CBBC Birthday thread

Perhaps he just wasn't available or just not considered important enough to the history of CBBC to be asked. I remember him more from doing CBBC shows than hosting CBBC itself.


The kids today probably thought that about Edd the Duck and the like though. And he's not as annoying as Otis the Aardvark was!

I would guess Jake was too busy to appear due to his BT Sport work but not iconic enough to go to the effort of recording something in advance.

I notice they skipped past the era when they almost did away with continuity and just had either Gemma Hunt or Anne Foy in front of a green screen. (Anne didn't appear tonight either)

I found Hacker ok, he's just like Otis really with a dry sarcastic attitude. Quite grown up references that would go over kids heads.

Cel does seem like a decent up and coming presenter, as long as it doesn't involve miming to a song whilst walking down the street. The female host was good as well. It makes you feel old when Cel's era is the one just before his own.

And I'm still not sure what Matt Edmondson's obsession with Anji Kreft is. I'm guessing if there was a question about CBBC presenters on Pointless she would be a pointless answer. Although most of them would be in reality.

And when growing up I remember insisting we stayed on BBC1 until the Neighbours ident had finished before my dad turned over to watch ITN News at 5:40. No tellys in bedrooms back then!

I watched from the beginning and two minutes in he said cocker about five times.

When they were interviewing the 00s lot you could see the fingers of Oucho's puppeteer pop up from the cbbc coffee table.

I liked the show on the whole though I missed who the new presenter was.

I think its more to do with the fact he's in London and CBBC office and studios are now in Manchester, it would have meant travel all day after work to Manchester and I day say staying for aftershow party then traveling back down in the early hours plus etc...



Was that at 5.35 during pointless?

I loved the whole show. Thought Cel and Katie were great and how everything came together was great. I did not relies they would put so much effort into it. Good on them. I think what today show is that CBBC in it's present form could be so much better. Hopefully this is something the new head of children's and the boss of CBBC are working on. One thing that annoys me is the new presenter. The last few presenters have all come from other CBBC areas. Katie was PR, Cel and Shannon from Friday Download, Karim from a drama on CBBC which I have forgot the name off and this new girl is off two CBBC already. I would have like to see fresh new talent bringing something new to CBBC. But other than that great show. They sure deserve the party they are having!

P.S. Hacker not that bad he is just being Hacker.

Did Matt mention Anji today? I must have missed it if he did. Or is it a reference to his radio 1 show? Bizarrely, I do remember Anji quite well considering how short lived she was as a presenter - I've even got a couple of clips of her up on my YouTube channel!

He was wearing an Anji Kreft t-shirt on air today, and about a month in advance was tweeting that he hoped she'd be there.

He was wearing a t-shirt with her face on, and regularly refers to her on Twitter.

I didn't realise Ben Hanlin was a CBBC presenter (according to the list on BBC press office), I'd guessed he might have done a guest magic spot or something but not fully fledged presenting.

Hacker is another great CBBC character. Up there with Otis and Edd.

Cel and Katie were excellent, although I noticed the new CBBC pres trait appears to be to call the audience "guys" at least once per link. Karim kept doing it earlier.

The anniversary show was a decent affair with enough to keep the target audience interested as well as their parents. Nice touch to do a feature about CBeebies too.

Well done to CBBC for their effort on this, some genuinely funny moments, and Cel very good at keeping the pace up. He stopping it getting drawn-out with too much nostalgia for today's audience. Nice touch with a CBBC game returning. I completely forgot about those - and were sometimes done on the roof if I recall correctly?

Impressive pres as well, the Andi Peters mocked-up broom cupboard clearly had a bit of effort put into it, and a nice mix of old graphics, idents (kept in 4:3) and even details like old slides being used for presenters pics.

Really wonderful, lovingly put-together show. Great to see so many of the old presenters and it made me realise just how good Andi and Edd were, the rapport they had in that brilliantly reconstructed Broom Cupboard made it feel like they've never been away. You can tell that many people working on CBBC go into telly because of the Broom Cupboard, I'm sure I wouldn't be doing what I do without all those behind the scenes bits they used to do, showing how the continuity desk worked and that sort of thing.

As someone with a kid in the CBBC age range, I think a few people on here underestimate how interested many children are in "retro" things and what TV, video games etc. were like back in the olden days of the 80s and 90s when their parents were young... Plus I'm sure there were plenty watching who would've been old enough to remember Ed and Oucho.

Nice that CBeebies got a mention, and nice that the CBBC puppets kept up the "I hate CBeebies" line to keep the older kids with younger siblings on board (was it in the Oucho days when they had a skit where they "stole" the birthday cards?).

And Hacker is brilliant. Some of the CBBC links over the last couple of years have made me laugh more than most things on TV.

well, he didn't appear to be in the BT Sport studio yesterday - but like you say, it's a shame he couldn't have done a prerecorded bit (like Julie Etchingham's). They showed a reasonable amount of him from archive clips after all.