Admittedly it hailed from some considerable time before the relentless amorphous expansion of ‘branding’ really began to relentlessly amorphously expand, but even so, you do have to wonder who exactly pioneering repeats channel with a distinctly seventies-skewed flavour UK Gold were hoping to hook in with their pre-launch trailer, which essentially consisted of little more than a wackily-jacketed impressionist in an empty auditorium rattling through a rapid-fire procession of popular television catchphrases; essentially “‘AAAAAAA-ROLD! Happy Christmas Ange PUH! OH! BUH!” and so forth alongside an uncannily accurate Dalek voice apparently achieved via the act of vigorously pressing the microphone against his lapel. Once UK Gold itself actually commenced regular broadcasting, their initial on-screen branding was even more confusingly off-message still, based conspicuously nostalgia-avertingly around a whistly motif clearly designed to capitalise on the then-familiarity of the bewilderingly popular ‘dancing milk bottles’ advert and a restless animated Golden Retriever who could possibly just about be interpreted as an intended evocation of Blue Peter‘s long-serving Simon Groom-accompanying Bonio-requester Goldie, but as Biddy Baxter-endorsed in-studio pets went this was not only far too recent but in fact as good as contemporary a reference when Shep was not only right there but also at that moment literally right there, plastered perplexingly across buses the length and breadth of the nation alongside John Noakes, The Goodies and an upside-down Chopper bike in a vodka advert promising ‘Good Clean Fun’ for all and sundry. Evidently the budget would not extend to Jason The Cat looking askance at UK Gold’s logo. All things considered, it was something of an unexpected methodology for bookending repeats of Father, Dear Father.

That said, there is a particularly strong case for arguing that this stylistic mismatch was immeasurably preferable to the deluge of clumsily computer generated aspect ratio-averse lava lamps doing Pilates that would become de rigueur ‘seventies’ denotation later in the decade – and which of course would ultimately bring us the dizzyingly Alpine Limeade-fuelled Angel Delight bowl-scrape of very nearly impressively staggering nothingness that was Days Like These, but there’s more about that and how and why it resolutely failed to work here – but what is genuinely fascinating about what can loosely be termed the UK Gold Era and the associated re-emergence of long discarded yet still less than twenty years old aspects of seventies fashion and popular culture was that this all took place not just before ‘the seventies’ had begun to be sold back to us as a clearly defined flare-sporting disco-dancing punk-rocking Silver-Jubileeing irony-friendly strictly parametered construct with everyone using one foot to imitate a platform boot-stomping Noddy Holder and the other to kick in their television when The Sex Pistols said ‘BARSTARD’ at Bill Grundy no arguments and indeed no Issi Noho, but even before the Ministry Of Nostalgia – who at that point were still struggling to move on from all that black and white bunting-occasioning jingoistic celebratory hoo-hah about Winifred Atwell and rationing – had officially issued permission for anyone to start ‘remembering’ it, with Andrew Collins’ superb feature on the double-edged re-infiltration of all things Space Hoppered in the Christmas 1992 double issue of NME presumably landing him straight at the top of their ‘list’. It did also mean, of course, that UK Gold were showing an episode of The Goodies every single night, which may well have led certain viewers – certain of whom might well not be averse to being bought a Fine Fare own brand instant coffee here – to start wondering if those songs in the background of the speeded-up slapstick interludes were ever given an official release anywhere, and doubtless even courtesy of surrounding avenues in their schedules towards similar thoughts on eccentric post-Glam outfits like Fox, the self-contradictory social politics of Jon Pertwee-era Doctor Who, and the fact that the seventies more or less invented Looks Unfamiliar, only with a very slightly different name…

Looks Unfamiliar: Ben Baker – If You’re One Of Those People Who Sells Crack…

Along with That’s My Dog!, Give Us A Clue and Whose Baby?, Looks Familiar was a quietly enduring light game show mainstay of ITV’s early daytime service in the days before students discovered the joys of tiresome ‘ironic’ championing of its programming, tiresome comedians discovered the joys of ridiculing students for their ‘ironic’ championing of its programming, and advertisers discovered the potential of actual properly difficult challenging quiz shows with contestants who at least halfway looked like they were aware that they were taking part in it and a mardy couple sitting cross-legged on swivel chairs chatting to champion knitters about how to take up knitting. Ironically, however, for a show with a vague point-scoring system which allowed the viewers at home to pit themselves against era-appropriate studio guests on tests of their knowledge of popular culture from the twenties through to the fifties, nobody could ever really remember what happened in Looks Familiar – a point Jonathan Ross once put directly to presenter Denis Norden on Radio 2, who chuckled uproariously at this delicious contradiction. At a time when you really did have to take whatever light retro pop culture analysis you could find and wherever you could find it, though, there were some much younger audience members – well, when they were off school at least – who really did appreciate Looks Familiar even despite having little idea of who all of those people falling off biplanes into swimming pools in black and white actually were, and it will probably come as little surprise to discover that along with a couple of other programmes like The Antique Records Road Show and the original radio incarnation of Room 101, Looks Familiar was a huge influence on Looks Unfamiliar. After all, it honestly really is just an inversion of the format, only with two letters removed from the title so nobody would ever suspect a thing. Partly as a way of promoting Can’t Help Thinking About Me and partly to see whether nostalgia really isn’t what it used to be, I asked Ben Baker – who only really knew about Looks Familiar by reputation – to watch a couple of editions and to be honest we were both surprised not just by how much we enjoyed it but also how easily, albeit with a couple of substantial tweaks, it could still work as a format even now. Although some might well argue that someone has already given that format a couple of substantial tweaks. You can find the full show here and an extract in a collection of Looks Unfamiliar highlights here.

Looks Unfamiliar: Jenny Morrill – I Just Get Pictures Of Actual Boots

Well known for her various blogs about the it has to be said more desultory depths of discarded pop culture ephemera, not least her running tally of damaged Masters Of The Universe figures that had somehow found their way into charity shops and a day by day chronologically accurate analysis of an eighties teenager’s emotionally yoyoing yet still somehow utterly pedestrian diary that she had found in the street, Jenny frequently contacted me with interesting and witty responses to other guests’ Looks Unfamiliar choices and also talked the show up in a Den Of Geek feature, which led to this appearance on the show. Jenny’s thoughts on simultaneously feeling fond towards and yet patronised by the Just Seventeen Yearbook and Boots Global Collection – which at the time of recording neither of us could find any concrete evidence of the existence of whatsoever – in particular were very much in the sort of Nostalgia But For Girls Too direction in which I had been hoping to take Looks Unfamiliar, and as you can imagine there was a certain degree of pushback from a certain strand of male listener, all of whom in an uncanny coincidence appeared to conclude their complaints with a suggestion that they should have been the guest instead because they would have been ‘better’. No, they wouldn’t. You can find the full show here and the chat about the Just Seventeen Yearbook in a collection of Looks Unfamiliar highlights here.

It’s Not Hard To Find, You’ve Got It In Your Mind

Not that I ever especially need much in the way of prompting to start excitably jabbering about The Goodies at the sort of length and in the sort of detail and at the sort of breathless pace that I could easily be mistaken for Graeme embarking on one of his harebrained inadvertently megalomaniac schemes, but this appears to have been written two days after the release of a huge box DVD box set of all of the trandem-toting trio’s BBC adventures – which, if you bought it early enough, came with two staggeringly detailed books by Andrew Pixley, a reunion interview with Bill, Tim and Graeme talking to dedicated Goodie obsessive Stewart Lee, a three-disc set of surviving musical cues from the show and, erm, a bag – and was very clearly inspired by watching that first series again. Although they would go on to bigger and better speeded-up slapstick-driven mild cultural satire, there is a genuine thrill and energy to that first run that sits somewhere between the excitement of embarking on your own first big project on your own terms and the exhilarating experimentalism that comes with not having quite figured out what you should be doing with it yet, it also features some of Bill Oddie’s delightful psychedelic pop songs from before he decided that unrelenting hard funk was a more suitable backdrop to their stunt-filled location filmed silliness. I had previously spent a long time looking everywhere I could in the hope of finding two songs in particular without the sound of the studio audience shrieking with laughter at Tim’s police helmet turning into a cuckoo clock plastered all over it, to essentially nothing resembling avail, and as they sadly could not be located for the CD box set that came with this release either then it only seemed right to sing their post-Magical Mystery Tour musical praises here. Considering that celebrating the earlier series of The Goodies over and above their better known work risked being viewed as deliberately and wilfully difficult as arguing the case for the 1967 Casino Royale and The Laughing Gnome, I was quietly thrilled at how many readers apparently shared my enthusiasm in this instance. You can find the original version of It’s Not Hard To Find, You’ve Got It In Your Mind here and an expanded version, with much more on The Goodies’ actual released recorded output, in Keep Left, Swipe Right here.

Looks Unfamiliar: Phil Norman – Salvador Dali’s Scalextric Set

As the original founder of TV Cream, Phil is probably at least partially responsible for Looks Unfamiliar whether he likes it or not. Naturally Phil was one of the first potential guests that I approached to appear on the show, and to my absolute thrilled delight he elected to use it as an opportunity to talk in detail for probably the first time ever about some of the baffling half-remembered deliriously obscure obsessions that he had regularly tried and inevitably failed to get the TV Cream readership similarly bewilderedly fixated on, in particular starkly futuristic language-mangling ITV Schools And Colleges advanced mathematics impenetrableness Leapfrog, the BBC’s deeply problematic mid-eighties rock opera Body Contact, festive animated advert compilation nobody asked for The Country Life Christmas Box, Ken Campbell’s Children’s ITV techno-horror drama Erasmus Microman and – inevitably – angular imported lunchtime puppet show Oscar The Rabbit In Rubbidge, so deeply forgotten that for many years the only available evidence anywhere of its existence was, oddly, a tie-in jigsaw that showed up for sale in the earliest days of eBay. When you consider that Fox’s widely loved yet hardly exactly on rotation play on Absolute Radio 70s S-S-S-Single Bed was the most obvious lead item on this edition, you can probably get some idea of just how deeply into the pop cultural margins we went on this one. You can find the full show here and the chat about The Country Life Christmas Box in a collection of Looks Unfamiliar highlights here.

Dr. Pod

Although even the most generous assessments would have to conclude that Doctor Who at least in terms of its public profile has enjoyed somewhat mixed fortunes since then, it’s still interesting to look back at the excitement that surrounded Jodie Whittaker’s casting in the lead role – which, of course, was announced via a specially shot mini-episode scheduled directly after the Wimbledon Men’s Finals. Doctor Who really was still that huge at that point, and the announcement was initially met with a lot of optimism over a fresh direction and a superb actress and what felt like an opportunity for an invigorating overhaul. It should not have been a political issue in any way at all – it was, after all, purely about someone taking over an iconic role and if you ask me doing so absolutely brilliantly – but the dreary manly moaning inevitably slowly but surely set in, with one particular MP somehow contriving to link this and similar recent casting decisions with a rise in convictions for young male offenders and somehow not ending up resigning in ridicule-instigated shame before being walled up in a defunct Nobby’s Nuts factory. With this nonsense very much in mind, Emma Burnell and Steve Fielding invited me onto The Zeitgeist Tapes, a podcast looking at the point where politics and popular culture collide, to talk about the casting of a female Doctor in relation to the history of female roles in Doctor Who as a whole as well as the numerous on-screen depictions of fictitious – and sometimes not so fictitious – politicians, pressure groups and cover-ups in the series. We recorded this a week into Jodie’s first run in the role and you really can hear how excited I was; about as excited as I was when she showed up again unannounced the other week, in fact. You can find the full version of The Zeitgeist Tapes: Dr. Pod here.

Well At Least It’s Free

If you’re in the mood to find out what I made of Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant’s stints on Doctor Who, as well as a lot of further opinion-venturing about tons of other ‘genre’ shows of a similar vintage, then you can find all of that and more in Well At Least It’s Free, available in paperback here or from the Kindle Store here.

Mystery Link! If you want to just go straight to a surprise page completely unrelated to any of the above, click here.

© Tim Worthington.
Please don’t copy this only with more italics and exclamation marks.