Yakity-Yak

1 9 5 6 (UK)
19 x 25 minute episodes

Premiering on Sunday 6 May 1956, ITV’s short-lived panel game Yakity-Yak would attract little support from the Women’s Lib group.

It was subtitled “The Dizzy Show” and encouraged the six “pretty but not very bright” female panellists to give silly answers to the questions.

McDonald “Mac” Hobley introduced the show, alongside the show’s creators, Michael Pertwee (the older brother of Doctor Who star Jon Pertwee) and Leslie Goldberg.

The recipe was simple enough. The host selected words that sounded as though they might mean something they didn’t, and the girls had 15 seconds in which to explain them (and were not allowed to say “I don’t know”).

The result sent shivers up and down the spines of the erudite gentlemen who compiled the Oxford English Dictionary, while viewers were incredulous that even a very dumb blonde could think a toupee was an abbreviated two-piece, or a Bombay Duck a duck with an extra-long leg.

When asked, “What is a pundit?”, the girls offered a number of creative answers: “something to do with a pun”, “an Indian like Pundit Nehru”, “a piece of machinery”, “something you clean the sink with”, and “a long boat . . . like a punt”. The sixth admitted that she also thought it was “something to do with a pun”.

The show often provided the heartiest belly laughs and, of course, gave the Press the chance to publish even more pictures of girls with trim figures and cute faces.

At the end of each programme, the girls were asked to discuss a debatable topic, resulting in brain machinery working overtime with the girls producing such classic remarks as “Men are so stupid – whenever I want to read what’s going on in Cyprus, they are reading the sports page. That’s why I hate travelling on the Underground”.

Women who appeared as panellists on the show included Barbara Roscoe, June Cunningham, Leslie Carol, Shirley Anne Field, Valerie Agnew, Shirley Burniston, Therese Burton, Jean Clarke, Valerie Carton, Jackie Curtis, Patricia Webb, Ann Gyrsting, and Rosemary Stewart.

The Sketch called the show, “about the most inane half-hour of nonsense that TV has ever foisted on a stunned public”. The final episode aired on Sunday 9 September 1956.

Host
McDonald Hobley
Michael Pertwee
Leslie Goldberg