Noel's House Party

I don't blame people for finding it amusing on the face of it, because it's a pretty bewildering thing to watch. What people don't realise is that studio floor was solid concrete and Bobby had hit it full in the face with considerable force. Only when you take that into account do you realise just how horrible that accident actually is.

Here he is telling Terry Wogan the story



Louis Barfe (Light Entertainment historian and writer, formerly of this parish) suggests that it wasn't quite the accident it seems





I can't not post Louis' all time classic story of injuries attained in a TV studio











(David Thewlis on IMDB)

It's often said it was a concrete floor but I'm pretty sure he falls onto a raised platform which almost certainly wouldn't have been made out of concrete.

Would probably still have been quite a hard surface regardless!

Oh of course, but would have been a lot more serious had the stocks been on the concrete.

Serious as in dead or paralysed!

One of the men (possibly Chegwin) was interviewed about it and commented that he fell onto the concrete floor, and that you can't hear the actual smack as he lands which is apparently awful to hear. Then again, I can't put it past him to either misremember or overdramatise.

It's stuff like that why I wonder how they ever got away with it.

It'd make the papers these days, gunged audience member happened to be wearing an expensive watch which was a family heirloom that subsequently stopped, or wearing some expensive dry clean only outfit that was ruined.

Unless the entire audience was told before hand not to wear anything decent as you may get gunged at a moments notice, but still wear something decent enough to look good for Saturday night prime time TV.

Injury Lawyers 4 U would have a field day

I think Dick and Dom commented about being asked to sign a waiver to be the Phantom Flan Flinger's "victims" on the TISWAS Reunited show.

Absolutely true, I was sitting next to them in the ITV canteen when the waivers came in. Stephen Mulhern had a word with a wardrobe assistant about getting another shirt in, as, although he was fine with a pie in the face, he didn't want his personal shirt wrecked.

Dom told me that this kind of thing wasn't a problem at the BBC (and I saw first-hand what went on there when I performed a Tiswas sketch on the show with Matthew Butler and other folk from TiswasOnline). It's just that the insurance policies over at the London Studios were much tighter. I had a hand in arranging all the Cage inhabitants, and they were made to sign disclaimers that stated "You will suffer emotional distress".

You do get some idiots on TV forums claiming the lack of crazy stunts is down to 'political correctness'. It's not, it's lawyers, but you can still have enough madness. Dick And Dom In Da Bungalow went a lot further than Tiswas if you looked at it carefully.

Good post. And of course, health and safety, when done correctly, is not an thing to attack either when it comes to things like this.

In fact, a thread about Noel Edmonds would seem to be the best place to make that statement.... *wince*