Favourite moments from shows like Clive James on TV, Tarrant on TV, etc

[George White]

Been watching all that is on youtube of these shows plus Denis Norden's spinoffs from It'll be Alright on the Night, e.g. Laughter File, which AFAIK may have been one of the few places on UK TV to show SCTV sketches.

In the post-youtube age, I miss this kind of curated anthology of televisual weirdness. Maybe it's why I enjoy exptv.org.

Any favourite moments showcased by these kind of shows?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIQnvTshJ54 This comes to mind.

[Brundle-Fly]

I wouldn't say it was a 'favourite moment' per se but this American PSA from Tarrant On TV really stayed with me.

Bit triggery, if you're sensitive about the welfare of babies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MMzOw3jfCE

[Absorb the anus burn]

Within These Walls cutting to 'The Yogs' always tickled me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RQz8YuNNcU

Just made me laugh 35 years later.

[Jockice]

Within These Walls cutting to 'The Yogs' always tickled me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RQz8YuNNcU

Just made me laugh 35 years later.

I bet that caused a few googies to wither.

[BeardFaceMan]

I'm having trouble remembering anything past the sexy foreign adverts, especially that one where your bloke is spying on woman's sauna, looking at a lot of very sweaty, very naked women, something to do with an advert for a newspaper that covers everything. And he gets seen so they storm into the men's sauna to see who it was, and your bloke has only gone and covered his erection with a newspaper! That, and the Japanese gameshow Endurance, obviously.

[famethrowa]

It'll Be Alright On The Night 5 is burned into my memory from a VHS recording we had and played endlessly. This clip is endlessly amusing, a Bob Fleming-style singer, and his dog scooting downhill:

https://youtu.be/AwaiayQ0wcM?t=111

Later on in the show a reporter in a cemetery asks some old yankee "can you tell us how he came to be buried here?", to which the response is "BECAUSE HE DIED!"

[petril]

what I remember most was the sudden mood shift from laughing at the stupid sexy adverts, gameshows and other adverts from elsewhere in Europe with casual English swearing in, like a slogan that is "...for when the day is a cunt", anyway, the mood shift from that to the really sombre tone for a drink driving PIF(it was usually drink driving. And brutal)

[Gurke and Hare]

It'll Be Alright On The Night 5 is burned into my memory from a VHS recording we had and played endlessly. This clip is endlessly amusing, a Bob Fleming-style singer, and his dog scooting downhill:

That's excellent! But yeah, it's impossible to see it without thinking "All around my ARSE".

[Alberon]

I always remember Clive James with the Japanese game show Endurance which, given the sadistic level of psychological torture probably employed some ex-Imperial Army interrogators.

Two moments that stick in my mind is where they tied contestants to a stake in the middle of a bullring and said they were going to release a bull (really a model of a bull on wheels) and where they claimed to spray them with petrol (But was something not flammable) and had them slide under hoops of fire. At the end of that they'd tell the contestants they were on fire and laughed as they ran to a tub of water to extinguish themselves.

Really they were in less danger than appearing on the Late Late Breakfast Show, but they believed otherwise.

[George White]

what I remember most was the sudden mood shift from laughing at the stupid sexy adverts, gameshows and other adverts from elsewhere in Europe with casual English swearing in, like a slogan that is "...for when the day is a cunt", anyway, the mood shift from that to the really sombre tone for a drink driving PIF(it was usually drink driving. And brutal)

The Australian ones, especially. There's Tarrant did where it's a group of Aussie teens dying in  a crash, and then cut to John Bluthal and his pal chatting. And Bluthal says, "ah, probably, just a buncha city kids." Then, he arrives home, and his wife is at the door to tell them that their kid's dead.

[Catalogue Trousers]

To bring the tone right down, it was one of the Clive James shows of the early 1980s that introduced me to the guerrilla soft-core pornographer Ugly George - the guy who basically sweet-talked attractive young women into removing some or all of their clothes (with suitable recompense). He had one particularly lovely subject called , IIRC, Melinda de Lucinda - could that possibly have been a pseudonym? - who made quite the favourable impression on me...

[George White]

Found an Entertainment USA or four on yt.
The problem is King. Not so much what we know now, but even then, he was an insufferable, self-aggrandising, condescending thinks-he's-a-barrel-of-laughs unfunny c***.

Interesting showcase of ads (Wendy's, both the Clara Pellar one but also the Russian fashion show one that Clive James did too plus similar Soviet-baiting ads from RC cola and Cabbage Patch Kids, plus the Domino's Noid, Friskie's Buffet Cat Food, the California Raisins, Chi-Chi's Mexican restaurant, California care, Raid insect killer), plus interviews with the cast of the Golden Girls, Leonard Maltin, Mickey Spillane, Robert Ludlum, Stacy Keach on the set of Mike Hammer post-drugs bust and most interestingly, Charles Ludlam, the American underground drag act and performance artist who had finally broken the mainstream, was a star on Broadway and did guest shots in Miami Vice and Tales from the Darkside, but then died of AIDs within 18 months of the interview.

[gilbertharding]

I always remember Clive James with the Japanese game show Endurance which, given the sadistic level of psychological torture probably employed some ex-Imperial Army interrogators.

Always introduced by James, with his ever present clenched jaw and squint-eyed grin as 'Japanese game show Endurance' too.

[kalowski]

I have this vague memory of a song called something like"Dogshit on my Foot Sole" - I think it was Dutch- from Tarrant on TV.

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

I have this vague memory of a song called something like"Dogshit on my Foot Sole" - I think it was Dutch- from Tarrant on TV.

Dogshit In My Garden ( " Smelling Like Elizabeth Arden"). It was from the C.James era.Not even joking, mate.

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

Actually, *not* Smelling Like Elizabeth Arden. That would make more sense, wouldn't it?

Was it a Fireman? Was it Super Woman?

[Bently Sheds]

The Japanese Game Show Endurance clip that sticks in my mind was the one where the contestants, dressed in vests and pants, are in a freezing field in the Netherlands and are challenged to drink as many pints of Dutch lager as they can without taking a piss. Cue shots of shivering men gulping down jugs of frothing beer, faces contorted in misery, some hunched over in agony, some hopping from foot to foot in pain. One guy rushes to the edge of the field and relieves himself in the nearby ditch, the audience screams with laughter as the camera zooms in on his ecstatic face.

[George White]

Dutch cod-reggae https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nRBbQWVerg

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

Dutch cod-reggae https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nRBbQWVerg

Yep, that's the song that was on the Clive James show ( not that exact clip).

[thecuriousorange]

The Japanese gameshow Endurance clips led to me and my brother (and no doubt many other children) doing a home version as a form of horseplay. This included aerosols sprayed in faces and drinking/eating vile things.

[Gulftastic]

The Japanese Game Show Endurance clip that sticks in my mind was the one where the contestants, dressed in vests and pants, are in a freezing field in the Netherlands and are challenged to drink as many pints of Dutch lager as they can without taking a piss. Cue shots of shivering men gulping down jugs of frothing beer, faces contorted in misery, some hunched over in agony, some hopping from foot to foot in pain. One guy rushes to the edge of the field and relieves himself in the nearby ditch, the audience screams with laughter as the camera zooms in on his ecstatic face.

And then shows the other contestants, knowing they haven't lost, all in a row pissing into a river.

[beanheadmcginty]

Two Australian adverts featured on Carrott's Commercial Breakdown (I think) - one for peanuts that had people saying "Let's nibble Nobby's Nuts" and a series of ads for Kaiser beer where the theme was people taking incredibly long pisses.

[George White]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsuV7kbD2Ms here

[Chriddof]

Two Australian adverts featured on Carrott's Commercial Breakdown (I think) - one for peanuts that had people saying "Let's nibble Nobby's Nuts"

Decades later, the same brand was bought by some random company and launched in the UK, with a TV ad campaign that would have sent Jasper Carrott insane back in 1989:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DBhRyWD4wk