Sir Bruce Forsyth RIP

It wasn't unusual for personalities to straddle networks. Carol Vorderman being a perfect example, at one stage being on both BBC 1 and ITV at the same time.

There was no falling out in 1994 - in fact the BBC made a big deal about it being his last Gen Game and he was presented with a gift on air wishing him all the best for the future.

Actually, even his first departure from the BBC had few ill feelings. Contrary to popular believe, he wasn't poached by ITV. He left to star in a musical in the West End which wasn't very well received. Later that year, he signed with LWT.

He did say in 77 he didn't want to do the potter's wheel again.

And Channel 4, of course.

He may not have wanted to do it in the 1970s but history now shows Forsyth tended to drop a show and then come back to it again a few years later. Generation Game and PYCR being two key examples, mind you the networks deciding to revive the formats (especially GG which was a format that was either being revived or in talk of being revived everytime it went off the air) may have had more to do with that, presumably offering him first dibs as it were.

He was fantastic at ad libbing when something went wrong but the downside of Brucie not wearing an earpiece was that during the live Strictlys, the PAs had to get Tess to prod and nudge him to get him to talk to time. Often didn't work, resulting in the programme overrunning and, in at least one instance, coming off a few minutes early.

Don't think he ever did use an earpiece did he? Think he would have responded to the old school way of doing things of a floor manager (or whoever) doing a finger countdown above/below/side of camera to cue him up for VT inserts and what not.

Of course even having earpieces doesn't mean your talent would wrap the programme up on time as Sir David Frost demonstrates here at the end of TV-AM one Sunday morning forcing the vision mixer to have to do it instead:

That is not the worst case

Of course, but I meant simultaneously on both channels at one point (ie you could switch between BBC1 and ITV and she was on each channel).

Well, you can argue that, but I wonder if that's a very good example, because while it's all very impressive to hear about the Live From Her Majesty's incident, it seems a bit ghoulish and I surely can't be the only person who thinks it might have been better for all concerned if they just abandoned the whole thing. I know the show must go on and all that, but it doesn't really have to. It reminds me a bit of a episode of Les-era Blankety Blank they showed on Challenge ages ago with Bernie Winters on the panel, who was wearing dark glasses and there was a lot of talk about how he was very ill but was such a trouper to come and do it. But it wasn't very entertaining to see him like that.

I mean, I love the stories about old showbiz as much as anyone, but it's like if you look at an old issue of the TV Times and a lot of the features and interviews go into graphic detail about the illnesses and injuries people have suffered. I think sometimes it's nicer now to realise people on the telly are human, and don't just soldier on regardless.



That's right - when the Daily Mail archive was publicly available a few years back, I had a look at this, and indeed Brucie did leave the Gen Game just because he'd got bored of it and wanted to do The Travelling Music Show on the stage because it was something he'd always wanted to do. He said in his biography that the tour they did was successful but it didn't do much when it went to the West End and closed quite quickly, and he was on the front of the Mail with "DIDN'T I DO BADLY" as the headline. And then the next day the headline was "DIDN'T I DO WELL" because Michael Grade had signed him up.

Although it wasn't a massive falling-out at the time he left again in 1994, he was upset at them moving the Gen Game from Saturdays to Fridays in 1993 (though they moved it back again) and also they'd ummed and erred for ages over a second series of Bruce's Guest Night and when they finally recommissioned it they cut the budget and gave it a rubbish slot, so he was getting a bit fed up. When he joined ITV again he pointedly said he'd loved the Beeb "especially in the days of Jim Moir and Michael Grade", not mentioning the likes of John Birt and the current lot.

But he did flit around the channels a bit, in the seventies he did a couple of specials for Thames like Bring On The Girls even when he was doing the Gen Game, and while on ITV in the eighties he did a week of Wogan, the Bruce and Ronnie special in 1988 and his own Christmas special in 1989. He happily worked for anyone who'd have him.

When Jimmy Tarbuck was on Piers Morgan's Life Stories, he said something along the lines of, "if you pull the plug, what do you put in there?" He said that none of the viewers knew he'd died until the news broke, presuming nobody would bat an eyelid if the show continued. I can only presume this was before the days that ITV could just whack something like an episode of Creature Comforts on to kill some time.

After all, the only reason they were able to conceal him was because of a curtain that was in place specifically for one of Tommy's tricks. If he hadn't done that trick, and there are numerous claims that nobody was able to move him, then one can only wonder a) how they could've brought the show back, and b) how the audience would've coped actually seeing people trying to revive him.

What happened to thread? I remember it got locked

https://tvforum.uk/tvhome/tommy-coopers-death-30643/page-11

Doesn't look like it got locked, but it seems it transcended into a discussion about the ethics of watching people die and it all went a bit morbid.