The rolling "The Good Old Days" BBC4 revival thread

Andrew Sachs + depressed looking provincials in shabby fake-edwardiana listlessly mouthing words to vile songs of the past.

Right now:

Bathing beauties Medley -> Barry Cryer in kilt and oversize tam o'shanter doing one of those comical Scottish songs (Janet Brown did one of these the other week - I don't think I knew it was ~a thing~) then jokes about Mick McManus.

harry lauder classic: "stop yr ticklin jock"

Starting thread because it was a topic of discussion at the ILB fap last night.

What is this?
Why is this?
Who actually liked this?

Makes me feel ill and tense because I am so swiftly taken back to being about 8 and having to go to bed on Sunday nights - epicentre of ennui. But I am also fascinated.

dear god this turn is long

Yeah some solid jokes in there but why did it go on forever?

next: virtuoso diabolo artist

SINGING diabolist no less (called wong mow ting)

diabolo artistry is boring

The singing diabolist is also going on forever.

A friend on twitter says he asked his parents if they could explain it. They could not: "We used to watch it, but there wasn't much choice"

It doesn't help much that my TV keeps freezing.

"dirty" edwardian song (didn't catch the singer's name)

'Inimitable idiosyncratic egocentricities' shouldn't he be aiming for initial assonance in those bits?

Did seem hesitant over egocentricities tbf

Sheila Steafel!

And The Don.

arthur fluffs punchline of first joke

wondered if askey (b.1900) had performed in actual real edwardian music hall, but apparently he didn't begin working in theatre till the 30s

bit of class: moira anderson

yes she's raised the tone.

Ok i don't think I understood this started in 1953

this episode

it makes more sense when we realised the audience arrived in 1953 and were unable to leave the theatre until 1983

d

"stentorian"

he's contractually required to say this word

xps
haha yeah, but it sort of joins the dots a bit on generationality and commissioning, like this is something on the fringes of memory for a 1953 audience (but not a 1973 one) so it gets made but no-one remembers to shoot it in the head till the 80s.

a lot of the audience are pretty elderly -- BUT NOT ALL

ok none the wiser

I am so swiftly taken back to being about 8 and having to go to bed on Sunday nights - epicentre of ennui.

my Good Old Days memories seem to be about Fridays but that description is jarringly true - those Sunday nights, or still light summer midweek nights too - opened up the same vaguely terrified empty ache in pre-teen me that's followed me ever since. but why? dusk is terrifying.

Love the timing of these repeats on BBC4 - straight after old TOTP. Both shows that went on for a very very long-time and thinking back when I started watching TOTP it had small-ish ratings (or it was criticized as not having many people seeing it), out of time in terms of presenting something familiar in an fogey-ish way, maybe like this presentation/recreation of light-entertainment.

I remember this had like a twelve year waiting list for tickets, and thinking (at nine) that if I wrote in for my mum and dad, I could get them as a present for them when I was 21.

Then I thought, nah cbb.

From "A Woman in the Sky", by James Hanley, p. 33:

'Check the tele for you, Lil.'
'If you want to.'
'Of course I want to.' But the set seemed miles away and as she watched him checking through the channels she could only think of the woman she would visit again next Friday.
'Poor creature. And so lonely, I'm sure,' she thought.
'Good Old Days,' announced Eddy and dropped the paper in her lap. 'It'll do.' The moments were suddenly pregnant with over emphasis.

So there's your answer, 'It'll do.'

p. 36

Unusual for him he had dropped in at The Grapes and got himself a whisky, gulped it down, and rushed off again. Along the same road, a turn into the same street, round the same corners, no change in the set rhythm of his day. The traffic lights blinked at him, the same people passed him by, and a newsvendor called out, "Hello, Ed.' He was glad of these simple things, and they were important to him. He caught the same bus and alighted at the same stop. But his eye was yet full of the room, and the woman in it. He hoped she'd enjoy 'Good Old Days'.

Fat chance.

IA at "tele" for "telly" there

He was 70-odd when he wrote the novel.

the I is lifting at the correct weight then

Where did you get that hat -> railway medley (ft "She'd Never had her Ticket Punched Before" god bless you Marie Lloyd)

A George Formby kind of tribute act and the audience are lapping it the fuck up. The best thing they've ever seen.

i'm still in the middle of a goopy lady in green singing "proper"

I paused mid-totp2 for a bit, so I'm behind

Irish jokes. God, it's been a while.

Does an English 18-year-old now know that Paddies are thick and Jocks are mean?

this is the 200th edition

ron moody does an al jolson gag and a nero fiddling gag

now he's doing a deliberately bad italian accent

Ok this might be one for the 'embarrassingly old when you found out thread' but until my wife just asked 'are Hinge and Brackett men?' I don't think I'd realised they were female impersonators. tbf not thinking about them for 25-30 years a contributing factor there.

We're out of sync, and I've been forbidden to watch any more, which is fair because it's punishing, just punishing.

desparately bored little girl in the audience

everything i've seen tonight was the level of nerveless am dram, if that

Andrew Sachs + depressed looking provincials in shabby fake-edwardiana listlessly mouthing words to vile songs of the past.

Leonard Sachs!

Sachs appeared in Danger Man with Patrick McGoohan. He had two appearances in the science fiction series Doctor Who: as Admiral Gaspard de Coligny in The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve in 1966 and as Lord President Borusa in Arc of Infinity in 1983.

lol didn't spot that

to be fair to the songs of the past, i think the performances are doing them no favours: not all of them are entirely vile

bad show from me, sorry both Sachs

Sachses

So… Barry Cryer comes on regularly to do a Harry Lauder thing?

lo does he gradually get better?

Home town gig for yer man, Cryer, right? Though I'm assuming he'd gtf'ed outta there years before.

Vince Hill opening up his spot with a pop at "Your Mother Should Know" which is less Edwardian than the Beatles version.

programme on about the wildlife of france is full of brilliant shots