Looks Unfamiliar: Adam S. Leslie – At Any Point In Any Day Channel 4 Might Be Pranking You

Maths-In-A-Box (BBC1 1980) - listen to Adam S. Leslie and Tim Worthington talking about it in Looks Unfamiliar.

Looks Unfamiliar is a podcast in which writer and occasional broadcaster Tim Worthington talks to a guest about some of the things that they remember that nobody else ever seems to.

Joining Tim this time is novelist and screenwriter Adam S. Leslie, who’s fiddling with the radio in the hope of picking up stray mysterious signals containing evidence of the existence of Maths-In-A-Box, I Heard Your Name by Martin Rev, Noble And Silver: Get Off Me!, The Great Reality TV Swindle, Codename MAT and 1, 2, 3 And Away!. Along the way we’ll be encountering a Folk Horror Sean Maguire, listening to a 1970s heroin-y version of They Might Be Giants, recalling your school’s ‘Special Space Treat Day’ and arguing over whether the best Catatonia album was the first one or the first one.

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Noble And Silver - Get Off Me! (Channel 4, 2001) - listen to Adam S. Leslie and Tim Worthington talking about it in Looks Unfamiliar.

Codename MAT (Micromega, 1984) - listen to Adam S. Leslie and Tim Worthington talking about it in Looks Unfamiliar.

About Adam

Adam S. Leslie is a screenwriter and novelist. You can get Adam’s Caffè Nero Fiction Prize-winning novel Lost In The Garden here and follow him on Bluesky at @adamsleslie.bsky.social.

Buy A Book!

There’s lots more about Maths-In-A-Box and tons of other BBC and ITV schools programmes that almost felt like extra proper children’s television but not quite in The Golden Age Of Children’s TV, available in all good bookshops and from Amazon here, Waterstones here and directly from Black And White Publishing here.

If you enjoyed this, then you’ll enjoy Tim’s book Keep Left, Swipe Right, available in paperback here or from the Kindle Store here.

Alternately, if you’re just feeling generous, you can buy me a coffee here. If bloody Codename MAT doesn’t zap the mug out of space first.

Further Listening

You can also find Adam on Looks Unfamiliar talking about Full Metal Jacket (I Wanna Be Your Drill Instructor) by Abigail Mead and Nigel Goulding, Return Of The Jedi Read-Along Book And Tape, Michael Davies, Piece Of Cake, Juggernaut and Mystery Train here, and on The Golden Age Of Children’s TV talking about Mysterious Cities Of Gold here.

Adam also appears in The Best Of Looks Unfamiliar alongside Suzy Robinson on Crown Court, Danny Kodicek on Fox Tales, Bob Fischer and Georgy Jamieson on Why Don’t You…?, Paul Abbott on Disneytime Rotadraw, Genevieve Jenner on Fruitopia and Justin Lewis on I Hate J.R. by The Wurzels, which you can find here.

There’s more about Maths-In-A-Box‘s rivals for your attention between series of Doctor Who – though they probably wouldn’t be too flattered by that comparison – in The Sci-Fi That Time Forgot here. There’s also more on how and why we ended up with so much folk horror in children’s television and literature in the seventies in particular in I’m A Stage Illusionist, Nothing More Sinister Than That here, and further musings on Mark and Lard’s late-night radio antics in Amongst Them Trevor The Sheep here.