Bob Monkhouse: Million Joke Man

Gold did show all three parts, on Wednesdays starting 3 June.

I suspect it won't be long before they repeat the run.

Going by how he looked, I would've thought it was a lot older than that. Thanks for finding that out for me though. I'll know to look out for it if it ever pops up anywhere.

By my logic, having now seen the third part of the Gold documentary, Bob talks about Simon Monkhouse in the interview in question and about Simon's death, so it can only date between May 2001 (when Simon died) and Bob's own death (December 2003). There's only two shows that fit that time scale that would do an interview like that, Parkinson (but that's the episode that featured on the Secret Life documentary) and the ITV show.

Of course, I may be wrong and it may be from an entirely different show on an entirely different network. But it's my best educated guess.

I think it's 'Face to Face' with Jeremy Isaacs from 1997 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1742423/

EDIT: Ah didn't see Neil's point above, perhaps not.

Pretty sure it is, I don't think Bob refers to Simon as having died in the interview, though he still talks about him in the past tense because they were estranged. If he refers to anyone dying it would be his other son Gary. The ITV show wasn't an interview, it was a documentary following him around.

There's an episode of Face to Face on YouTube featuring director Alan Parker that is presented in the same way as the Bob Monkhouse extract. There are other episodes there as well from the 1990s that have the same style - black backdrop and a close-up shot of the face - so pretty safe to assume the Bob Monkhouse extract is from Face to Face, albeit inevitably cropped/zoomed on both documentaries.

Interestingly, over on a different 'tv old boys' forum, someone who was in the studio next door to the National Lottery Live, recounts what happened after the draw was abandoned in live show, somewhat differently, to how Colin Edmunds and Billy Bragg were shown on camera describing it.

Obviously, time and the stress of the situation can play tricks on the recall of that night, and whilst Bob didn't go back to his dressing room and stopped in the studio - he wasn't entertaining the audience all the time with non-stop gags. If fact the poster says he was behind the audience seating for most of the break whilst Casualty was going out on BBC One, trying to come up with new jokes. It was left to Bragg and the FM to keep most of the audience in TC6 for the 50 min gap, before the next window to perform the draw. He recounts around half walked out during the gap in shows.

Makes me wonder though, why not fire the draw machine up, get the unnamed observer from KPMG (who used to do the watching) to give the thumbs up that the power issue at the back (IIRC the power lead had slightly dropped out the back, so there was no power to it) and pre-record the draw to show at the next junction, rather than ask the audience to stay over an hour longer than expected all for the sake to say it was still live.

There is another point though from the footage that Bob kept and was seen fleetingly in the series.

In the same way The Two Ronnies studio tapes were fascinating, and on You Tube there are a couple of full studio tapes that been uploaded - it would make a great 'Norden' style occasional series, to review some of that exist.
One of the frustrating elements of the 90 min '60 years of Eurovision' programme, was the occasional glimpse of the studio tape of the 1981 UK heat, where Bucks Fizz won. Forget the rest of the documentary - I want to see more of the Togmeister talking to the gallery via his earpiece!

No doubt, some tv industry diehards will now post on here, why there 101 reasons broadcasting even a couple of minute excerpts of some studio tapes (no matter how well explained they are in viewer friendly language' beforehand) from well known performers in the archive is not a very good idea!

To be fair keeping the audience entertained is the warm up man's role rather than the host, although I'm sure that a contribution from Bob would have been appreciated by both the audience and Billy Bragg, Bob's job was to concentrate on the live show.

If you wondered how Dale Winton would handle a massive cock up himself, here's a video that might give you an insight:

I laughed far too hard for far too long at that. Thank you.

God, I remember watching that, not the Lottery's finest hour.

Just unbelievable- this is so legendarily bad it should really be up there with the Blue Peter elephant etc. Were viewers so drunk on Millennium Night that they instantly forgot it? That Lotto draw was hugely advertised by Camelot as well.