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 Tiswas © 1974 ATV Network Limited, © 2004 Granada Media . This is a non-profit site intended for education about the British televison series Tiswas. This site acknowledges all copyrights and presents material under the 'Fair Use' clause of international copyright law, for the purpose of review. . |
All the ingredients... The various items that Tiswas would be made up of. This is just a work in progress at the moment... Compost Corner An excuse for Chris Tarrant to douse various guest celebrities/musicians with muck and water. Mind you, Chris rarely needed an excuse to do that to anyone in the show, but here was an extra element of humiliation - the guests were dressed up as flowers, and cruelly, ATV's wardrobe department decided the best way for a human to represent themselves as a flower would be a woman's bright green leotard, tights optional. Add to that, cardboard petals around the head, and it's looking pretty ridiculous. It wasn't just Chris in this, he played the straight men to Lenny Henry in his "marvewwous" David Bellamy mode, which included some rather lame pun-based gags about plants and gardening. Still, if it leads to Phil Collins getting a bucket of water over his head, that's fine with us. It wasn't always celebrities. Sometimes other presenters and crew members could be roped into the flower role. Every mention of Compost Corner would be echoed back from the studio audience and crew, practically ripping off the Crackerjack gimmick. The last time Tiswas had a chance to do so, was on 28th March 1981, the final show Chris was involved with. Phantom Flan Flinger Challenge Obviously rigged quiz, and possibly the best thing ever on Tiswas. Two sides battled it out with Chris Tarrant in joke-shop glasses as quizmaster. The idea was that a wrong answer would result in several flannings and soakings from the Phantom and his family. Inevitably, the guest band or comedians would be sitting on the right, and being on the receiving end of all the slapstick, while a single guest would be on the other side, staying clean as Chris would usually give them incredibly easy questions, and sometimes, the answers (written on the back of his question card). The prizes were read out at the beginning of the game, and they always sounded fantastic to the contestants, although us watching at home saw some illustrations of them, clearly topical gags. As the questions went on, the guests on the right would get messier and messier, having been subject to impossible questions. By the time it was announced the quiz was over, they usually hurled the remains of the mess at Chris in revenge, while Albert Grumble (John Gorman) the studio cleaner would shuffle onto the set, screaming and ranting against everyone who had caused this mess to happen. He'd be temporarily silenced by a flan most times. Excellent stuff. "I didn't fight in three world wars for this!" Flan Your Folks Very similar to Phantom Flan Flinger Challenge, in that a solitary contestant on the left would remain clean throughout, while the people on the right would get a special slapstick treatment from the Phantom and his family. No celebrities with this one, it would be down to a child who had written in, wanting to play on the show with his family. The child would be placed on the left, and his relatives on the right. The male relatives would be adorned with "wrong" placards, with the females all with "right". Not that this meant anything, as the quiz was craftily concocted to ensure both genders got equal flanning and soaking punishment. All the questions were directed at the child contestant. Half were easy (or judged as correct anyway with trick questions - "Do you know precisely how tall the CN Tower is in inches?" "No." "Of course you don't, that's right, you don't know!") and the other half impossibly difficult (or another trick question). Correct answers would result in the "right" crowd being pied and drenched. Incorrect answers would result in... well, you can guess. No matter what happened, the child would be given a prize for each answer, placed on their lap at first, and then resulting in a huge pile where they wouldn't even be able to see Chris. Was there a rule about dropped prizes being taken away? Could that be another Crackerjack element? Pop videos The original terminlogy is "promotional video", and these wold be issued by record labels to TV stations in the hope television may pick up on the song - it continues today, but now it's the basis of an entire genre of teleivison channels, thanks to the explosion in MTV's empire which began as a small American cable channel in 1982. At the time, BBC's 'Top Of The Pops' persisted with mainly studio-based performances with big name stars, while lower budget shows with lesser audiences wouldn't quite be able to have the budget nor the star attraction to get famous musical acts live on their programmes. It's no wonder the pop music video has taken over from the era of Pan's People. Anyway, giving Tiswas a cool edge was its selection of music videos - sometimes as many as four would be played on the show, some of them receiving a television premiere. Not that the stars were dissuaded from Tiswas, they would often appear on the show with their latest video a point of discussion in interviews with Sally. ATV's studio 3 would of course be too small for most outfits, hence the prolific use of promo clips. When Chris was producer, you could expect a Status Quo video every other week, with him being a fan of the denim-clad rockers. Other Tarrant-friendly acts would be Queen, Motorhead, etc. These would be in contrast to the up and coming New Romantic scene of the time, featuring plenty of eyeliner'd dandies and synth-based anthems. The early 80s Ska craze got a fair crack of the whip too. Madness, The Specials, Bad Manners would frequently be featured. Buster Bloodvessel of Bad Manners appeared many times in the studio during the last series. Also appearing frequently was Toyah, although, as a native Brummie, that could be expected. Moving back to the subject, Toyah's videos were spectacular mini-epics in their day, and it was no surprise to see them in regular rotation across TV shows other than Tiswas. While today you may be slightly annoyed when you record a favourite pop video for having a music channel's logo in the corner, a similar blemish came with the clips shown on Tiswas - the greetings captions. Viewers could write in to have a personal greeting overlaid on screen during a video - like "Hello to Angie and Dave of Nuneaton!" or "Happy Birthday, Amy, 8 today!". These would be scrawled by Tiswas artist Chris Wroe. Don't get the impression that all the music videos were cool. Videos from Bucks Fizz, Stevie Wonder (in his funk-free era) and Air Supply have been known to pad out the 'Was. Cartoon shorts These days, most Saturday morning shows (and kids TV in general) are made up of American cartoons usually focussed on the latest toy or fashionable craze. They're almost like 20 minute long commercials. Back in the day, and with Tarrant eager to have each item not lasting more than five minutes, we would be treated to a better class of animation. Tiswas would usually feature the Looney Tunes/Merry Melodies shorts from Warner Bros. Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Road Runner, Porky Pig, Elmer Fudd, Sylvester and Tweetie Pie, Wile E Coyote, Semedy Sam and Foghorn Legorn were resident in spirit on Tiswas, and sat favourably among the chaotic madcap ethos making up the rest of the show. These were classic episodes from the 1950s and 1960s, with great attention paid to visual humour and slapstick, contrasting wildly with their rivals Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck from the Disney empire. Disney would feature on Tiswas, in the form of clips from their animated epics, so no Mickey Mouse shorts here (thank goodness, they were rather too twee and whimsical). Not that Warner Bros were the only suppliers of cartoon shorts. Woody Woodpecker was also on the roster, but phased out round the time of the last two series of Tiswas. In the 1980-81 series, ATV cut up a feature-length cartoon film into small chunks - Animalympics would be shown each week, although they didn't always cut at the required point quickly enough! 30 Second Theatre Seen only in the final series, this oddity was voiced and performed by Den Hegarty. It was a deliberately low budget feature, which, as you can tell by the title, lasted half a minute. It centered around a different film title each week. "The Great Train Robbery by Robin Trains" was simply a shot of a Playmobil train on a train set... then some hands come in and take it away. Similarly, "Gunshot" was just a close up shot of a gun. All of these would be followed up with jokey closing credits, making up the full 30 seconds. |
  
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