The Big Breakfast

I totally agree. I thought that the 2001 relaunch brought the programme up to date yet took it back in style to the original with short features, of course people were used to Vaughan's features by this point and so it didn't work well for them. Paul was a good choice as was Amanda Byram. Donna wasn't bad when doing features, but maybe she should have become the new on the bed host. As I've mentioned before The Oscars programme was very good that year imo. After a few weeks more typical breakfast features returned but feeling modern. Some of their casting decisions were good - a great character in Lola Lasagne to review tv, others were crazy - barefoot doctor anyone? Like most things in TV though it got turned around too quickly.

As I've said before the week or two that Ed Hall filled in and presented with just Amanda felt like a great mix of new with old. Woolseye is still an underrated game to this day.


As for Christmas in the later years I'm sure that they were live until Christmas Eve (as were GMTV) and then had a week or so of pre records until the new year, the pre records that were filmed in October.

I believe The Big Breakfast was live on Christmas Day 1992, but all subsequent years were pre-records.

The following two years saw Christmas Day fall on a weekend, but there was certainly a special shown on Christmas Day 1994, "The Big Christmas Breakfast" which was an hour long pre-record shown in the afternoon rather than morning. I think I have it on VHS somewhere, hosted by Paul, Mark and Gaby - it was the first time the standby blooper reel was shown, which resurfaced on The Biggest Breakfast Ever.

It was a great shame that Denise's last show was a pre-record. There's a clip of her actual last show here and she certainly seems mellow.

The Large Breakfast Theme:
https://up.metropol247.co.uk/Jason/the_large_breakfast%205.mp3

Well from the first few seconds I was wondering if that was worth the 15 year wait - but by god it was. Brilliant.

Did it run with the usual visuals?

Yes it did, but "The Large Breakfast" faded up instead of the usual logo bursting out of the house.

Here's how it looked (apart from the logo obviously)

I think we've all just done that edit.

Those final titles have aged quite well IMO - as much as I hated them undoing the 2001 revamp we did get one of the best title sets out of that sitution.

I'm sorry but that sounds dreadful, and it doesn't even fit those titles any better than the previous theme.

As we were speaking about Christmas, did they ever change the final line of the chorus on the Friday song to something that fitted with the 8-10 shows? I've got a Friday song from the 22nd December 2000 where it sounds like some are singing the final line of the chorus as normal and others are singing alternate lyrics.

I think they did a couple of Christmas specials at the weekend - one in 1994 and then 1995. They were an hour long and went out at 09:25 for some reason.

I have a vague memory there were live news inserts into one of the first (pre-rec) shows of 1996, which maybe just referenced "The Big Breakfast news" but not a specific newsreader .

After the 2001 relaunch flopped, wasn't the plan to scale back Donna Air's role to just on "on the bed" interview or doing features from a new bathroom? (Which was later created for Roland Rat. Instead, she just disappeared.

I remember after the relaunch was undone, Richard Bacon couldn't contain his happiness about, "No more xxx! No more xxx! No more Lola Lasagne!"

This theme's a bit of fun but they were actually going to use it for real..?

I seem to remember it changing to something like "Stick with us from 8 till 10 and you'll be fine" or something similar.

That's what it sounds like when listening to that one I have.