Noel on Strike

Given the BFBS connection in his username, I presume that at least some of the recordings will be ones made from the studio feed for use in timeshifting etc, they would still have these bits on the end as standard practice was to record the trailers for the next week as the show went off air.

I know it will never happen, but supposedly there's a whole dress rehearsal of a late era NHP doing the rounds as the problems started to take hold that makes for interesting, if uncomfortable viewing. Doubt that's in his hands, but I would definitely like to see some of it some day.

There were a lot of these available on the recordings available on BBC Redux, possible he's got them from there. I did see a few a while back and it is fascinating if you're interested in how the show was made.

Whether it's likely to get that account into trouble again, who knows.

There was a studio recording of the following week’s trails being recorded, including footage of the warm-up man as then Noel doing the various takes of different trails. It was from 1991 IIRC and wasn’t on the Highgrove Media channel - the channel that it was on has disappeared.

I found one particular joke from the warm-up man absolutely extraordinary as it was highly anti Semitic and I was staggered that such a joke would be uttered in a BBC studio (if not on air) even in 1991.

Yes there was a lot of older programmes and stuff not recorded off airbonbRedux at one point. A lot of it is still there but not searchable and still watchable of you were lucky enough to have bookmarked it


I think the BFBS theory is more likely, or RTE or similar.

What is the BFBS theory?

Just that he could have worked for BFBS and got the footage through a feed made available to them. It's mentioned only a few posts up.

Was that Felix Bowness? Probably getting towards the end (or close to) of his career, where such 'jokes' and material once acceptable were, by this time, getting overtaken by time and comedy tastes.

Bowness was one of the best warm-ups in the business in his day. Did numerous of the tri-weekly Wogan warm ups, and you could always tell when a guest backed out or cancelled late, because Wogan always had him on at the end of the show to pad out the last couple of minutes, upto the show logo and copyright caption.

As far as I am aware BFBS got clean broadcast feeds (and presentation talkback) of BBC1 & 2. They didn’t get clean feeds of any actual studio outputs.

Acording to his linkedin he didn't work for BFBS until 2001. Apparently he's ran Highgrove Media providing transmission and production support for media groups since 1991, could they have provided some facilties for NTV or similar and got the feeds that way? Although I imagine the BBC liked to keep everything in house in those days also I can't find any record of Highgrove Media on companies house.

Did RTE air House Party then?

No I assumed it was just one of those made up names people use to 'brand' their YouTube videos (which is annoying as they aren't their videos)

You say tha they kept everything in house but of course as the series went on, Noel's company Unique played more of a role.


Just a guess, I don't know..tthey did show Late Late Breakfast.

With regards Highgrove, I assumed the same thing. But YouTube wasn’t around in 1991! Perhaps he does freelance work under that name?

I imagined Unique was more to do with the editorial side (if that’s the right word in this context) than the broadcasting infrastructure side.

RTE never simulcasted Noel's House Party and for one good reason - by 1991 nearly all of the Republic of Ireland had access one way or another to the four main UK channels, via cable television which covered a large chunk of the Irish republic by 1991, at least all the major cities and towns had a cable company - by MMDS which provided over-the-air UK channels via special microwave system to areas which could not get cable - by many UHF deflector transmitters which rebroadcast the four main UK channels to again areas which could not get cable, and finally spill over signals from Northern Ireland and Wales.

This meant in 1991 the Irish viewers could easily pick up BBC One Northern Ireland or BBC One Wales and watch it, so RTE decided against simulcasting it, along with many other shows they stopped simulcasting on the relaunched Network 2 from 1988.