Help with some vague memories

Hey there

Had some vague memories of some long forgotten shows that have been driving me mad for ages. Would really like to know if anyone else remembers these and can help name them.

First one is a cookery show. From very early Channel 5. Around 97/98. It was studio based and I have this feeling it involved banging a gong? Sorry to be so vague on that one.

Second one is not so much a show but a continuity strand. I'm pretty sure it was part of Tiny Living. I used to watch their line up of shows early in the morning around 1999/2000. Now I'm not going barmy and I swear this was a thing....but I recall at one point the continuity was presented by a lady on a flying bed (A bed greenscreened on to a sky background) and she had a puppet companion called (I think) Sazzlefraz or something like that. Now as barmy as that one seems. I did ask on the classickidsTV forums a number of years back if anyone had a clue what I was on about and one person did and named what it was. Sadly, I've completely forgotten again and the forums are long gone.

Any help would be most appreciated!

The only cookery show from the very early days of Channel Five, was hosted/presented/cooked by Nancy Lam. But I think that was done from the kitchen of her restaruant in Clapham rather than a proper studio.
She was a ecentric oddball presenter (at times she was so over the top she resembled a comediene playing her as a comedy character) so if there was a gong in the premises - that may have been it.

Although, suppose it could have been seen in the cookery slot on the sprawling live afternoon show 'Fives Company'. Chef bangs a gong when the dish is cooked and completed if the presenters are on another feature.

There is a clip of someone banging a gong in what looks like a cookery show during the pre-launch video Channel 5 showed, doesn't say what the show was, but I'm presuming that's what the OP remembers?

No, there was something else, I'm struggling to remember myself, but I seem to remember a fairly dark studio and a gong perhaps to start or swap people cooking? It's ringing some bell here, if only I could dredge it up.

Edit: Yes, Mixing It. Think the previous poster and I must have replied around the same time, I wasn't disagreeing with him!

I think that's Jono Coleman (5m15s)



It looks to be a show called Mixing It, which seems to bear some similarity to Ready Steady Cook

2:11 into this:

The name of the programme escapes me. It involved multiple celebrities having allocated time to work on the same dish. They were given ingredients and whatever the first chef started to make set the tone, the gong would sound and the next chef would dive in and could change the dish completely.

C5 never bettered the content from pre-launch did they. Spent far too long watching that "Give me 5" promo back in March 1997.

Thanks everyone. It was Mixing it!

I imagine the second vague memory though. Will remain a mystery for a long time.

The pre-launch promo was probably more entertaining than virtually everything they've shown since!

I remember watching it for hours on end too...

"Give me movies.... great movies". For about 2 weeks until they ran out of the few decent films they had the rights to and started showing cheap crap instead.

I always felt the pre-launch promos were influenced by those of L!VE TV which had launched two years previously.



Even the look of the open plan office has 5 News vibes about it.

Were they not both inspired by the Canadian Citytv format?