It's a seven-decade saga that charts the changing fortunes of the very long desk, co-starring ashtrays, telephones, banquettes, pulpits, piano lids and an over-enthusiastic electric fan. My history of BBC election studio furniture: nearertotheend.co.uk/2026/04/25/b...

Start of episode: "We really need to pick up the pace and not spend so much money." One minute later: "We've treated ourselves to a luxury trip to the middle of nowhere." End of episode: "We're gutted we finished so far behind the others." #RaceAcrossTheWorld

This is fantastic news. It's easily my favourite of John Barry's Bond scores and it's the only one where he gets to be both witty and sophisticated. Put a glass against the side of my head and most days at some point you'd hear the opening bars of 'The Whyte House' circling round and round.

Un. Bear. Able.

I’m sorry but the Cheltenham Festival has a long way to go before I think of it as anything but that massive super-spreader event in 2020.

As regards #EurovisionSongContest entries entitled One Two Three, there's a very high bar to clear. www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zSK...

Probably the best version of Lal's "all down this side" routine.

Thank you for all the kind responses to my piece on #KennethWilliams. I'm glad it struck a chord and it's heartening to hear the man is still so appreciated and loved after all this time.

I've started a new site where I'll be writing periodically about TV, films, music and the like. To begin with, ahead of the 100th anniversary of his birth: Kenneth Williams and 1980s television - a story of commitment, triumph and upholstery. nearertotheend.co.uk/2026/02/15/k...

I've been 50 less than two weeks and I've already been invited to join a bowel cancer screening programme and attend a webinar on planning for retirement.

It's what he would have wanted.

The endgame will take place in the grounds of our glorious castle. (If wet, indoors) #thetraitorsuk

Hugo A-Go-Go #TheTraitors

Bought myself the 1989 Christmas Radio Times as a present for myself, and spotted the premiere of ‘Crocodile’ Dundee (which still holds the record for the UK’s single biggest TV audience on any Christmas Day since Barb began reporting in 1981) was billed as a “special presentation”.

Watching Tommy Cooper on the 1979 Parkinson Christmas special reminds me of how much I was terrified by him (Cooper, not Parky) as a young child. There was something quite brutish about his huge frame, gruff patter and missing teeth. I flinched every time he loomed at the camera.

He’ll finally get to see “those faces”.

No. And no.

Potential line-up for a mid-1970s Celebrity Traitors. 10 men & nine women, as per this year: John Le Mesurier Joyce Grenfell Terry Wogan Gabrielle Drake Kenneth Williams (if unavailable, Larry Grayson) Yootha Joyce Roy Castle Diana Dors Jonathan Miller Linda Thorson John Conteh Ann Haydon-Jones...

"Pull out chairs and easy on the swears." Advice I think we can all live by, Will. #totp

Good to see the celebrities maintaining the round table traditions of spelling each other's names wrong and addressing each other as "yourself". #CelebrityTraitors

Imagine if ITV had chosen to mark its 70th anniversary by giving over half an hour of this evening's schedule to a new performance of those exact same scenes from The Importance of Being Earnest, Baker’s Dozen and Private Lives. No, I can't either.

I remember Simon Mayo being so smitten with Vindaloo that he played it on air twice in a row.

John Cleese moaning (again) in an undignified way about the BBC reminds me of the way Terry Wogan moaned (again and again) in an undignified way about the BBC for about 15 years. With Wogan it was worse, however, as he moaned about the BBC while at the same time taking money for working at the BBC.

It's October 1987 and Q magazine has categorised helpfully the celebrities du jour. There's good news for Ben Curiosity, Bill Wyman and Lindas Davidson and Lusardi; less good news for Chris Quentin, Belouis Some and "sundry" Curiosities. First reserves include Nino Firetto and Gary Glitter.

While we're celebrating 40 years of Howards' Way, let's also commemorate the faltering evolution of the typeface used during the opening titles, which progressed series by series from slap-this-on-anything to bespoke-ritzy.

40 years ago today, #HOWARDSWAY was first broadcast. This drama of ambition, love and shoulder pads was often dubbed 'Dallas-on-Sea' for its glamorous portrayal of the wealthy yachting and business elite in the fictional coastal town of Tarrant. 🧵...

40 years ago today, I began keeping a daily diary. The first entries are rather prosaic, but a) I was only nine and b) at the time I didn't know I'd carry on. But I did - and I never stopped. (The names of the days are in Cornish; they were printed in a different language each week. Very recherché).

Saw the first few minutes of At Bertram's Hotel on BBC4 - one of the most visually exciting openings of any of the BBC adaptations - and was struck by how pristine the remastered print looked. Then I checked and saw no Blu-rays are available in the UK *purses lips like Joan Hickson*.

Has it ever been definitely established who The Firm are depicting in their big budget #totp performance of Arthur Daley E's Alright? At times it seems they're meant to be Arthur and Terry - but then why is "Terry" is dressed like a city gent and "Arthur" like Jay Gatsby?

It was in this week 40 years ago that I went to the Curzon cinema in Loughborough to watch A View to a Kill: my very first James Bond film. I went largely on the recommendation of Jimmy Greaves, who had reviewed it on TV-am and shown a clip of what he hailed as "the best car chase I have EVER seen!"

Hmm - I get the funny feeling this "you", of whom Cliff sings repeatedly and enthusiastically, is not a real person. #totp

40 years ago today, my hometown does its bit for Live Aid. Sally should probably have checked Radio Times.

I hope they found whoever pulled the plug on The Who’s set… and gave them a medal. #HereAllWeek #LiveAid

Were you still up for Su Pollard and Duncan Goodhew? #LiveAid

*checks weather forecast* Looks like I might be able to use my oven on Tuesday, the first time this month! After that - who knows? Maybe I can risk heating a sausage in August.

Glad we don't have to do THAT any more! Anyway, here's that first listing in @radiotimes.bsky.social

60 years ago this evening, a TV programme created by my great uncle Glyn was launched on BBC1. Its name was coined by Glyn's wife, Daphne, when someone from Radio Times rang them at home in a flap, desperate to know how to bill the show in the next issue: "Tell them to call it Tomorrow's World."

These "secret sets" by musicians at Glastonbury don't seem very secret to me. I'm reading about them everywhere.

This episode of All Creatures Great & Small has thoroughly scrambled my already over-heated brain.

May 1993: a time when Alan Yentob was almost as well-known as Noel Edmonds (though neither were as well-known as Mr Blobby).

Ah yes, of course: the thing that caused the world the most distress and hardship in 2020 was the cancellation of the Eurovision Song Contest.

Start of episode: "We really need to pick up the pace and not spend so much money." One minute later: "We've treated ourselves to a luxury trip to the middle of nowhere." End of episode: "We're gutted we finished so far behind the others." #RaceAcrossTheWorld

At this rate, the presenter of the BBC's News at Ten will have to begin by saying "Good morning".

"And while the votes continue to be counted, for your enjoyment, we present a musical montage depicting life... in each of the 26 Swiss cantons."

Is every single resident of Switzerland contractually obliged to appear in this Eurovision semi-final? Get a bloody move on. Some of us have got work tomorrow.

One of the fiftysomethings in tonight's Race Across the World said, referring to trains in China, "at least they're not as bad as British Rail" - which made me wonder how many people still use British Rail to mean the UK's rail network, even after all this time.

This shot of the office of Smash Hits, from the 1992 South Bank Show on Pet Shop Boys, has stirred some potent workplace memories: not because of the magazine or the PSBs, but because of that monstrously tangled telephone cord. I grappled with dozens of these coiled horrors in my younger days.

One thing they need to restore to the Bond films: 007 donning disguises. I've just watched Octopussy and it must hold the record for the most instances of this: he's a horse trainer, a South American colonel, a crocodile, a dead body in a body bag, a gorilla, a circus knife thrower and a clown.

Trip to Sheffield I think. www.sheffield.ac.uk/efm/teams/pr...

Watching Funeral in Berlin and wondering if this dazzling form of intra-floor transportation ever made it out of West German office blocks and into the UK.