction of 'S' prefix registrations, and it being "the last August rush". Even back then, as a 10-year-old living in west London, I was interested in vehicle registrations - and I knew that the letter changed on 1 August every year, that prefixes had begun in 1983 and that a new system would be due in a few years' time. Yet, somehow, I missed all the stories about this being the last August letter change, before the move to two new letters a year in March and September respectively - hence my considerable surprise at seeing a 'T' registration on a Renault Clio in my school's car park in early March '99...)

I loved the opening to the early evening weekend/bank holidays bulletins in the virtual era. It was my favourite theme of that time.

I didn't, to me it was like a "mickey take" to the superb nine theme. They should have used the six theme for early evening weekend bulletins just like they used the nine theme for late weekend bulletins.