Featured Blog Posts
To outsiders, it seemed that Pete Duel had everything to live for – a loving girlfriend, a nice home, money and a hit TV series. Yet shortly after 1:25 am on 31 December 1971, this handsome and talented…
The Silver Beetles (John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Stuart Sutcliffe) failed an audition as Billy Fury’s backing group but drew a consolation prize in playing behind Johnny Gentle (in reality John Askew, a 20-year-old apprentice joiner…
On 27 December 1960 The Beatles appeared at the Litherland Town Hall Ballroom in Liverpool in a performance widely regarded as being a turning point in their career. The band, in one form or another, had been playing in the…
A look at some fascinating behind the scenes shots from some classic television shows. UFO (1970 – 1973) Star Trek (1966 – 1969) Steptoe and Son (1962 – 1974) The Addams Family (1964 – 1966) The Champions (1968…
TV Party tvparty.com An American site that is sooooo slick. We can spend hours here, looking at categories such as ‘Super Sixties’, ‘Hit Shows of the 70s’ and ‘Where are they now?’ It’s About TV itsabouttv.com Adventures in…
Featured Television Posts
1 9 9 0 (UK) 12 x 10 minute episodes Mick (Michael Barrymore) is a cartoonist. Mac (David Jarvis) is a miniature Scottish character who hangs out on Mick’s drawing board. Mick sits at his drawing board and…
1 9 9 4 (UK) 4 x 50 minute episodes In 1957, naive and hapless civil servant Jasper Pye (Michael Maloney) lives at home with his mum and is thoroughly bored with his lot until he is sent…
1 9 9 4 – 1 9 9 5 (UK) 6 x 30 minute episodes 1 x 45 minute episodes The character of Alan Partridge first appeared in On The Hour (1991), a British radio comedy. He was the mock news…
1 9 7 0 – 1 9 7 2 (UK) 38 x 60 minute episodes Phyllis Calvert, former star of British films, became a star of television as Kate Graham, a recently-widowed 50-something agony aunt answering readers’ personal problems…
1 9 9 8 – 2 0 0 0 (UK) 22 x 30 minute episodes This BBC comedy series starred Caroline Quentin as Kate Salinger, a counsellor/psychotherapist whose bumbling business partner, Doulas Fielding (Chris Langham), was permanently-depressed and…
Featured Music Posts
One of the defining moments of Australia’s 1970s pop legacy was undoubtedly Hush performing Bony Moronie on Countdown. This updated version of the old Larry Williams rocker was a #1 for Hush in September 1975. It was the perfect vehicle for…
1 9 7 7 – 1 9 8 1 (UK) 30 minute episodes This teen-orientated show from the BBC covered the contemporary scene in the Midlands and was hosted by local girl (and future punk superstar) Toyah Willcox…
1 9 7 8 – 1 9 8 6 (UK) 81 x 25 minute episodes The BBC turned pop music into a game show with Cheggers Plays Pop. The effervescent Keith Chegwin had come to fame as a…
In late 1974, Gough Whitlam’s Australian Labor government allocated a new AM radio license to the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) for a “youth-style” radio station that could reach future potential Labor voters in Sydney. Alternative rock radio station,…
1 9 5 7 – 1 9 5 8 (UK) On 16 February 1957, the Six-Five Special came down the line – its name taken from its timeslot (it followed a five-minute news summary) – courtesy of Rock & Roll…
Featured Movies Posts
In this sequel to the Evil Dead films – The Evil Dead (1981) and Dead By Dawn (1987) – a sarcastic discount-store employee (“Name’s Ash. Housewares”) is time-warped – along with his immense ’73 Oldsmobile – to a…
Norah Benson (Shirley MacLaine) is an affluent socialite and divorced mother of two living on Manhattan’s Upper East Side who seems to be living the perfect life. After her mother’s suicide, she becomes a mother figure to her…
Three youngsters steal a car for a joyride and encounter a couple out on a date. They drive the couple into a ditch, pull the boy out of the car and beat him up while their leader attacks…
The fourth in the superb Planet of the Apes series of films picks up a few years after Zira and Cornelius gave birth to their talking baby ape in Escape From The Planet of the Apes. The year is now 1990 and,…
Based on the dystopian novel by George Orwell and set in the totalitarian future state of Oceania, this is the story of citizen Winston Smith (John Hurt), a lowly outer party functionary who lives in London, which is…
Featured Pop Culture Posts
Tupperware, a company making plastic kitchen containers and other domestic items, always concentrated on selling its products through party-plan selling, allowing housewives to buy the products in the comfort of their own homes at Tupperware “parties” – a…
This Cadbury concoction of raisins and chewy stuff and rum (0% proof) was available from 1971 to 1978. The bar was advertised with a Cockney pie and mash style song: “It’s amazin’ what raisins can do All that…
“And all because the lady loves Milk Tray”. The pluckiest man on television was the chap who would leap on to moving trains, swing from a helicopter, even brave the January Sales – ”All because the lady loves…
“A mans gotta chew what a mans gotta chew”. The Mighty Chew – a chocolate-covered nougat bar from Rowntrees which you could stretch to the floor whilst still attached to your teeth – was first produced in 1972.…
Introduced in the 1960s, Treets came in three varieties – peanut (yellow bag), toffee (pale blue bag) and chocolate (brown bag). They were near-spherical chocolate/nut/toffee lumps “sealed in a crispy shell”. The magic of Treets was that they…
Featured Social History Posts
Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990. The justification was an old territorial claim on the Gulf state, but the main reasons were economic. Iraq had built enormous debts with its neighbours, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, during the Iran-Iraq War and…
January 01 – Spain and Portugal join the European Economic Community (EEC). 04 – Thin Lizzy bass player and vocalist, Phil Lynott dies of heart failure after laying in a coma for a week following a drug overdose.…
The Sixties to many is a decade of childhood memories – as much about Matchbox Cars as Vietnam; equal parts Captain Scarlet and Thunderbirds as well as Woodstock and Hendrix. Have you ever watched Heartbeat on TV? Well…
January 02 – Ideological purity has reached the superficially cosy world of the nursery. In an attempt to excise any taint of racism, all new editions of Enid Blyton’s Noddy books will be shorn of the traditional black golliwogs,…
January 02 – USA officially withdraws from UNESCO. 07 – Nine striking miners in the UK are jailed for arson. 10 – Sir Clive Sinclair’s ill-fated C5 battery-operated tricycle takes to the road. 10 – Eight die when…
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Latest Posts
1 9 9 4 – 1 9 9 5 (UK) 30 x 15 minute episodes Frankie (Isobel Middleton), Mummy (Toby Sedgwick) and Igor (David Shimwell) run the Monster Café, a…
1 9 9 4 (UK) 13 x 15 minute episodes With the help (and hindrance) of family and friends, Millie (Sarah Davison) embarked on the construction of a model town,…
1 9 9 3 – 1 9 9 4 (UK) 18 x 30 minute episodes This BBC comedy written by Carla Lane found us once again sitting around the dinner…
1 9 9 7 – 1 9 9 8 (UK) 16 x 30 minute episodes Based on the long-running Australian sitcom Mother and Son, this BBC series starred Stephanie Cole…
1 9 9 5 – 1 9 9 8 (UK) 53 x 15 minute episodes This children’s comedy series from the BBC revolved around schoolgirl Julia Jekyll (Olivia Hallinan), who…
1 9 9 1 – 1 9 9 2 (UK) 12 x 10 minute episodes This BBC stop-motion animated children’s series revolved around young Joshua Jones who lived on a…
Latest News
4 November 2021 Lionel Blair, the veteran actor, dancer and entertainer, has died at the age of 92. Born Henry Lionel Ogus, he grew up in Stamford Hill, north London…
9 October 2021Canadian-born Rick Jones began his TV career in Britain as part of the Play School team before starring as “Yoffy” in Fingerbobs, presenting stories featuring paper finger-puppet characters…
26 September 2021. Alan Lancaster, founding bassist of rock greats Status Quo, has died in Australia, aged 72. He had been suffering from Multiple Sclerosis for some time.
16 September 2021. Sir Clive Sinclair, the inventor and entrepreneur who was instrumental in bringing home computers to the masses, has died at the age of 81.
Featured Aussie Posts
1 9 8 4 – 1 9 9 4 (Australia) 42 x 30 minute episodes An Australian sitcom in which the elderly Maggie Beare (Ruth Cracknell) may be showing signs of…
1 9 7 2 (Australia) 6 x 60 minute episodes This six-part serial from the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) was based on the novel by Neville Shute and set in…
1 9 9 1 – 1 9 9 2 (Australia) 40 x 25 minute episodes Widowed Bill Mellop (Bill Conn) runs the Lazy Daisy nursery, assisted by his children -…
1 9 8 4 (Australia) Australian network Channel 7 produced this show – which debuted on 30 July 1984 – to compete with the phenomenally successful Perfect Match, Channel 10’s dating…
Featured Canadian Posts
1 9 7 6 – 1 9 8 4 (Canada) 72 x 30 minute episodes 42 x 90 minute episodes 18 x 45 minute episodes Second City Television (SCTV) was a popular…
Bob Clark’s imaginatively nasty low-budget Canadian slasher traps a group of college students in the snow-dusted sorority house of Sigma Lamba Chi, where they are terrorised by an obscene phone…
Since co-founding Buffalo Springfield in 1966 (and then splitting after two albums), Neil Young rarely stopped moving. Born in Toronto in November 1945, Neil Perceval Young worked in Canada as a folk singer…
Roberta Joan Anderson was born on 7 November 1943, in Fort Macleod in the prairie province of Alberta, Canada. She was the only child of William Anderson, a flight lieutenant in…
