…whilst Big Brother launch night twists are usually uncomfortably mean-spirited or a bit rubbish, having Cheryl Ferguson and Julie Goodyear secretly and gamely improvise a soap opera style catfight was genuinely funny, especially as Julian Clary and Martin Kemp cottoned on to it quite quickly and some Americans looked bemused.
It is almost time for someone to do a format which is just two hours of mystery celebrities going through a door and walking down some stairs. To dance music.
In other news, BBC FOUR repeated its The Secret Life of Bob Monkhouse documentary last night. If you didn’t see it first time (2010?) and haven’t seen it yet, it’s on iPlayer for a week. It’s 90 minutes long and more focused on his comedy than his game show work, but I thoroughly enjoyed it despite being fairly lukewarm on the guy while he was still alive. It’s not uncritical but it’s a wonderful legacy for the guy. I’d like to think that if he had a hundred clones so that he could do all the things he wanted to at once, clone #97 would have loved being on the Bar and we’d have loved him being here. Highlight: clips from the last episode of The Golden Shot before he was sacked, where has live TV to himself for an hour plus and knows how to use it.
Yes it’s a teriffic documentary.
Monkhouse was someone I appreciated more the older I became.
The strange irony of that Golden Shot clip is of course, that we were watching that very film that the floor manager said would be put in the cannister after the show for Bob as a ‘leaving present’.
It’s a brilliant doc, and it was only until the BBC took over the production (originally it was an indie production) that you even saw 0.0001% of his collection.
The original cut/version of the doc, was so negative and made Bob out to be some werido, that both the familiy and his friends that appeared refused to co-operate and sign it off for transmission. BBC In-house took it over re-filmed and re-edited most of it againg and did a magnificent job.
There were plans to show some of the collection around the original BBC Four transmission back in 2010 (Bob’s archive night, if you like) but rights issues put pay to that.
A former work friend appeared on the last series of Wipeout. Despite his illness starting to play it’s hand, he was funny thoughout cracking jokes to the studio crew and ad-libbing to put all the contestants at ease. A true professional.
An episode of Masterteam from 1987: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDiNCqCuPqE
Unrelatedly: help people on a family holiday play Pointless instead of playing Fabricated Pointless! It’s quite fun and will take no more than 1600 seconds of your time. Apparently responders will also be notified of any otherwise Pointless answers so it’s almost as if you’re playing yourself if you get any. (“Very well done at home!”)
>_< So many UK-centric questions… Okay, only a handful. And there are non-winter Olympics…? 😛