In my gigantic list of horrible stuff to cover on here, I'd always planned on hitting 3-2-1, but I snoozed and losed, and Limmy beat me to it. So instead, let's get into the era's other weird as shit riddle-me-ree gameshow. Like Crystal Maz...
2021-02-07 00:01:29 +0000 UTC View Post
Before British television became uniformly embarrassing, home audiences had to ring second-hand cringe-laughs from the clip shows of Clive James and Chris Tarrant, shrieking at pre-watershed cereal ads from Europe which casually featured bare breasts, a...
2021-01-18 00:02:19 +0000 UTC View Post
Larry Grayson is another performer who exists in my mind, and perhaps in modern pop culture, more defined by other people's impressions of him than his actual self; an entire historic essence boiled down into the catchphrases “shut that doorâ...
2021-01-08 00:01:35 +0000 UTC View Post
As this is the final post of 2020, without wishing to come across all 'Bill Murray at the end of Scrooged,' I'm afraid I must drop some unironic earnesty, and sincerely thank you all for sticking with me through this Hell-year. I hope i've been able to provide a little distraction from the grim world outside, and having an audience to m...
2020-12-22 00:00:34 +0000 UTC View Post
It somehow feels dirty letting the horrible 90s get their lager and spunk-covered hands on Christmas, but I regret to inform you there were at least ten of them held in that decade. To get a sense of what a 90's Christmas was truly like, I'm afraid we m...
2020-12-12 00:17:49 +0000 UTC View Post
Christmas special.
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Theme is Comascape - Chant, licensed under Creative Commons 3.0. The rest of the music and SFX are via freesound.org.
2020-12-03 00:01:20 +0000 UTC View Post
In the history books of light entertainment, the name Mike Yarwood is invoked almost entirely as an example of being massively famous and successful before suddenly disappearing, never to be seen again. I've only the vaguest memories of watching at the ...
2020-12-02 00:01:46 +0000 UTC View Post
With my distressing fixation on Edmonds, Noel's Christmas Presents is one of those suggestions that comes up a lot, and I almost went there last year, only to decide against it at the last moment. How could I possibly write about t...
2020-11-22 00:00:27 +0000 UTC View Post
As a little behind the curtain goss, I had intended to cover Mike Reid's adult panto, Pussy in Boots this year, but then something else came along, which I simply couldn't refuse (to be posted just before Christmas). But Reid's such an iconical...
2020-11-12 00:07:27 +0000 UTC View Post
I simply couldn't cover GamesMaster without looking at its opposite number, CITV's Bad Influence! “I have o...
2020-11-02 00:00:41 +0000 UTC View Post
Ah, Uri Geller. For a man so spectacularly up my alley, at the exact convergence point of naff paranormalism and television kooks, it was inevitable we'd meet on these pages for a deep dive. I have touched on Geller before, briefly in my book 2020-10-22 23:07:11 +0000 UTC View Post
A recent story in the Hollywood Reporter about Bryan Singer's toxic sets on the X-Men movies opened with a brief anecdote, meant to demonstrate the general disarray of production. In it, Michael Jackson showed up at the studio, to pitc...
2020-10-12 23:01:21 +0000 UTC View Post
Is it Halloween already? Like your most annoying Facebook friend from school's birthday, our greatest festival now takes up a full month. It seems to get earlier every year, although it only starts to feel like Halloween when you see the ...
2020-10-02 23:06:30 +0000 UTC View Post
In digging around weird old shit off the telly, I spend half my time falling off the end of the pier down various light entertainment wormholes. One minute, it's the height of summer and you're watching the 2020-09-22 23:01:28 +0000 UTC View Post
This is about a teacher I had at the age of eight, but as he's not consented to be written about on here, to protect his privacy, I'm going to call him Mr. Diarrhea. Hm, on second thoughts, that's a bit too... diarrhea-y. Let's call him Mr. ...
2020-09-20 12:07:20 +0000 UTC View Post
Lasting two series from 1976-77, ITV's Our Show was the Bugsy Malone of television, the very Our of the title a metaphorical 'NO ADULTS ALLOWED!' sign swinging from the door handle. Surely intended to be a proto...
2020-09-02 23:04:46 +0000 UTC View Post
As a frequent stablemate on lists of Britain's worst ever television, The Girlie Show was essentially sold as The Word<...
2020-08-23 23:01:40 +0000 UTC View Post
In trawling through the worst of pop culture, I always want to give my beloved Patrons their money's worth, but often come across something which is fully on-brand yet too short or singular for a deep dive. So, I figured I'd start a series b...
2020-08-13 23:01:30 +0000 UTC View Post
Wacaday's something which crops up a lot in suggestions, but like much of the stuff I cover, very little footage has survived. In this case, that's not surprising, given even even The Upper Hand would slink off defeated at Wa...
2020-08-03 23:04:05 +0000 UTC View Post
Travellers and guests.
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Theme is Comascape - Chant, licensed under Creative Commons 3.0. The rest of the music and SFX are via freesound.org.
2020-07-25 09:26:39 +0000 UTC View Post
As 1990 was the era of the animated spin-off, it's a given that Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure landed a Hanna-Barbera cartoon. More surprising is the original cast reprising their roles, with Keanu, Alex Winter and George Carlin all...
2020-07-24 23:01:41 +0000 UTC View Post
A few quick notes:
- I've been wanting to get into video essays as $3 content for a while, and this felt like a good way in.
- I know you're specifically paying for written work, so some of you may not be super into yet another site pivoting to video. Eventually, these will be more of a thing, but for the foreseeable future, *at most...
2020-07-14 23:02:32 +0000 UTC View Post
If you've been reading my work regularly over the last few years, you'll recall I've a specific bar for things which ran a really long time while simultaneously leaving no cultural mark. Remember 90's ITV sitcom The Upper Hand? You should...
2020-07-04 23:01:22 +0000 UTC View Post
Without question, Channel 5's nude gameshow, Naked Jungle, is one of the most infamous programs ever broadcast. You'll find it cited at or near the top of every article or clip show about Britain's Worst Television, but like a lot of thin...
2020-06-24 23:01:30 +0000 UTC View Post
Growing up a wrestling fan in early 90's Britain, you had to take what you could get. Nowadays, you'd have to retire to free up enough hours for the endless dreck they're pumping out, but back then, everyone had to wait their turn for the VHS tape...
2020-06-14 23:02:14 +0000 UTC View Post
