Phil Norman
@mrphilnorman.bsky.social
π€ 859
π₯ 200
π 1743
The Year of Listing Dangerously:
https://historyoftv.substack.com
Has anyone been lucky enough to find a second-hand book with one of these plates in it?
about 7 hours ago
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Sudden, unbidden memory of a line from an ancient fly-on-the-wall documentary: "There's a pizza and whoopee event, that sounds fun." Sadly I can remember no more. Anyone?
about 8 hours ago
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I might just leave the whole of modern popular culture to carry on without me.
about 15 hours ago
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Once more, the nation becomes one vast Benny Hill Show break bumper.
1 day ago
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1 day ago
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Would you do Dougall? TV's sexiest newsreaders, 1960.
2 days ago
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You've got to give a little love, Take a little love, Be prepared to forsake a little love, So low in price we are, So near, so Spar.
2 days ago
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That girl bands documentary is great fun (apart from the bits that are horribly bleak), but we really need to call time on opening programmes with footage of interview subjects finding their marks, adjusting their seats and farting about with the clapperboard.
3 days ago
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Fancy Wanders - Gurney Slade co-writer Sid Green orchestrates a slight return of the original mould-breaking surreal sitcom two decades later, with Dave King and Joe "the Fresh Prince butler" Marcell, bewildering a new generation just after Play Your Cards Right.
open.substack.com/pub/historyo...
3 days ago
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Any TV producers keen to spearhead the new wave of ultra-cheap drama could do worse than look at afternoon Nyree Dawn Porter terminal illness saga For Maddie with Love. Not in writing terms - it's cliche central - but for its threadbare but effective visuals.
open.substack.com/pub/historyo...
4 days ago
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Get It Together - a pop music showcase out of time, still hanging on in the post-punk early eighties by combining musical guests like Modern Romance and U2 with seventies Basil Brush stooge Roy North and fifties puppet owl Ollie Beak.
open.substack.com/pub/historyo...
5 days ago
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45 years ago this week Tom Baker was in a swamp, Nyree Dawn Porter was in a void, Dennis Potter was in Eastbourne, Brigit Forsyth was in a swimsuit adorned with saucepans, and Peter Purves was in Newcastle commentating on fireworks. All this and Ollie Beak too!
open.substack.com/pub/historyo...
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Week 54: 1st β 7th November, 1980
βI used to like you. You always knew where I buried the tortoise.β
https://open.substack.com/pub/historyoftv/p/week-54-1st-7th-november-1980?r=4ckna1&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
6 days ago
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The absolute filth ATV were transmitting in the name of variety back in 1969.
7 days ago
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Separated at birth: The Wednesday Play theme tune and the chorus of Hersham Boys by Sham 69.
7 days ago
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Still reeling from the suggestion on University Challenge that Judi Dench played Iris in Taxi Driver. "You never spend time with me any more, Sport. We might as well play bridge with our maiden aunts."
10 days ago
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Glamour n. an attractive or exciting quality that makes certain people or things seem appealing. - "the glamour of Milan"
10 days ago
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Just about to settle down in front of Spike Lee's underrated 1990 film about a jazz trumpeter.
13 days ago
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13 days ago
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I normally roll my eyes at TV companies bigging up their awards success in press advertisements, but I'll make an exception for this.
15 days ago
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Contrary to popular belief, when Boy George sang "Every day is like survival", he didn't mean they all began with the Anglia knight and were narrated by Andrew Sachs.
16 days ago
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"They'll walk along an empty street For fully half a minute, Their front legs bend the wrong way round, It's fucking creepy, innit?" CHORUS
add a skeleton here at some point
16 days ago
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If your fourteenth-favourite early nineties sketch show did a skit parodying a "typical" seventies sitcom, it couldn't hope to look even half as over the top as Yus, My Dear, which was real.
open.substack.com/pub/historyo...
25 days ago
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The Crezz - Thames's expensive and doomed attempt to create a middle class soap, covering the doings of the residents of a Kensington crescent who all have frightfully fancy interior design.
open.substack.com/pub/historyo...
26 days ago
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Week 53: Pauline Quirke stacks beans, Joss Ackland attacks squatters with an axe, Arthur Mullard removes his trousers, Gemma Jones hosts some randy Liberals and Max Bygraves remembers last week. It has to be 1976.
open.substack.com/pub/historyo...
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Week 53: 11th β 17th October, 1976
βWeβre all going soft in the head through eating oranges.β
https://open.substack.com/pub/historyoftv/p/week-53-11th-17th-october-1976?r=4ckna1&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
27 days ago
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Might spend tomorrow going through the Yellow Pages and phoning up bookshops to ask if they've got a copy of this.
28 days ago
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1938 was a very grim year indeed. MacFisheries were ready for it.
28 days ago
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"It's made of people, our Maurice!"
29 days ago
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If Celebrity The Traitors was made in 1978 it would involve Frank Muir, Roy Kinnear and Angharad Rees in boiler suits sitting round a big beige hexagonal table in TC7, and would be all over in 27 minutes.
29 days ago
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"Over 1,000,000 sold!" Well done everyone.
29 days ago
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Smurf n. A Small blue rubber homunculus found in petrol stations, holding its nose while claiming to be from Catford.
about 1 month ago
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Time for a glass of Wincarnis to ease my "brain fag".
about 1 month ago
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I know that "I've never seen popular thing" is just a bit of fun, but is there any piece of pop culture from the last fifty years that a majority of people in the country have seen? I think even the notorious 1977 Morecambe & Wise Christmas show reached just a shade under half the population.
about 1 month ago
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about 1 month ago
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I'm not saying East End gentrification has reached grotesque new levels but the local Sunday food fair now features a booze stall titled "the finest wines available to humanity".
about 1 month ago
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Listening to Poptones by PiL I gaze out of the window, and the first thing I see is a thirtysomething bloke over the road wearing a PiL t-shirt. Wonder what that would get you down Paddy Power.
about 1 month ago
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Some twelve year old lads ran past me in the street earlier chanting "Nimon! Nimon! Nimon!" Now, this is refering to either a West Ham midfielder or a PokΓ©mon, isn't it? I don't want to contemplate the alternative.
about 1 month ago
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about 1 month ago
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Sudden unbidden memory of Tiswas doing a My Fair Lady pastiche. John Gorman sang "I've Thrown a Custard in Her Face". You can probably guess the rest.
about 1 month ago
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Friday.
about 1 month ago
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Ooh, an article claiming The Simpsons isn't very good these days.
about 1 month ago
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"Who was Billy Butler's co-host on Radio Merseyside's Hold Your Plums?" "Er... Mike Woodin?"
about 1 month ago
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Coincidentally Inman's other ITV sitcom, Take a Letter Mr Jones, also has a title sequence that turns out to be the only point of interest in the whole series.
add a skeleton here at some point
about 1 month ago
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A fantastic overview of a programme almost impossible to, well, overview. Delighted to see it touches on Fancy Wonders, bewildering childhood memories of which haunt me to this day.
add a skeleton here at some point
about 1 month ago
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That article about how "cultural snobbery" should "make a comeback". Like it's a lifestyle choice people can throw on for the autumn. Like there's no middle ground between Proust and The One Show. Like the way columnists think up articles to pitch is the natural state of humanity.
about 1 month ago
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One of the most evocative of the old jingles for me is the evergreen Lee Longlands song. I particularly like the way it sounds as if the singers are constantly trying to stop a pub brawl from breaking out.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xZ_...
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Lee Longlands advert from the 80s
YouTube video by Bob Hickman (InstantArcade)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xZ_uWcKe68
about 1 month ago
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about 1 month ago
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Well of course.
about 1 month ago
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The Hack going for the Clarissa Explains It All end of Brechtianism.
about 1 month ago
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"And I can almost smell/Your Purdey sheets..."
about 1 month ago
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Jeff Wayne's Ansell's Bittermen Theme could have served as the sig tune to a Palladium-style variety show, espionage action thriller and regional news magazine all in one.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eYd...
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Bittermen Theme
YouTube video by Eric Cox
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eYdoHjyyfE
about 1 month ago
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