Inessential shit from the backwaters of years old TV that you somehow still remember

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Grooey.  Barely anything seems to exist of this online.  An episode of Grooey in which he accidentally causes the paintwork on his Dad's car to become damaged.  He tries to repair it with sandpaper and the wrong coloured paint, and ends up making it a fair bit worse.

If Knightmare hadn't become irritatingly fashionable retro TV in recent years I would have said those wall face things with the dodgy animation.  Those stayed with me for years but my true childhood memories and feelings of them have now been augmented and ruined by the voice of Justin Lee Collins asking if I can remember my own memories.  No I can't now; cheers for that.

[Gulftastic]

The line 'she's pancake!' from some old bank ad about a young lad whose ex bird had taken loads of his stuff, including, bizarrely his 'Colour Me Badd' LP.

The fact that when Roland Rat did a run of shows from Kowloon, Hong Kong, he stayed on a boat called 'Resplendent Dawn'.

[pigamus]

Heathcliffe and Marmaduke.  A Marmaduke section:  Some show and tell happens at the school and all the kids have brought in their pets and it's chaos.  A Heathcliffe section:  one of those generic mad scientist stories where one person's brain is swapped into another person's body and hilarity ensues.  In the end the mad scientist gets a craving for dog biscuits or something.

Do you remember the bits in the title sequence that made no sense? Like a sort of vampire pumpkin thing? Apparently there was another cartoon that the BBC edited out. Bothered me for years that did.

[purlieu]

I remember this. IIRC it wasn't a teleportation device but a person copying device. The girl (who I seem to remember was a princess) asked the inventor to demonstrate it with himself, but there was some sort of rule that you had to destroy the original for some inexplicable reason. The girl forced him into the booth, and he was disintegrated. The girl/princess was so guilty that she made a copy of herself, and then destroyed herself, leaving behind "a guiltless copy". I have a feeling it was shown as part of some kind of animation film festival round-up.

Ah yes, that sounds right. Really glad somebody else remembers this!

[Cerys]

The man who said 'Doog' in The Adventure Game.

For a long time I had conflicting feelings about The Adventure Game.  They ran a competition to win the Arg Crystal, and my brother and I won[nb]Under my brother's name, despite the fact that I was the one who worked out the answer[nb]Not that I'm bitter[/nb][/nb] - but they never announced who won on the show, so fame eluded me.  I was devastated[nb]Slightly miffed[/nb].  Then, years later, it occurred to me that the questions posed in the quiz were so damn difficult there probably weren't many correct entries, so they just sent an Arg Crystal to everyone who got the answer and never spoke of it again.

[jaydee81]

Grooey.  Barely anything seems to exist of this online.  An episode of Grooey in which he accidentally causes the paintwork on his Dad's car to become damaged.  He tries to repair it with sandpaper and the wrong coloured paint, and ends up making it a fair bit worse.

Is it because it's actually spelt Gruey?

Also, nothing beats Johnny Brigg's brother replacing a piece of cake he'd eaten with bread covered in toothpaste.

[jaydee81]

The dreadful quality of the overdubbing in Tim Tyler - The Boy Who Lost His Laugh. 

If I recall correctly, that programme was the most round about way of getting to a fairly obvious conclusion.

After swapping his laugh for the ability to win all bets, he then proceeded, after god knows how many episodes of failing to get it back, to bet someone that he could.

[thraxx]

Is it because it's actually spelt Gruey?

Also, nothing beats Johnny Brigg's brother replacing a piece of cake he'd eaten with bread covered in toothpaste.

Which brother?  From memory you had the sort of down to earth one, and the sort of weird sort of like Mackenzie Crook/Rik one (who was far superior).

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Is it because it's actually spelt Gruey?

Oh yeah; there it fucking is!

[Fabian Thomsett]

An advert for clerical medical life insurance which involved Tony Slattery wondering through (very primitive) computer graphics of various people's lives. Most distinctive bit for me was someone pouring wine over someone else's head at a party - but the graphics were so blotchy and distorted it looked like they were pouring white lava over a slightly melted waxwork. It really freaked me out whenever I saw it. This would have been late 80's.

[Blue Jam]

I was never allowed to watch Get Fresh because my sister said she was scared of Gilbert The Alien. Looking back I suspect she was jut being spiteful- and yes, Nobby The Sheep was infinitely creepier.

I thought I had a very clear memory of the time the Pet Shop Boys were on Live and Kicking miming to I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind Of Thing when "Chris Lowe" turned out to be either Trevor or Simon in the costume pissing about pretending to play the keyboard, but the thing is on YouTube in its entirety and it looks like I had forgotten all of the other details:

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zFA5Yu_tOtc

[Jockice]

In the 80s CITV continuity was recorded, don't know if it was still the case in 1991. If it was it's a very strange thing to happen, maybe it was a gag?

The Jeremy Irvine death in ver Hill was originally written to be Jonah Jones, but he protested or something so the Irvine character was written in at very short notice. Jonah's cousin from Rodney Bennett, I think. Jonah left not long after - did that thing of just not turning up after summer holidays,which did actually happen in real life.

I remember Jonah singing a bit of My Perfect Cousin to Zammo while describing him. As a massive Undertones fan this made me feel very proud.

[madhair60]

A Sonic and Knuckles cartridge being immolated in front of its crying owner by a maniacal Dave Benson-Philips, as a punishment for a poor show on Get Your Own Back.

[biggytitbo]

Is it because it's actually spelt Gruey?

Also, nothing beats Johnny Brigg's brother replacing a piece of cake he'd eaten with bread covered in toothpaste.

Johnny Briggs, who is now 40, apparently still trades on his famous past by using 'Do you know that Johnny Briggs, that was me that was' to baffled women in nightclubs.

[jaydee81]

Which brother?  From memory you had the sort of down to earth one, and the sort of weird sort of like Mackenzie Crook/Rik one (who was far superior).

It was the wacky one, not the serious pretentious one

[studpuppet]

The man who said 'Doog' in The Adventure Game.

Bill Homewood is a poet who's active on Twitter:

http://www.billhomewood.com/

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There was a Fruit Gums advert in the 80s that had a boy screeching "all you can do is chew!" at the camera, before popping one in his mouth.  I remember my fixation with it more than I remember the advert itself - for example I have distinct memories of taunting my older brother with the advert slogan over and over again, which I actually had misheard anyway as "ooey gooey chew".

[studpuppet]

As a seven year old I watched a series called 'Star Maidens', not once, but twice (in the days before repeats). It was on LWT on Saturday mornings when I used to stay overnight at my grandmother's house, and then at home we only got Anglia, so I saw it when they showed it a few months later. It's BRILLIANT – an anglo-German co-production where the English saw it as a Space 1999 knock-off starring a pre-Blake Gareth Thomas, and the Germans saw it as an adult sci-fi sex romp.

God knows what I saw it as, as a seven year old. For years my favourite car was a Corgi Ford Cortina police car, and it wasn't until they released the DVD of it that I realised that what an impression it made (I'm 43 and I still have the car!).

http://www.animus-web.demon.co.uk/maidens/

[Don_Preston]

An ex-girlfriend told me her mate was a contestant on Get Your Own Back, and made it to the final where either Richard McCourt or Dom Wood faced getting gunged. But levity turned to tragedy as the poor students' favourite presenter injured their neck on the descent into the gunge vat and failed to resurface to pull the obligatory face as the credits would roll.

I've no idea if this aired, but apparently the video was given to the contestant.

EDIT: Seems apocryphal, unless it was one of the other celebrities. Tim Vincent, I'm hoping.

[Fabian Thomsett]

Micheala Strachan singing a song about a horse.

Cheryl Baker doing a workout in a gym and miming to the 'get ups' in James Brown's Sex Machine. The music was dubbed on later (and they probably edited it down a fair bit, seeing as it was a kids show).

[Johnny Textface]

Some weird game show where the contestants had to traverse a chess board set in space or something.

[Replies From View]

Some weird game show where the contestants had to traverse a chess board set in space or something.

Sounds like the ubiquitous Knightmare.

[Junglist]

No Child of Mine by Peter Kosminsky starring Brooke "I may have done a soap but I was touched up in a TV movie!" Kinsella:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119795/

I remember seeing this on its air date, I would've been 12/13. Found it incredibly bleak and distressing and harrowing back then. Think its been shown once since. Managed to hunt a copy down a couple of years ago and its still bleak and depressing and holy shit did this really air.

So yeah, if you wanna fill your head full of fucked up stuff, give it a go!

[Johnny Textface]

Sounds like the ubiquitous Knightmare.

Nope definitely wasn't that. Similar though. It was more like a grid with seemingly infinite space beneath where the loser would fall. I think this scenario was only a small part of the whole wierd exercise. The player could move and then something else on the board was able to. It used to scare me tbh.

[studpuppet]

Sounds like the ubiquitous Knightmare.

Or The Adventure Game end bit - the Vortex:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HLX2weZfkA

[Replies From View]

Nope definitely wasn't that. Similar though. It was more like a grid with seemingly infinite space beneath where the loser would fall. I think this scenario was only a small part of the whole wierd exercise. The player could move and then something else on the board was able to. It used to scare me tbh.

Still sounds an awful lot like Knightmare.  Was it done with effects or just props and sets?

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

^ yeah, was just going to mention the (already mentioned on this very thread) Adventure Game.

My own particular memory of that is top actress Janet Fielding (Tegan Javanka in "Doctor Who", Davidson's incarnation) referring to the cameramen in some (unintentional?) atmosphere-spoiling fourth-wall breaking through-type comments.

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

I bet it's 'The Adventure Game".

[Kane Jones]

Nope definitely wasn't that. Similar though. It was more like a grid with seemingly infinite space beneath where the loser would fall. I think this scenario was only a small part of the whole wierd exercise. The player could move and then something else on the board was able to. It used to scare me tbh.

As others have pointed out, it's The Adventure Game.  It used to scare me a bit too.  There was also a pot plant called 'Uncle' I think.

[studpuppet]

The Adventure Game used to remind me of 'Now Get Out Of That' which was essentially just filming some middle managers on a team building course. It always felt that they just shoved it out unedited as it would take them a whole series just to cross a river:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkVml5SQVLc