20 YEARS AGO TODAY: David Attenborough's life's work reaching its ultimate destination - which would make II and III further destinations but let's not quibble - Planet Earth is the most expensive nature documentary series ever commissioned by the BBC .

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Married For Life, ITV's version of Married... With Children, is a huge flop, maybe as Central hired Russ Abbot in the Al Bundy role and rewrote original episodes in a Ctrl+H style, casting Hugh Bonneville as wacky next door neighbour. www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2F_...

60 YEARS AGO TODAY: The Ark is what it says, a human spacecraft fleeing Earth's destruction that Doctor Who and his companions nearly accidentally destroy the human life, including a young Michael Sheard, from.

30 YEARS AGO: piracy comes to the Playdays Playground Stop, which means Peggy and Patch, and also C-tier Playdays presenter Carolene Hinds and a story written by former Wide Awake Club presenter Arabella Warner. www.youtube.com/watc...

20 YEARS AGO TODAY: "can we not just do the song one list time without being upstaged by Melvin Odoom again?" The final Sunday Dick & Dom In Da Bungalow on CBBC and they finally achieve the singularity by getting Mr Blobby in.

50 YEARS AGO TODAY: Leonard Sachs indulges in some wild scarf twirling before introducing the players of The Good Old Days, including Sheila Steafal, opera singer Valerie Masterson, a genuinely tense knife-throwing pair and your very own Ken Dodd.

20 YEARS AGO TODAY: Dancing On Ice was the epitome of an ITV us-too commission yet against all expectations it was huge, ITV's highest non-football or Corrie audience of the year watching the result. www.youtube.com/watc...

20 YEARS AGO TODAY: the dream Wogan/Kaplinsky team front Eurovision: Making Your Mind Up, where Antony Costa and Kym Marsh are amongst those falling in the wake of Daz Sampson despite the hopes of a pointless studio panel including Kelly Osbourne.

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: No Limits' Jenny Powell is confused by what Bernard Matthews does.

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Eddy Shah's vault into new colour-filled newspaper boundaries Today launches. It's sold within four months and closes after nine years. www.youtube.com/watc...

20 YEARS AGO TODAY: the penultimate Saturday Dick & Dom In Da Bungalow with Sara Cox, Bogies in Machu Picchu and our boys already having second thoughts about their version of Ask The Family.

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: The Bob Monkhouse Show features an incompetent magician in a red hat. That's right, it's Frenchman Mac Ronay.

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Wogan talks to Julie Andrews about her career, Educating Archie, how Hattie Jacques enabled her big break and her brother getting a round of applause for existing.

50 YEARS AGO TODAY: children's BBC heads to the estates of Liverpool for Rocky O'Rourke, the titular teen wanting to become a gang leader like his brother, which as it's the 1970s mostly means abandoned old buildings and the hope of petty theft.

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Screen Two's adaptation of Booker winner Hotel du Lac, all very 80s soft focused lavishness, would win three BAFTAs, one for lead Anna Massey as a romance novelist escaping to a Swiss hotel.

50 YEARS AGO TODAY: angry young man of 60s theatre Arnold Wesker writes Play For Today Love Letters On Blue Paper, in which leukaemia victim Patrick Troughton receives emotional missives from his wife.

20 YEARS AGO TODAY: Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe is given a three-week dry run by BBC Four, the first of which snarks into Jeremy Kyle and The Apprentice, breaks down the cost of telly and seeds his love of The Wire and hatred of Justin Lee Collins.

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Mervyn Peake of Gormenghast fame is responsible for Mr Pye, a both more and less grounded fantasy work in which preacher Derek Jacobi moves to Sark, tries to get the eccentric locals into spiritualism, and then grows angel's wings.

50 YEARS AGO TODAY: The Little Ladies officially form in the second episode of Rock Follies, bringing in Stephen Moore, Billy Murray, disapproving men and some typical Howard Schuman hyper-reality.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Gary Numan appears on Noel's House Party as part of a Battle of the Decades vote against The Manfreds (Manfred Mann without the actual Manfred Mann) and Showaddywaddy. Luckily, later the same night he also performed on The White Room.

Janet Ellis reunites with her Jigsaw co-presenter Sylvester McCoy on Blue Peter today in 1987. Meanwhile Mark Curry and Caron Keating try out bowling with a nine year old and Curry goes longboating in York as he's "absolutely fascinated by Vikings".

In this week's archive newsletter: Mark E Smith upsets Andi Peters, Derek Griffiths' typewriter, Honeybun/Puffin, Rik and Ade's TV double act debut, Parky's surprise visitor, Noel in the broom cupboard, Wogan's long putt and The Two Ninnies. whydontyoutube.substack.com/p/the-why-do...

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Hotel Babylon's Dani Behr welcomes Not Hotel Babylon's Noel Gallagher to discuss threatening Liam with a cricket bat and perform Don't Look Back In Anger on Hotel Babylon.

It’s not McGowan in this one, but Alan Francis.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: The Mark Thomas Comedy Product attempts to unify stand-up and campaigning political stunts, including a tank disguised as an ice cream van combined with an explanation of Credit Guarantee Loan Scheme international bad debts. www.youtube.com/watc...

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Fist Of Fun, by way of Sally Phillips and Alistair McGowan, investigates whether York City really are magic.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: the songs of Fred Halibut and his little banjolele.

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: a week after Wham! announce their split George Michael tells Aspel & Company why.

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Hale & Pace host Saturday Live, featuring early Stavros, SNL's A Whitney Brown, Jeremy Hardy, the Dangerous Brothers in a torture chamber and our hosts singing See You Later Alligator with Madness in front of inflatable elephants. www.youtube.com/watc...

30 YEARS AGO ON THE 29th: the last regular French & Saunders for eight years is mostly Dr Quimn, Mad Woman, with Jennifer as Jane Seymour and Michael Praed as rugged friend. Also features Kate Moss, Patsy Kensit and Mel & Sue separately in the same sketch.

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Micro Live finally acknowledges that games exist as Lesley Judd shows us how to cheat at them and Fred Harris tests the Spectrum 128k. Half the programme is taken up with "artificial intelligence guru" and synth inventor Ray Kurzweil.

George Michael guests on Richard & Judy today in 2003 and while he's there takes Richard's place in their daily phone-in game You Say We Pay.

60 YEARS AGO TODAY: The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band make their TV bow on Blue Peter.

30 YEARS AGO ON THE 29th: This Morning celebrates thirty years of the Daleks - introduced in 1963 - and the TV movie announcement by talking to Jon Pertwee, Roberta Tovey and Doctor Who Magazine editor Gary Gillett.

20 YEARS AGO TODAY: the cultiest of cults, Snuff Box features Matt Berry, who also wrote all the music, and Rich Fulcher as a hangman and his assistant, in the same way their former BBC3 employers The Mighty Boosh were just zookeepers.

20 YEARS AGO TODAY: the first series of Life On Mars concludes with Sam Tyler meeting his father on 1973 cop duty and thinking a marriage reunion could hold the key to his escaping the coma.

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: 40 Minutes provides a classic of letting their words condemn them, The Fishing Party. Paul Watson of The Family fame follows four City gents on a trip to catch large amounts of skate in Scotland and while there gets them talking.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: at the end of the fifth series of The Brittas Empire Gordon Brittas was in heaven. Fifteen months later he returns to Whitbury New Town Leisure Centre.

50 YEARS AGO TODAY: The Muppet Show, as you likely know, was filmed at Elstree by ATV. While the Creature Shop select were over to film the first series they made their UK TV debut on Des O'Connor Entertains.

Another week passes: whydontyoutube.substack.com/p/the-why-do...

Points Of View today in 1985 covers not only initial reactions to Eastenders and Wogan but Blott On The Landscape, which Barry Took compares to the Falklands, thriller Maelstrom and the desire for spare magnetic weather symbols.

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: a barely credulous Anne and Nick meet Sigue Sigue Sputnik's Tony James and Martin Degville in their full finery on Good Morning Britain. Michael Barrymore contributes as much as he finds he can.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Ruby Wax Meets... Charlton Heston, kind of accidentally. Her actual target is Goldie Hawn, who seems genuinely surprised to find Wax and her crew there before she's ready but bonds with Ruby so quickly they end up jacuzzi-ing together.

50 YEARS AGO TODAY: A Song For Europe, in the presence of Aspel, features Tony Christie, Frank Ifield, Hazell Dean, Cheryl Baker as a member of Co-Co and Brotherhood Of Man, who were on their way to The Hague. Certainly should have been, you may think. www.youtube.com/watc...

50 YEARS AGO TODAY: any idiot could interview Peter Ustinov - make him comfortable and let the stories flow. Derek Nimmo, fronting his talk show Just A Nimmo, fulfils the brief for what he calls "the most entertaining conversationalist in the world".

50 YEARS AGO TODAY: Brian Cox is defence counsel on a Crown Court written by regular Ken Loach collaborator Jim Allen, defending two youths arrested by Philip Madoc and charged with assault.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Iggy Pop and his special NSFW trousers take on the White Room.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: The Sculptress, about a woman imprisoned for dismemberment and a journalist who believes her to be concealing something, stars Pauline Quirke in such a convincing manner you can't help wondering if she wasted the rest of her career.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: An Evening With Spike Milligan. No, not An Audience With, different production company. Sir Harry Secombe, Peter O`Toole, Roy Hudd and Denis Norden are among the questioners.

50 YEARS AGO TODAY: Rock Follies was huge, winning the drama Bafta and the Little Ladies' album going to no.1, but feels diminished these days maybe because it's barely been repeated, maybe due to the "drawn together by the power of communal song" plot.