Party Vibe

that bit out of the old Thames Christmas tape doing the rounds again I see :laugh_at:

yep, no way would that be allowed to get to TX if people wanted to keep their jobs (the old IBA made Ofcom look like fluffy kittens when it came to regulating kids / youth TV!)

OTOH it was made at Teddington using the actual actors, puppets and sets and made as an in-joke for people working at Thames TV.

it was a tradition until the early 1990s that each Christmas a TV company would use slack time in the studios/edit suites to make these spoof tapes, which would normally only get distributed amongst the TV station engineers and sometimes their suppliers.

It got a bit hairy in the 1980s when one had BBC engineers taking the piss out of the guy who died on Noel Edmonds late late breakfast show; and someone grassed everyone up to the tabloids.

By the 1990s most TV studios kept tighter control over what their resources were being used for.

Although you now regularly see mashups and spoofs on youtube in most cases you’d never get the actual talent sending up their own projects as they would lose their work for “not believing in their brand”. The TV industry is no fun any more… :you_crazy

there have been some proper actual gaffes on kids TV though…

– the phone ins weren’t on delay until recently (the kit was expensive) so some kids called Matt Bianco “wankers” in the mid 1980s..

– Philip Schofield was introducing the next show which featured “Jill Dando” but got the two syllables of her name swapped over..

– Anthea Turner got blown up on a saturday morning show due to a mix-up with stage explosives (it was quite harsh, she was badly burned and you can still see the scars today). I once worked with the bloke who was a BBC engineer at the time it happened and he was initially asked to wipe the tape but refused out of principle as it was evidence for the safety investigation (and it would have denied subsequent generations a popular joke e-mail attachment)

– in the 1990s MTV got 11:00 and 23:00 mixed up on their TX computer and put the Ray Cokes Show on at kids’ viewing time (swearing and all). They were fined a stupid amount by the authorities IIRC..

– Phil Cornwell (Gilbert the Alien) used to get away with some classic lines (and admitted to being on speed most of the time)

– Joolz Holland tried to plug a show called the “Groovy Fuckers” on CITV in the 80s. I think he was off air for 3 months after that…

Ironically though media types got away with a lot more back then – a bollockig and they were then back on air. nowadays (despite trying to make it look like TV is more daring) everyones on their best behaviour as theres too much competition to take risks..