Saturday morning TV memories

A thread right up my street.
I have hazy memories of watching motormouth (but I remember the giant mouse trap game more) and have a factsheet at my Mum’s of how to bat gingerbread biscuits from Rustie Lee (I assume she was a guest chef).

Similarly I remember parts of going live and ghost train, but not that much. We used to watch Live & Kicking from time to time especially in the era when ITV’s became links with scratchy & co and Tricky, etc. The Live & Kicking theme even to this day puts a smile on my face. I remember it airing after the new adventures of superman during the Zoe & Jamie day’s especially.

With Fully Booked airing on Sundays from around 1996 we watched mashed on Saturday mornings and became excited for the launch of SM:TV. I may have been one of the only viewers watching in the early days with the control desk, little games and sketches, but it slowly morphed into an amazing programme that I thoroughly enjoyed despite being at the top end of the demographic. Saying that I still watch Saturday Mash Up, I’m definitely an adult in appearance, but a child in mind.

MOM, Dick & Dom and TMi all provided great entertainment also, it’s a shame that there was such a lull, hopefully Saturday Mash Up will continue to go from strength to strength (assuming it returns in September).

I can’t see ITV wanting to do anything anytime soon, especially as they don’t seem to commission much new content for the channel, never mind a Saturday morning programme. If anything they’d commission something for the main channel, but with James Martin’s Saturday, they don’t need to take the risk. If any main channel were to try it these days looking at the schedules it would most probably be Channel 5 who could bulk it out with nickelodeon programmes (such as turtles already shown) and replace the repeats that appear (all hypothetically of course).

I remember being a bit scared and not liking Tiswas as a child, Swap Shop was the choice in our house (my mum was a Noel fan too which swung). The first distinct memory was the last Swap Shop, especially a gag that Noel did where he took one of the circles that made up the clock on the wall behind him and ate it, suggesting it was a marshmallow all along.

The start of Saturday Superstore was a bit of a disappointment, never seemed as good but normally watched it but flicked over to No 73 though I don't think anyone else in my household liked that much, it took a bit more effort that Superstore.

Going Live was the show that I really embraced, I was the right age, it was modern and Phil and Sarah had great chemistry. I had the same reaction to Live and Kicking as I did to Superstore years earlier - it was a less good version of what went before.

The only other Saturday morning show I watched was Dick and Dom years later when I was far too old to be watching it and didn't even have the excuse of having kids. It wasn't for kids though was it?

Number 6 was BBC 1 London+SE, (I was disappointed to discover BBC 1 from Oxford was dull old London+SE too)

A slightly older friend of mine, tells me his local pub was full of people at 11am, specifically to watch Tiswas while having a pint

One of my earliest ever memories was recovering in Maidstone's Ophthalmic Hospital after having my tonsils out, watching Noel Edmonds on Swap Shop. Wasn't allowed to watch Tiswas!

After that finished, I watched a bit of Saturday Superstore but, being a Maidstone kid, had to watch No. 73. This lost it's charm when Sandi Toksvig left and it morphed into "7T3" so went back to the other side and Going Live. I may have watched a little bit of Motormouth, but I was getting a bit too old by that stage!

I have no memories of motormouth at all, I admit I'd not even heard of it (or had totally forgotten about it anyway) until I read about it on the internet years later, even though I'm old enough to have seen it and remember watching BBC Saturday shows that were around at the same time like Going Live and the 8:15 from Manchester. Must have been a BBC kid and never actually watched it, though I do remember watching TV-am Saturday stuff from the same era like Dappledown Farm and Top Banana.

Also, people have mentioned the Disney Club, but nobody's mentioned Diggit, which I think originally span off from it (I think they ran alongside each other for a few months?). One of the earliest TV jobs of Fearne Cotton. I think it only originally ran on Saturdays, but it later ran on Sunday too.

It was always 'Now on BBC 1 its 9.30 & time for Swap Shop'.
Reading a lot of these comments has made me feel very old

I would agree with this. I was too young for Swap Shop but I was always a Beeb kid. SuperStore was the first one I remember watching - although I would probably have said I preferred The Saturday Picture Show, because we were big Mark Curry fans and only started watching Blue Peter regularly when he joined - but it was Going Live that I really loved, I watched it religiously and have so many fond memories of it.

I could never get on with No 73, like most CITV it seemed to change things around too much and I enjoyed the familiarity and the slow pace of the Beeb. The only time in the eighties I defected was to Get Fresh, which we did because It's Wicked was so bad - the only BBC Saturday morning show not to get a second series, which must mean something. I liked Get Fresh, though, what with Gaz Top being local and, of course, the logos of the regional ITV companies at the end, and the following year, because I also liked On The Waterfront, I would record one and watch the other.

The other time I defected from the Beeb was in 1992 when Parallel 9 totally bemused us and we went to Gimme 5, although because Gimme 5 ended in June, I went back to Parallel 9 for the sake of something to watch (and during the Olympics, that was off as well, so I was bored witless). The following year Gimme 5 spanned the whole summer so I didn't have to watch Parallel 9 at all. I also recorded Wow in 1996, because by that point I had a video and was recording any old rubbish, and fast forwarding through the cartoons you could watch it in under an hour.

And then I defected in 1999 when Live and Kicking collapsed and SMTV was the place to be. I was in my twenties at this point, of course. I came back for Dick and Dom, obviously.

That said, even though I was a Beeb loyalist, I'd end up watching bits of Motormouth and the like because they would start in early September and the Beeb in late September, and in the summer the Beeb would finish earlier as well.

Living in the primary service area of Sutton Coldfield, 6 buttons was 3 more than we needed.
I never understood why Oxford had ATV and BBC 1 South East.
Neither would really give much on the way of local news for the area - and now of course it is part of the old BBC South - is that any better?
I am amazed how young so many of those on here are - or how old I am.....

I remember one fun OB I worked on was Live & Kicking last one of the series, where they did the show live from a steam train on the Watercress Line, I bet there will be a few on here who remember watching that as a kid!

Of course, there's a fascinating clip from that episode on YouTube...



As you can see, the poster says it encouraged them to work on TV, and someone who worked on it has popped up in the comments. I remember Anna Home's book about kids' TV saying it was a massive technological feat and incredibly complicated.

Going Live did the whole show as an OB in four of its six series, it became a bit of a tradition. In 1988 they did the whole show live from Center Parcs, that was on November 5th and it ended with a big firework display. Then for the next three series they did it at the end of March, in 1990 on a cross-channel ferry, in 1991 on the Watercress Line up there, and in 1992 on the ferry to the Isle of Wight. That one is on YouTube in full, of course. They didn't do one in 1993, alas.

The cross-channel ferry one in 1990 was my absolute favourite, I remember being absolutely blown away by it at the time, I couldn't believe that they could do three hours of live telly from a moving ship, it seemed impossibly exciting. Indeed, suitably inspired by it, when I was doing my made-up TV schedules in an exercise book (come on, we've all done it), I would include endless programmes from moving cars and ships.

I loved all that stuff on Going Live, because it really made it feel like an important show. I loved it when they'd go out in TV Centre and do a big balloon release or something like that, it really felt like it was the centre of the universe. I liked how it felt like a big show that people took seriously, not just some tiddly kids' show.

Amazing to see shots of my colleagues from so many years ago.
The "satellite links" position receiving the helicopter includes someone I still work with to this very day.
It is of course microwave links, operating at 2GHz, not satellite.
I did the first and then third station of the four, with a quick drive between the two once the train left for the second station.

The Saturday morning programmes did really start to have a bit of a budget back then - but only at the end of the series.

Doing shows from cross channel ships we did a few times, often involved with Dunkirk or D-Day commemoration events.