The Big Breakfast

Rick Adams might have worked on a better incarnation of The Big Breakfast, he'd done things like Reactive which were live and unscripted and he'd done well on those, I know he came across as a bit like Chris Evans' younger brother but he was quick-witted and quite likeable. But nobody could have shone in that era, especially paired alongside Sharron Davies. It didn't work as a pairing and because Sharron contributed so little, Rick clearly decided he had to talk for both of them, meaning he came across as over-frantic and annoying.

Kids TV was probably a decent enough training ground, especially on Saturday mornings as Gaby came from, because a lot of it was live, unscripted and went on for a long time, just like The Big Breakfast.



I know that he was on BSB for the five minutes that lasted, he read the news and was a presenter of one of the umpteen current affairs shows they had on the Now channel. I don't know what he did between BSB and The Big Breakfast but I do remember reading that he'd actually been a businessman and quite a big cheese in the advertising industry before deciding to jack it in and go into broadcasting.

Richard Bacon had worked at L!ve TV before Blue Peter so he did have some experience in both adult telly and broadcasting for hours on end with no budget.

Remember that this was the same time Rick Adams was seen as a shoo-in for Andi Peters replacement on Live & Kicking. Then flunked his screen test with Zoe. Which maybe should have been a warning to the BB's producers.

Of course it could well have been that we had Rick Adams on Live and Kicking and Zoe Ball on The Big Breakfast come September 1996, as when new Big Breakfast editor Lisa Clark appeared on Chris Evans' Radio 1 show that July (as she was Dan McGrath's wife) she was insistent that Zoe would be staying, but then a few weeks later she'd decided she'd had enough and was poached by Live and Kicking.

As you mention, Simeon Courtie says that he went up for the Saturday morning jobs on both the Beeb and ITV that summer, but was told that it was a done deal and that Rick Adams was going to do Live and Kicking, so he accepted the offer from ITV - only to be told, just after he'd signed the contract, that Rick Adams now wasn't going to be doing it because the pilot he'd done with Zoe had been a disaster. And Jamie Theakston got the job with about three weeks to go. Though you'd have to say it worked out well in the end because Jamie turned out to be the perfect choice.

Sometimes it is the case that pairings look good on paper but don't work out on screen. Zoe had it with Mark Little and also had it again with The Priory, because she was supposed to be doing that with Tim Lovejoy but with just days before the first episode - when it was already billed in the Radio Times (under a different name, of course, it was initially billed as Right About Now) - there was some sort of issue, Lovejoy abruptly departed and Theako was parachuted in.

It's obviously not exclusive to Zoe because other presenting teams haven't had much in the way of chemistry. I don't suppose it was all Rick Adams' fault, they just didn't gel as the production team were expecting and he may have worked well with another host, but Zoe was the famous one and so in that scenario it was always going to be Adams that would be off.

Indeed one of the reasons Zoe and Mark Little didn't get on is seemingly that Mark really liked Gaby and didn't think Zoe was a suitable replacement, and Zoe has said one of the reasons why it didn't work out with her on The Big Breakfast is because the production team seemed to just want her to do everything exactly like Gaby, even dressing her in suits like Gaby used to wear,, to the extent she wondered why they even hired her if they weren't interested in her doing it in her own way.

Although of course Zoe did end up pretty much being the lead host, taking over the competitions for example and arguably paving the way for Denise and Liza to have a much more equal role than Gaby ever really did.


I think with Gaby leaving they struggled to work out what they wanted out of the female co-host. Gaby had offered continuity throughout and been the perfect foil to Chris Evans and was more of an equal when he left, plus had a good rapport with Lily Savage. It was a role though that developed naturally overtime and Gaby did it so effortlessly it was hard to replicate.

Some new clips appearing on YouTube this week:

La Triviata from July 1999. Anyone know what the Barbeque Johnny's character is referring to at 01:37? I don't think it's the wedding as that was the previous month.


Court With Your Pants Down with Kelly Brook June 1999. I didn't realise they did that game with Kelly, I thought that was a Johnny and Liza game.



A full episode from when Johnny was absent due to his back in 2000:

I think Court with Your Pants Down ran pretty much every year from 1995/1996 through to 2000. Certainly started with Mark Little and of course You Beauty! became a brief thing at Wimbledon when Johnny and Kelly was on the show.

I quite liked the comps during the Kelly Brook stint - they kind of kept the character element that Johnny and Denise had but also were a bit of a throwback to the style of earlier comps too.

If The BB was around today there's no way the show would be able to broadcast live from the house. It was far too small a space to be able to ensure adequate social distancing.

Possibly the only episode to be hosted solo? I feel for Lisa, especially when it gets to the paper review. I'm amazed they didn't under-run with just one presenter.

Also a rare sighting of Jasmine Lowson against the blue news background. They should have been using the purple background by this stage - I guess it wasn't ready in time for the relaunch. Also the astons aren't animating as they later would.

I think there was one occasion where Sharron Davies didn't turn up and Rick ended up doing the show on his own.

Didn't Rick once host solo when Sharon didn't turn up?


I'd like to think if the presenters of the day had some French Windows and a bit of colourful fabric to throw over a bog standard dining chair nobody would have noticed.


In the "what if" scenario though of how they'd handle todays situation I think it kind of highlights how different the shows were in the first and second half of the run. I think the earlier version may have been better placed than the latter version thanks to shorter features and I think more pre-recorded content. Also extra cartoons or playing out music videos wouldn't have looked as out of place as they would have during the Johnny and Denise era. One thing either era may have done though is moved the show up to 8-10am with more people at home.

That's right, I remember it getting in the papers, it was quite early on in her reign of terror. It's been said on here before that Sharron lived absolutely miles away, but still commuted in every morning.

Of course, there was that famous episode when Evans called in sick at the last minute, so Paula had to host the first hour with Gaby before Mark Little arrived after eight.

Lisa Rogers, Richard Bacon and Mike McClean hosting the show pre-2001 relaunch: