Tarrant brings Tiswas back to ITV

BBC website reports

Anarchic 1970s children's programme Tiswas will return to ITV next year with original presenter, Chris Tarrant.
He will host a one-off show featuring classic sketches and interviews with guests who were "gunged" on the programme, such as Sir Trevor McDonald.

But Tarrant has launched an appeal for recordings of Tiswas, as many of the original tapes were scrapped.

"If anybody's got any videos that will help us put this programme together, please get in touch," he told the BBC.

Tiswas became a cult favourite when it hit the airwaves on Birmingham-based ITV station ATV in 1974.

'Disaster for television'


The show was a launch-pad for comedian Lenny Henry
It gradually went nationwide, and its mixture of sketches, cartoons and custard pie fights proved a hit - initially with the children's audience it was aimed at, but later with their parents as well.

The show's name was believed to be an acronym for "Today is Saturday, Watch and Smile".

It was cancelled by ATV's successor company Central in 1982, but spawned a short-lived late-night spin-off called OTT - Over The Top.

According to Chris Tarrant, more than 350 episodes of Tiswas were scrapped by a Central executive who called the show a "disaster for television".

Tarrant says he has been able to retrieve several tapes through the estate of comedian Kenny Everett, who was a big fan of the show.

Cast reunited

Many other episodes were saved by presenter Sally James' husband.

James will join Tarrant for next year's tribute show, along with co-stars Lenny Henry, Bob Carolgees and Spit the dog.

The villainous Phantom Flan Flinger is also due to make an appearance, although the producer who originally played the character, Glyn Edwards, has died.

The tribute programme will have a similar format to ITV's Audience With... series, where stars perform and answer questions from a celebrity audience.

Tarrant said it would mark the 30th anniversary of Tiswas becoming a national programme "that fundamentally changed children's television forever".

Members of the public who want to submit tapes of the original series can contact Tarrant's production company at the email address unimediaman@aol.com.

Wasn't this rumoured ages and ages ago?

Sounds like they're just nicking Swap Shop's idea, really.

More likely, they were scrapped just because that was how TV companies worked at the time by wiping everything.

it helped Save monay as there never belived anyone would want to wacth that show again.

althourgh it was NOt shown Network wide until 1979 just after that it got crap!

I'm thinking the same there too, but I remember reading a few years ago alot of ATV archive was junked sometime in the 1980's or 1990's, hence the loss of Tiswas and many editions of Crossroads from the 1970's, I remember it was something on the lines that it was a decision by Polygram. Only when Carlton got hold of Polygram Archive/ATV much archive was restored.

The truth of the matter is that quite a lot of the programmes weren't recorded by ATV in the first place for many reasons: it was live, no one thought it'd be of any use in the future (this was the 70s remember), maybe no one thought it was good enough to record for posterity... take your pick. However, there's a lot more Tiswas in existance than you might expect... thanks to people home-recording many programmes.

Incidentally, it would appear that the Tiswas idea has been around for almost 2 years, but ITV have only picked up on it recently, perhaps because of the forthcoming Swap Shop show. No doubt the success of the Swap Shop show might help demonstrate how well a Tiswas programme may be received...

I'm part of the TiswasOnline website ( www.tiswasonline.com ) and we're going to be helping with some aspects of the show. Contrary to much of what you've read recently, nothing has actually been confirmed as yet... it's not even definite that the programme will go ahead, although it looks hopeful.

We're currently looking for anyone who had any kind of connection with the programme. Guests, prize-winners ('up by the ears'), even kids in the audience... we want your stories so that we can pass them on to the producers. There's a chance that some people may be asked to take part in the show - obviously if you can pinpoint a date you were on then all the better (if you know what I mean).

No guarauntees, obviously, but if anyone was on the show - go along to www.tiswasonline.com and contact us via the 'Contacts' section (or PM me here).

EDIT: A number of other aspects of that press report quoted above are wrong, for the full picture keep watching the Tiswas site