Channel 5 to revive Blind Date

Interesting you say that, as I'm sure I remember Des saying in his autobiography that he'd rather have pre-recorded it, as they'd proven that the show could be ready for 7pm, but the producers wanted it to go out live in case there should be a big bit of breaking football news (which, Des mused in his book, never happened).

It's interesting to hear that it was the opposite way around behind the scenes and it was Des who fought for the live feel - I wonder why he didn't say that in his book?

(Steve Williams - please do correct me if I've misremembered this - I've given my copy to a charity shop, so can't check!)

Well the story at the time among the crews was that Des wanted it live, but if he says differently in his autobiography then who really knows?

The Premiership football show was produced in TLS St 8.

I think you're right. He talks about doing Match of the Day live and he says that one week while he was doing that, as an experiment, they pre-recorded the whole thing earlier in the evening to see if they could do it to a tight deadline. He says they did it easily, but the bosses refused to let them pre-record it every week in case of, as you say, any breaking news. But yes, I'm pretty sure he was happy to pre-record it.

Of course, Des didn't really want to be doing The Premiership anyway, he left the Beeb because he was getting bored of working every Saturday and wanted to be doing more live football. When ITV won the rights, he says Alan Hansen told him the only pleasure he got from the news was knowing that Des didn't really want to do it.



The Goal Rush did come from Southampton, it was a Meridian production. But On The Ball came from LWT, specifically the old London Tonight studio because in the first series, back in 1998, it didn't really have a proper set, they just sat in front of the window overlooking London. Not sure what that had to do with football, but sat in the provinces it was quite exciting to see. On The Ball came back long before ITV won the Premier League rights, they only had England, the FA Cup and the Champions League at the time, but seemingly it was considered important to have a weekly presence in the schedules, it was around the time they were expanding their sporting horizons with the launch of ITV2.

Although Central were responsible for ITV's football coverage from 1993, it's always come from the London Studios.

Anyway, here's the article I was talking about in Media Guardian in 2001 about Saturday night telly, just before The Premiership began - https://www.theguardian.com/media/2001/jul/02/mondaymediasection3

As you can see, it was considered a bit of a gamble, but it's interesting how it talks about Slap Bang being intended as a long runner alongside it, only for it to flop massively. Moment of Truth never went on Friday nights in the end, but they did move a couple of Saturday staples such as The Brian Conley Show to Fridays. Hear'Say It's Saturday was an absolute disaster and the last few episodes were flung out during the day.

At the time, Cilla said she'd personally told Charles Allen to put Blind Date on instead of the football, but a) you'd think Charles Allen would have thought of that himself, and b) whether by luck or judgement, it came back on the exact same week it had the previous year. Presumably had The Premiership caught on they would have done it at 6pm, because it certainly was declining at the time. Indeed, Pop Idol completely upstaged it within a few weeks and that became the priority. As Des mentioned in his book, Paul O'Grady also slagged off The Premiership on air on Lily Live - "what's all that football doing on Saturday night, we don't want to see it there" - and Des complained that they were getting enough criticism from the papers, they didn't need another show on the channel slagging it off. I don't like it when Paul O'Grady does that.

Do you think the fact that Paul and Cilla were best friends had anything to do with his comments?

Well, probably, and Paul always shoots his mouth off on telly anyway about stuff that's none of his business, much to my dismay.

Anyway, I have now got out my copy of Des' autobiography where he says that, having done it at 7pm, he didn't understand why they didn't pre-record it because he thought it was a waste of time them all hanging around, but he was told that they wanted to keep it live in case of breaking news. He argued that never happened, and if it was so important to be live, by that logic they should do the Sunday repeat live as well.

As I say, as it turned out the triumphant return of Blind Date wasn't all that, within about three months it was completely upstaged by Pop Idol. I would say Blind Date started running out of steam a bit in the late nineties, you can argue they changed it too much for the final series but they probably didn't change it enough before, you had more or less gone through every single type of contestant and every single way to play it.

As ever with a long-running LE show there were a few oddities. The one everyone remembers is when the Cosmo journalist got a date and the next week Cilla revealed this on air and everyone booed her, although I don't really know why it was that big a deal, to be honest, the only thing she'd done wrong was not play it "properly" and I doubt many other contestants went on it 100% focused on finding love. There was also the one where the woman didn't turn up for the date, and the bloke had to go on his own, and one where the man was barred from going on the date because they found out he'd got a girlfriend (but again, I don't see how it matters) so the date basically became an episode of Streetmate where they tried to set her up while they were there.

Of course, the bit nobody liked was when they had old people on, because they were boring, and that was certainly a view shared by my gran who was otherwise a loyal viewer but never liked the old people. Frank Skinner used to do a routine where he said what presumably you were supposed to think when old people were on Blind Date was "oh, old people on Blind Date, isn't that lovely, they're still up for fun and adventure despite their advanced age", whereas what you actually thought was "oh, old people on Blind Date." *click*

Blind Date opening titles down the years. Notice how there is no over emphasis on the 'Blind Date' or 'Miss Cillaaaaa Blaaaack' in 1985, and 'Our Graham' continues to ramp it up through the years peaking in the 1999 era when there was more Graham in the opening titles than ever before with the coming up bit.

What on earth happened in 2002 - the theme is barely recognisable under that thumping base track & Graham was axed ?! That anno 'She's a drop dead read head who wants them wed, it's Cilla' is ghastly. The beginning of the end ?

1985


1986 - 1988


1989 - 1992


1993 - 1996


1997 - 1998


1999 - 2001


2002 - end


2017 revival

Nonsense!

You can hear through those titles how the introduction goes from "Blind Date" and "Miss Cilla Black" to "Blinder Data" and "MIss Cilla Blaaaahhhh"

Yikes, that brought back just how horrible 2002 era ITV was in Presentation and programme style.

You can tell Cilla is thinking "what the hell have they done" in that 2002 video. It completely wiped out any charm from the show, what with the harsh stainless steel set, no Graham and even dropping Cilla's chat with the contestants. It's not really Blind Date without "What's your name and where d'ya come from?". ITV1 was in a hell of a state then wasn't it.

Oh dear that 2002 stuff was awful, what on earth did they do to Blind Date??