The Strangest Regional Programmes

I think in 1977 or 1979 cameras filmed and broadcast the live morning broadcast of Good Morning Scotland ( or whatever it was called at that point ) on BBC One Scotland.

Don't speak a word of it but two other children's Gaelic programmes I remember are " Mag is Mog " which feautred a puppet and cat, and the first appearance of Runrig on TV. This used to be broadcast at about 8.30 / 9.00 on Saturday mornings sometime during the Swap Shop years.

Another which fascinated me was " Bzzzzz " which strangely enough, featured a puppet bee. This was made in the early 80s and I remember still seeing it listed in 1986.

The game show was Whoops TV. The week before there had been a dating show pilot called Nice Package.

Yes JM, that was discussed earlier in this thread.

I'm sure there was a show on Granada in the early 1980's fronted by Alexi Sayle on Liverpool's best bus routes. I've been unable to get anything on the web about this (but then can you find ANYTHING about regional progrannes on the web!)
I'd love to see some of this (particularly as Margaret Thatcher has long since ruined any concept of a bus service!)

The old bat ruined a lot of things!

In around 1990 Tyne Tees brought out "Gilbert's Late", a chat show of all things, shown after News At Ten IIRC starring everyone's favourite green snotty alien Gilbert. It was actually really quite good, totally surreal, and obviously fairly high budget, and quite how it wasn't picked up by Channel Four or similar I'm not sure. Always thought it was a totally bizarre thing to have as a regional show in amongst the religious debates and local sports shows.

TTTV seemed to produce a fair number of programmes around that time that wouldn't have looked out of place on the network -- remember the BBC's "A Word In Your Ear"? That started out local at Tyne Tees.

BBC Scotland produced a game show called " Superscot " which was literally and metaphorically beige. One exciting round consisted of the contestants chosing a region of Scotland from the map and getting a totally unrelated question.

For a couple of years they produced " Supersport " on Scottish cup final day.

Like all good and bad quizzes, they killed off Superscot by changing the format for the last series. And instead of the IMO professional and poised Jane Franchi, they brought in Jackie Bird. ( Both were / are Reporting Scotland people ).

I used to love watching Granada UpFront with Tony Wilson and Lucy Meacock with a guest comedian every week to seperate the two talking points - mainly used to be Caroline Aherne, Steve Coogan or Craig Charles!!!!!

It was never the same when they dropped the comic slot and had 3 talking points in the last couple of series'

Another late Granada slot was given to of one-off comedies and I remember one of them having a talking teddy-bear!!!!!!

A valiant attempt by BBC Scotland - The Untied Shoelaces Show - an end of ( Scottish ) holiday filler presented by " Tiger " Tim Stevens. Featuring bands and a " talent " show, it was a sort of Crackerjack / Saturday Superstore-esque strange mix.

One of Peter Kay's earlier Television roles was a piece in a one off Comedy for Granada back in 1997, which was only seen on Granada, but it did have Alexi Sayle and Paul Shane (of Hi-De-Hi fame) in the programme. But you can get it on the 'Driven to Distraction' DVD which is usually less than a fiver.

Talking about Anthony Wilson, he should be back on the box soon, apparently he's back on BBC Radio Manchester this weekend, which hopefully means he'll back at Channel M sometime soon. It's good to see he's recovered pretty quickly.

On TSW I think Mr TSW and Miss TSW were pretty crude.

And also how can we forget 'That's my Dog'! One of TSWs only networked programmes!