BU
I uploaded that to the MHP nearly 20 years ago, good grief...it came from a long play VHS which didn't help!
Yes another major issue with the show in late 1997 was that it just wasn't funny anymore, which is odd considering it was mostly the same writers. Later in series 8 when they started from scratch they abandoned the door sketches entirely after the first few weeks as they were just painful, and of course there were barely any celebrities who would appear on the show anymore.
Yes another major issue with the show in late 1997 was that it just wasn't funny anymore, which is odd considering it was mostly the same writers. Later in series 8 when they started from scratch they abandoned the door sketches entirely after the first few weeks as they were just painful, and of course there were barely any celebrities who would appear on the show anymore.
:-(
A former member
Who bright idea was it to start having bands on the show? until that point you would never had live music but the set its pretty clear bands would fill the gap at the west wing.
LL
I know it's off topic but is it considered taboo to redistribute clips from MHP PP? There are some real gems on there that I'm surprised don't get shared more often, but I'm wondering if Private Parts isn't just a clever name.
^ taken from the MHP PP and uploaded at the time which is why the quality is so low (by today’s standards)
I know it's off topic but is it considered taboo to redistribute clips from MHP PP? There are some real gems on there that I'm surprised don't get shared more often, but I'm wondering if Private Parts isn't just a clever name.
VM
I know it's off topic but is it considered taboo to redistribute clips from MHP PP? There are some real gems on there that I'm surprised don't get shared more often, but I'm wondering if Private Parts isn't just a clever name.
Considering it is invitation only, I would say yes. Darren recently uploaded new, higher quality encodes of all of the Diana clips from the old MHP page. Someone briefly uploaded them to YouTube, which caused anger on the MHP PP, and they were swiftly taken down.
I wasn't posting that in this thread to tell off Whataday by the way, since that's such an old clip and of low quality anyway, it's just I remembered seeing it on the PP when searching for NHP clips recently.
^ taken from the MHP PP and uploaded at the time which is why the quality is so low (by today’s standards)
I know it's off topic but is it considered taboo to redistribute clips from MHP PP? There are some real gems on there that I'm surprised don't get shared more often, but I'm wondering if Private Parts isn't just a clever name.
Considering it is invitation only, I would say yes. Darren recently uploaded new, higher quality encodes of all of the Diana clips from the old MHP page. Someone briefly uploaded them to YouTube, which caused anger on the MHP PP, and they were swiftly taken down.
I wasn't posting that in this thread to tell off Whataday by the way, since that's such an old clip and of low quality anyway, it's just I remembered seeing it on the PP when searching for NHP clips recently.
LL
I wasn't trying to imply you were wrong to share it, and I'm sorry if it came across that way. I just wasn't sure if there was an etiquette around MHP PP considering how exclusive it seems to be.
SW
Well, I would agree with that, he was very powerful and would have had a large say in the content of the show. It has been said before that it probably started going off the boil a bit when Noel's mate Michael Leggo got promoted and was no longer playing a day-to-day role on the show - Noel certainly respected him and they seemed to be a good creative team, not so much with some of his replacements.
It reminds me of the bit in Morning Glory where Ruth Wrigley discusses her time as executive producer on The Big Breakfast and what happened when she left. She had hired Johnny Vaughan and at the start she and Johnny would have arguments but there was a mutual respect between the two and in the end he would more or less do what he was told. But when she left, there was a series of junior producers who were often too scared to tell Johnny what to do because he was so famous, and he wasn't particularly interested in deferring to them. So as she says, Johnny started getting increasingly self-indulgent, and would too often just keep talking or decide to do something else on a whim, and nobody there was prepared to stop him. That happens a lot in telly.
I remember it being announced when it came back that Grantham and Walsh were going to join the show, it seemed at the time an attempt to recreate the "I had chips with mine" routines with Graham Cole and Andrew Paul.
As often happened when I was young I watched shows for far too long after I'd gone off them, so I watched the whole of the 1996-97 series despite not liking it that much. I remember on the first show of that 1996 series they had a "phone call" from Charlton Heston which was a pre-recorded sequence where he plugged his film, which I didn't like, similarly with the bands on it. Up until that point, it had always been a very irreverent show and guests appeared there either in character or to be sent up, so this kind of thing, where the guests were just there as if they were on any old chat show, was a major disappointment.
Yes, and that was important for Takeaway because it followed on from Slap Bang which had been a complete disaster, and Ant and Dec later realised that it was because nothing happened in it - it was simply Ant and Dec doing stuff on Saturday nights for the sake of it, and there was no reason for it to exist. So there was a desperate need to find a proper format so there would be more interest in the show and it wasn't just appealing to existing Ant and Dec fans and nobody else. I know the Takeaway format was devised by a researcher at Granada as part of an in-house initiative to come up with new formats.
Of course, as the show became more established, the importance of it diminished and you would certainly argue that these days, given they knock it off in a few minutes in the middle of the show and it's by some distance the least interesting part, they could probably get rid of it completely. But it was of vital importance in the early days to provide a hook for the show and keep it on the rails. And you would say that NTV was probably the big hook for the early days of the House Party.
The trick is, as Noel pointed out once, to make it not look like it's heavily formatted, so the audience isn't sitting there and going this is the bit where they do this, and then this is the bit when they do that, and it becomes very predictable.
I seem to recall in TV interviews (possibly for 'The Fight for Saturday Night') Noel had said about the budget getting cut, and men in suits getting more involved. Meanwhile someone else noted that prior to the walkout when the show was struggling Noel hadn't been that physically involved with the show's preparation/ideas. Their opinion was that if he (Noel) felt the show was struggling/declining he should have been getting more involved, as his name was in the show's title.
Well, I would agree with that, he was very powerful and would have had a large say in the content of the show. It has been said before that it probably started going off the boil a bit when Noel's mate Michael Leggo got promoted and was no longer playing a day-to-day role on the show - Noel certainly respected him and they seemed to be a good creative team, not so much with some of his replacements.
It reminds me of the bit in Morning Glory where Ruth Wrigley discusses her time as executive producer on The Big Breakfast and what happened when she left. She had hired Johnny Vaughan and at the start she and Johnny would have arguments but there was a mutual respect between the two and in the end he would more or less do what he was told. But when she left, there was a series of junior producers who were often too scared to tell Johnny what to do because he was so famous, and he wasn't particularly interested in deferring to them. So as she says, Johnny started getting increasingly self-indulgent, and would too often just keep talking or decide to do something else on a whim, and nobody there was prepared to stop him. That happens a lot in telly.
It was really notable when they came back how different the series was. The live Gotcha compilation actually got a pretty decent lineup of celebs (including DLT!) to come back and introduce their Gotchas, which you might not have expected given what had happened the previous week. But it was the rest of the series which felt like a different programme - all of the scene setting Crinkley Bottom stuff at the top of the show went in favour of Noel just reading out random jokes, they filled the set with actors in party hats as if it was an actual house party and started using chart music in the background instead of the theme tune. They introduced some major new features to fill the gaps like Panel Beaters (a guess the odd one out with inevitable gunging at the end) and a sketch "in the village" (so the pub, the dentist, a shop etc) which always had Bradley Walsh and Leslie Grantham appearing in character. These worked fairly well but overall it was clear quite how much of the show had to be rethought after Noel's walkout.
I remember it being announced when it came back that Grantham and Walsh were going to join the show, it seemed at the time an attempt to recreate the "I had chips with mine" routines with Graham Cole and Andrew Paul.
As often happened when I was young I watched shows for far too long after I'd gone off them, so I watched the whole of the 1996-97 series despite not liking it that much. I remember on the first show of that 1996 series they had a "phone call" from Charlton Heston which was a pre-recorded sequence where he plugged his film, which I didn't like, similarly with the bands on it. Up until that point, it had always been a very irreverent show and guests appeared there either in character or to be sent up, so this kind of thing, where the guests were just there as if they were on any old chat show, was a major disappointment.
In Chris Evans' book, he talks about needing an amazing end game for Don't Forget Your Toothbrush. Solve that, and the rest of the show is (comparatively) easy to format. I wouldn't be surprised if the thought process for Saturday Night Takeaway is the same - strong end game to guarantee a big finish to every show and give it a concept and title.
Yes, and that was important for Takeaway because it followed on from Slap Bang which had been a complete disaster, and Ant and Dec later realised that it was because nothing happened in it - it was simply Ant and Dec doing stuff on Saturday nights for the sake of it, and there was no reason for it to exist. So there was a desperate need to find a proper format so there would be more interest in the show and it wasn't just appealing to existing Ant and Dec fans and nobody else. I know the Takeaway format was devised by a researcher at Granada as part of an in-house initiative to come up with new formats.
Of course, as the show became more established, the importance of it diminished and you would certainly argue that these days, given they knock it off in a few minutes in the middle of the show and it's by some distance the least interesting part, they could probably get rid of it completely. But it was of vital importance in the early days to provide a hook for the show and keep it on the rails. And you would say that NTV was probably the big hook for the early days of the House Party.
The trick is, as Noel pointed out once, to make it not look like it's heavily formatted, so the audience isn't sitting there and going this is the bit where they do this, and then this is the bit when they do that, and it becomes very predictable.
RO
Perfect opportunity to mention an interview Graham Cole has done for The Bill Podcast (one of the best podcasts around IMO), where he mentions his time on Noel's House Party.
Link here (from 30:20 in)...
rob
Founding member
I remember it being announced when it came back that Grantham and Walsh were going to join the show, it seemed at the time an attempt to recreate the "I had chips with mine" routines with Graham Cole and Andrew Paul.
Perfect opportunity to mention an interview Graham Cole has done for The Bill Podcast (one of the best podcasts around IMO), where he mentions his time on Noel's House Party.
Link here (from 30:20 in)...
:-(
A former member
Does anyone remember that animated thing just after 5m?
Thread for the last time: https://tvforum.uk/tvhome/noels-house-party-41748/
Thread for the last time: https://tvforum.uk/tvhome/noels-house-party-41748/