Des of CITV's Diggit fame and other TV presenters who disappeared

[Uncle TechTip]

She reads threads on Cab where she was mentioned yesterday.

[Shit Good Nose]

The earlier mentions of Violet Berlin got me thinking about Nam Rood on Bad Influence and I presumed he'd faded into a life of obscurity or death, but as weird happenstance would have it he popped up on one of the news shows yesterday talking about how all the theatres and live event spaces are struggling at the moment cos of restrictions (he's a stage actor and spokesperson for some international live performance outfit).

[Goldentony]

He was on one of Mr Biffo's Digitiser shows too recently, love NAM ROOD. Big big fan of NAM ROOD.

[stonkers]

Nam Rood actually seems to have had a pretty respectable TV acting career, with lengthy runs on The Royals and Emmerdale.

[Goldentony]

where the fucks Adam Ay now hey!!!! Go fuck yourself Dexter Fletcher!!!!!!

[turnstyle]

I want to lament, not for the first time, the lack of tags. I would have added 'Mark Speight' and it would have been fucking hilarious.

[Sherman Krank]

I always wondered what happened to Paul Brophy off of Fully Booked. He was hilarious, but disappeared off the telly after G Force ended.

He was given a late night live talk/variety show that possibly only aired on STV and was so monumentally awful that it ended his TV career. The premise was that the studio set was supposed to be his penthouse bachelor apartment and the guests (none of whom I'd ever heard of before or since) would come on through some fake looking elevator doors.
I'd never heard of Brophy before coming home drunk from the pub one night and sticking the telly on just in time to catch the first episode so my memory of it is hazy but some bits are still burned into my brain.

At the start he came out and started talking to the audience about how he needed a new catchphrase which he'd decided was going to be that at points in the show he'd say 'I'm Paul Brophy' and the audience would all shout out 'No, I'm Paul Brophy'. He then spent the next 5 minutes or so visibly pissing off the studio audience by making them rehearse shouting 'No I'm Paul Brophy' over and over. Of course after that whenever he said 'I'm Paul Brophy' it was met with silence.
The only other bit I still remember was a young female singer who he decided he was going to do a duet with but obviously didn't tell her beforehand with Brophy singing some old Sinatra style cooner song while trying to get her to join in and her obviously not knowing the words and just sitting on her stool looking embarrassed.

When it was over I remember thinking 'Holy fuck I'm definitely watching this again' and the next one didn't disappoint. It started with him and another bloke doing a painfully unfunny two handed sketch that had obviously not been rehearsed anywhere near enough as they both kept fucking up lines and it just went on and on to the background noise of people muttering as they walked out. After about 15 minutes the other bloke went into full rabbit in the headlights mode and Brophy turned to the camera and said 'We'll be back after the break with the second part of the sketch', then the ads came on and after the ads were over there was 40 minutes of Road Runner cartoons until it was time for the next  program. As far as I'm aware Paul Brophy never appeared on TV again. 

I think it was called The Paul Brophy Show but it seems to have either been wiped from the net or never made it on to the net in the first place as I can't find any mention of it but did discover that Brophy apparently ended up working on cruise ships and doing kids parties.

I also have a sneaking suspicion that that episode and a bit ended up on one of those videos that got shown at celebrity parties which is where Coogan or someone else saw it and got the idea for Alan Partridge.

[Dead Soon]

He was given a late night live talk/variety show that possibly only aired on STV and was so monumentally awful that it ended his TV career. The premise was that the studio set was supposed to be his penthouse bachelor apartment and the guests (none of whom I'd ever heard of before or since) would come on through some fake looking elevator doors.
I'd never heard of Brophy before coming home drunk from the pub one night and sticking the telly on just in time to catch the first episode so my memory of it is hazy but some bits are still burned into my brain.

At the start he came out and started talking to the audience about how he needed a new catchphrase which he'd decided was going to be that at points in the show he'd say 'I'm Paul Brophy' and the audience would all shout out 'No, I'm Paul Brophy'. He then spent the next 5 minutes or so visibly pissing off the studio audience by making them rehearse shouting 'No I'm Paul Brophy' over and over. Of course after that whenever he said 'I'm Paul Brophy' it was met with silence.
The only other bit I still remember was a young female singer who he decided he was going to do a duet with but obviously didn't tell her beforehand with Brophy singing some old Sinatra style cooner song while trying to get her to join in and her obviously not knowing the words and just sitting on her stool looking embarrassed.

When it was over I remember thinking 'Holy fuck I'm definitely watching this again' and the next one didn't disappoint. It started with him and another bloke doing a painfully unfunny two handed sketch that had obviously not been rehearsed anywhere near enough as they both kept fucking up lines and it just went on and on to the background noise of people muttering as they walked out. After about 15 minutes the other bloke went into full rabbit in the headlights mode and Brophy turned to the camera and said 'We'll be back after the break with the second part of the sketch', then the ads came on and after the ads were over there was 40 minutes of Road Runner cartoons until it was time for the next  program. As far as I'm aware Paul Brophy never appeared on TV again. 

I think it was called The Paul Brophy Show but it seems to have either been wiped from the net or never made it on to the net in the first place as I can't find any mention of it but did discover that Brophy apparently ended up working on cruise ships and doing kids parties.

I also have a sneaking suspicion that that episode and a bit ended up on one of those videos that got shown at celebrity parties which is where Coogan or someone else saw it and got the idea for Alan Partridge.

Post-pub haze notwithstanding, I'm not having you as my character witness. It apparently aired on BBC2! Late 1995. What the fuck were these ad breaks and cartoons you imagined?? Anyway, no video footage can be found but it was called Don't Give Up Your Day Job. It has an entry on UKGameshows, which was probably written not terribly long after it aired, and a VHS archvist gives it a fleeting mention here - https://vhistory.wordpress.com/2016/05/02/not-the-nine-oclock-news-coogans-run-have-i-got-news-for-you-tape-2072/ - says something that he hasn't uploaded anything from it when he's extremely prolific on Youtube.

[Phoenix Lazarus]

I vaguely remember Diggit with a fresh faced Fearne Cotton and Reggie Yates. The other presenter, who seemingly disappeared from the face of the earth, was none other than Des who according to imdb hasn't been on TV since 2001.

Either way, turns out he's called Paul Ballard and I just read he's facing jail for causing death by dangerous driving. A news article reads as though he's currently in custody.

A very strange blast from the past and sad story.

Either way, what of those TV presenters you occassionally remember but even Google has no clue of what they're up to? Searching for Mr Ballard - pre-crash - just brought up results of people (Fearne Cotton included) wondering what he was up to. Entertain us all below with your memories of TV presenters who faded into obscurity.

There's Huffty from The Word who comes up a bit - no idea why I thought of her seeing as I was a one year old when The Word was on TV. Either way, as far as I'm aware, she's never killed two people in a car pile up.

He's been jailed.  He was convicted of rape after a separate trial and is awaiting sentence for that, as the second link below relates.

https://www.essexlive.news/news/essex-news/former-tv-presenter-paul-ballard-5774681

https://wardentimes.com/news/europe/ex-childrens-tv-presenter-paul-ballard-killed-two-after-ploughing-into-cars-at-104mph-while-high-on-cocaine/

[imitationleather]

where the fucks Adam Ay now hey!!!!

Posts on Cook'd and Bomb'd under the name madhair60.

[kalowski]

oh Danielle Nicholls has a twitch channel now.

i certainly had a "twitch" to her on CiTV back in the day, when I was 28 of course

I bet you did.

[BritishHobo]

He's been jailed.  He was convicted of rape after a separate trial and is awaiting sentence for that, as the second link below relates.

https://www.essexlive.news/news/essex-news/former-tv-presenter-paul-ballard-5774681

https://wardentimes.com/news/europe/ex-childrens-tv-presenter-paul-ballard-killed-two-after-ploughing-into-cars-at-104mph-while-high-on-cocaine/

Coked-up driver Paul Ballard has been jailed after killing two people after crashing his car with his son onboard.

Ballard, who had worked as a presenter on TV show Diggit in the 1990s, had taken a "significant amount" of cocaine and was driving with his 12-year-old son in the passenger seat.

Jesus christ.

That second article is batshit as well. Full of weird mistakes, random eerie pictures of him and Fearne Cotton looking fresh-faced, and then proper breakneck insanity shifts like this:

He denied two counts of causing death by driving whilst uninsured, which will not be pursued.

Ballard was also recently convicted of raping a woman in a hotel following a trial at Chelmsford Crown Court and is awaiting sentence for that offence.

CONVICTED RAPIST
During the sex attack, the 39-year-old told the victim: "Your life is ending.. You're dying tonight."

Edward Franklin, prosecuting, told the court: "The defendant approached two lines of stationary vehicles at a red light.

[Sonny_Jim]

I sort of met Booth back in 2016 when she was at the Camden Film Fair

Not sure if this is supposed to be a windup (site says 2010), but it's always good when a website warns you with:

This website is optimised for an 800x600 or 1024x768 display with 16 or 24 bit graphics and
we recommend you view the site with Microsoft Internet Explorer v5 or Mozilla Firefox.

http://www.emilybooth.co.uk/bits/main.htm

[Sherman Krank]

Post-pub haze notwithstanding, I'm not having you as my character witness. It apparently aired on BBC2! Late 1995. What the fuck were these ad breaks and cartoons you imagined?? Anyway, no video footage can be found but it was called Don't Give Up Your Day Job. It has an entry on UKGameshows, which was probably written not terribly long after it aired, and a VHS archvist gives it a fleeting mention here - https://vhistory.wordpress.com/2016/05/02/not-the-nine-oclock-news-coogans-run-have-i-got-news-for-you-tape-2072/ - says something that he hasn't uploaded anything from it when he's extremely prolific on Youtube.

There used to be a clip of Don't Give Up Your Day Job on youtube, it's not the show I was talking about.
The one I'm referring to would have been from around '96-97 and was a late night talk show with a weird Noel's House Party element to it that was on STV not BBC.

[bomb_dog]

Nope that Emily booth site is the real deal. I remember the guy who made the site promoting photos of her and stuff at retro gaming events back in the 00s. He was part of the incredibly self-indulgent 'Xmas Chortles' which makes me glad the internet didn't exist properly when I was in my early teens.

[Brundle-Fly]

Carolyn Marshall from ITV's It's Wicked!

[Famous Mortimer]

There used to be a clip of Don't Give Up Your Day Job on youtube, it's not the show I was talking about.
The one I'm referring to would have been from around '96-97 and was a late night talk show with a weird Noel's House Party element to it that was on STV not BBC.

That story reminded me of one told by ffogems, many years ago, about his late night discovery of a very odd bit of TV. Here's the thread.

[thugler]

He was given a late night live talk/variety show that possibly only aired on STV and was so monumentally awful that it ended his TV career. The premise was that the studio set was supposed to be his penthouse bachelor apartment and the guests (none of whom I'd ever heard of before or since) would come on through some fake looking elevator doors.
I'd never heard of Brophy before coming home drunk from the pub one night and sticking the telly on just in time to catch the first episode so my memory of it is hazy but some bits are still burned into my brain.

At the start he came out and started talking to the audience about how he needed a new catchphrase which he'd decided was going to be that at points in the show he'd say 'I'm Paul Brophy' and the audience would all shout out 'No, I'm Paul Brophy'. He then spent the next 5 minutes or so visibly pissing off the studio audience by making them rehearse shouting 'No I'm Paul Brophy' over and over. Of course after that whenever he said 'I'm Paul Brophy' it was met with silence.
The only other bit I still remember was a young female singer who he decided he was going to do a duet with but obviously didn't tell her beforehand with Brophy singing some old Sinatra style cooner song while trying to get her to join in and her obviously not knowing the words and just sitting on her stool looking embarrassed.

When it was over I remember thinking 'Holy fuck I'm definitely watching this again' and the next one didn't disappoint. It started with him and another bloke doing a painfully unfunny two handed sketch that had obviously not been rehearsed anywhere near enough as they both kept fucking up lines and it just went on and on to the background noise of people muttering as they walked out. After about 15 minutes the other bloke went into full rabbit in the headlights mode and Brophy turned to the camera and said 'We'll be back after the break with the second part of the sketch', then the ads came on and after the ads were over there was 40 minutes of Road Runner cartoons until it was time for the next  program. As far as I'm aware Paul Brophy never appeared on TV again. 

I think it was called The Paul Brophy Show but it seems to have either been wiped from the net or never made it on to the net in the first place as I can't find any mention of it but did discover that Brophy apparently ended up working on cruise ships and doing kids parties.

I also have a sneaking suspicion that that episode and a bit ended up on one of those videos that got shown at celebrity parties which is where Coogan or someone else saw it and got the idea for Alan Partridge.

Holy shit that sounds bleak, would love to see that. I also as a kid recall him being quite good on fully booked.

[gilbertharding]

If you google Paul Brophy (quite an unusual name, you'd have thought) you get results for an accountant, a lawyer, a fixed income sales trader, a fire fighter who died after living in a persistent vegetative state for three years, and Ireland's largest broccoli grower, amongst others.

Which one is he?

[gilbertharding]

Jesus christ.

That second article is batshit as well. Full of weird mistakes, random eerie pictures of him and Fearne Cotton looking fresh-faced, and then proper breakneck insanity shifts like this:

Fearne Cotton, of course, was an old flame of that Lost Prophets wrong'un.


As for the thread as a whole: whither Philippa Forrester?

[thugler]

As for the thread as a whole: whither Philippa Forrester?

She moved to the US and wrote a book about living amongst wolves last year. Apparently nothing else for a long time though.

[Sherman Krank]

If you google Paul Brophy (quite an unusual name, you'd have thought) you get results for an accountant, a lawyer, a fixed income sales trader, a fire fighter who died after living in a persistent vegetative state for three years, and Ireland's largest broccoli grower, amongst others.

Which one is he?

You can find him if you google 'Paul Brophy actor' though a lot of stuff has disappeared since I last googled him a few years ago. For example he was listed on the website of a downmarket chain hotel group as one of a number of comperes who would introduce tribute acts while you ate your chicken in a basket, I think it was there that the mini bio next to his photo described him as a 'cruise ship veteran'.

Seems I was wrong about him never appearing on TV again as his IMDB page now lists him appearing in an episode of Chucklevision and a one episode sketch show in 2001 and in 2002 he was in an episode of the Sally Phillips sitcom Rescue Me playing the role of 'James' colleague'.

His Twitter account is rather Partridge.
Here it is in full.

paul brophy@roftaman Aug 8, 2010
I would be eternally grateful if you could acknowledge that your receiving my messages, please sir.

paul brophy@roftaman Dec 6, 2010
Please make my day,week,month and year. Say Hello to me.

paul brophy@roftaman Jan 28, 2011
Congrats Dr Fry. Why they even named today after you.

paul brophy@roftaman Feb 20, 2011
Kajagoogle

paul brophy@roftaman May 2, 2011
The Canaries will be promoted tonight as Cardiff 3-0 down

paul brophy@roftaman May 2, 2011
Always difficult knowing which way to turn, Stephen.

paul brophy@roftaman May 2, 2011
The snookers on a break at the moment.

paul brophy@roftaman May 2, 2011
Calm down dear

paul brophy@roftaman May 2, 2011
NORWICH. Nice One. Really Worth It.Championship Heroes.

Finally figures out how twitter works.

paul brophy@roftaman Feb 11, 2012
You wil be brilliant as usual. You do know that BAFTA is the acronym for Brains Are Frys True Attraction.@stephenfry

Then never posts again.

[gilbertharding]

Crikey. I've just remembered - I used to watch Fully Booked sometimes - the first series with Zoe Ball on it. *cough*.

I hope this Brophy fellow has got a job, seeing as he seems utterly washed up as an actor*. That twitter feed is bleak. There's (yet another) Paul Brophy with a relatively current twitter profile, but it's not the same bloke, because he's supports Everton, not Norwich.


This thread, and the inevitable google image searches has reminded me how much of a thing it was to get all kinds of famous young women to have their photos taken in their vests and pants in the 90s.


* I always think that one of the most essential qualities needed to be any kind of success (by which I mean, even a sustained, low-key career) in showbiz is a talent and drive for self-promotion. You're basically self-employed, so you have to be constantly applying for work. You can't just rely on an agent, and people remembering you. Surely? He hasn't even got a picture on IMDb.

[Norton Canes]

Sally Gray, off of out of 50/50 and Depeche Mode's People Are People-sampling Tomorrow's World for kids It'll Never Work.

[Huxleys Babkins]

This thread, and the inevitable google image searches has reminded me how much of a thing it was to get all kinds of famous young women to have their photos taken in their vests and pants in the 90s.

They were basically forced into doing it to keep their profile up. I remember the joke that the only reason serial lads magger Gail Porter never got the Big Breakfast job, in spite of how hard her management were pushing her, was because the producers would run out of wank material if they actually hired her.

We've not really moved on that far though. They've just cut out the middle man and post their own bikini pics on Instagram.

[gilbertharding]

Oh I know. It's just the reminder is so jarring. Especially now, the pictures are juxtaposed with how they look today..

[ProvanFan]

Was there some teen magazine style show with Steve McKenna and a lassie with a Donna McPhail haircut and a raspy voice that was on in Scotland during school holidays in the early 90s? I thought it was called 'The Mag' but that's a later 90s Channel Five thing with Josie D'Arby.

Just say anything and we'll pretend you're correct, I've mixed it all up in my heid anyway so who gives a fuck.

[Gurke and Hare]

Was there some teen magazine style show with Steve McKenna and a lassie with a Donna McPhail haircut

Speaking of Donna McPhail, fellow Sunday Show host Jenny Ross. Googling her brings up an old CaB thread like this one.

[mippy]

Nope that Emily booth site is the real deal. I remember the guy who made the site promoting photos of her and stuff at retro gaming events back in the 00s. He was part of the incredibly self-indulgent 'Xmas Chortles' which makes me glad the internet didn't exist properly when I was in my early teens.

Tried reading about what that actually was but the website is near impossible to read. Nice to see a photo of Mike Shaft, though.

[gilbertharding]

This thread, and the inevitable google image searches has reminded me how much of a thing it was to get all kinds of famous young women to have their photos taken in their vests and pants in the 90s.

And that thought made me wonder what happened to Robbs Celebs (which was always being linked to by the late Rev Goatboy off of the popbitch messageboard) and googling that led me to this thread: https://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,20713.0.html