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It's Still A Police Box, Why Hasn't It Changed? Part Two: Koquillion It Was...
In our look at the first series of Doctor Who, we saw how the show went virtually overnight from being a well-made but undistinguished making-learning-fun history-fest to the ratings-topping eye of a...
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TV's Newest Series
One thing that those big walloping housebrick-sized books about the 'end' of 'the sixties' never get round to mentioning is the decline of ITC. Once ITV's in-house powerhouse of dynamic fashion-driven...
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Who's On, Wogan?: When Terry And The Doctor Collided...
Wogan, the BBC's flagship early evening chat show, was a regular fixture on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays between 1982 and 1992. Doctor Who, their occasionally flagship early evening family adventure...
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Time And Tide Melts The Snowman: Part One
"Sylvester Stallone's the new Mister Who!".It was with those words, uttered by a classmate who was obsessed with being the 'first' with the latest showbiz news despite apparently never quite...
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Time And Tide Melts The Snowman: Part Two
Episode One of Time And The Rani is, so a lot of fans would have you believe, Where It All Went Wrong For Doctor Who. Actually, one or two of them say it's Paradise Towers Episode Two, but let's not...
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Time And Tide Melts The Snowman: Part Three
When you get past the pre-credits sequence and the new opening titles and actually start watching Time And The Rani, the first thing you notice is that it looks good. And this is no mean feat when you...
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Time And Tide Melts The Snowman: Part Four
While Time And The Rani was being broadcast, Children's BBC how-it-works show for under-tens Corners suddenly picked up a couple of million extra viewers. This was largely down to the fact that the...
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The Camberwick Green Procrastination Society
The Camberwick Green Procrastination Society is a book collecting some of my recent columns and articles, including previously unseen ones on Chigley, Wait Till Your Father Gets Home and David Bowie's...
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It's Still A Police Box, Why Hasn't It Changed? Part Four: Last Train To...
Doctor Who's third series in 1965-1966 is in many ways its most interesting. It's also - frustratingly - the least represented in the archives, at least in terms of key visual material. Bold if aimless...
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The Unbearable Lightness Of Boing
The Comedy Cash-In Book Book, Ben Baker's book on the history of the TV Comedy tie-in large format paperback, has recently been reissued in an expanded form with even more on the shows that shouldn't...
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Looks Unfamiliar Show 1: Phil Catterall
Looks Unfamiliar is a new podcast in which I talk to a guest about some of the things that they think that only they remember.Joining me in this episode is Phil Catterall, who tells us about his...
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Stay Alert!
You’d probably need some sort of Space Detective to work out exactly what started off the early eighties trend for ‘intelligent sci-fi’. But whatever it was, even the most amateur of Space Detectives...
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Never Too Quickly, Never Too Slowly
If you still hadn’t recovered from the weekend’s celebrations on Tuesday 3rd January 1967, then you were in for a sharp wake-up call. At 13.30pm on BBC1, a shaky zoom in on a clock tower, followed by a...
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Looks Unfamiliar Show 2: Garreth F. Hirons
Looks Unfamiliar is a podcast in which I talk to a guest about some of the often very strange things that they think that only they remember.Joining me in this episode is Garreth F. Hirons, who tells...
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Jo Cox
Had this been a different kind of a day, right now I'd be driving you all to distraction with relentless plugs for an article on the ridiculous ITV children's programme The Mersey Pirate. It's more or...
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Ferry Cross The Mersey (Unless It's Raining)
On 2nd June 1979, arguably the weirdest idea for a Saturday Morning TV show ever - and less arguably the most technically ill-advised - set sail around the ITV regions. Launched by Granada on a wave of...
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Desert Island Dylan (Or Madhouse On Castaway Street... No, That Doesn't Work)
It's always a mistake to assume that you know everything about popular culture of the past. Doubly so if it's regarding a long-wiped television show. No matter how hard you think you've looked, there's...
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Gordon Murray's Multi-Coloured Swap Shop
This isn't going to be a 'tribute' to Gordon Murray as such, mainly because I feel that the various lengthy pieces I've written about his work stand up perfectly well as 'tributes' in their own right....
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It's Still A Police Box, Why Hasn't It Changed? Part Five: Well It's A...
Doctor Who's third outing in 1966-67 marked something of a turning point for the show, featuring the first ever change of lead actor, and what at the time was intended to be the last ever appearance of...
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That Was This Life That Was
In March 1996, a bunch of law graduates moved into a shared house in Southwark. Over the next two years, BBC2's rare excursion into credible and likeable youth drama This Life kept us all hooked (well,...
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