The first ever Tiswas

Regarded as a flan-flinging behemoth of chaos, comedy and custard, what actually went to air exactly fifty years ago this morning was rather unlike its eventual reputation. Restricted to the ATV region, the first series wasn’t seen outside the midlands and came to a premature end.

You’re probably wondering how it looked, maybe even wanting to see a clip, but sadly, no copies exist. Being an experimental live regional show aimed at a child audience, there was no commercial incentive for ATV to retain any recordings. The expense of videotape, plus ATV’s rather inconsistent archiving processes, means that we can only go on the words of the presenters and various viewers who saw the first series go out into the ether.

Emanating from a truly cramped presentation studio and fronted by local actor John Asher, ‘Today Is Saturday’ was a cheap linking device for various film clips and cartoons. It was like a lot of ITV regional presentation of the time, an announcer at a desk being exuberant and addressing the viewer.

The first ever Tiswas

A tight budget

There was no studio audience, there couldn’t have been. Studio 4, deep in the bowels of ATV Centre on Birmingham’s Bridge Street, was no bigger than a medium-sized bedroom. The set was literally a desk with only one chair. Presenters Chris Tarrant and John Asher had to switch positions while an item was being played out. This was truly low-budget broadcasting.

However, the show was hugely popular and managed to innovate. Live phone-ins were made possible, thanks to the show’s secretary getting a free loan of the phone system usually used for the game show, The Golden Shot. This meant viewers could call in and request items or take part in competitions.

This live interactive element is often attributed as an innovation of The Multicoloured Swap Shop, the BBC-produced rival to ITV’s Saturday morning fare. Yet that show hadn’t even been created at this time, only getting to air its first edition two and a half years after Tiswas first aired.

Co-presenter Chris Tarrant only came on board with the offer of some extra pay to supplement his existing on-air job as a reporter on regional news programme ATV Today. His role on these early editions of ‘The Tis-was Show’ was not too dissimilar, making news items palatable for kids.

Clean fun

If you were expecting cream pies, gunge and water being thrown about, you’d have been rather disappointed. Nor were there famous guests either. This was very much a children’s television show which would feel a bit like a midlands version of Magpie.

The TV Times billed it as “Today Is Saturday or The Tis-was Show”, promising “a new kind of chaotic entertainment live from Studio 4”, running from 10:00am for two hours before hitting World Of Sport at midday. The magazine outlined quite a few of this opening show’s items:

  • The ‘Who, Which, What Year’ Contest
  • Surprises and Prizes
  • A “miscellany of films”
  • Live viewer request phone-ins
  • “The news behind the news” from Chris Tarrant

Of course, to even call it a ‘show’ at this stage was very much disputable. It really was some ambitious presentation in between these components. Nevertheless, whether it could be deemed a ‘strand’ or a programme in its own right, Tiswas rapidly gained a cult following. It’s comparable to how Children’s BBC gave us the Broom Cupboard in the 1980s.

One staple that would remain with the show was the presence of postal competitions. Indeed, this was the key component of Tiswas’s conception.

An unlikely creation

50 years since Tiswas hit the airwaves

In 1973, ATV’s Peter Tomlinson was assigned to Saturday morning announcements in between the adverts and programmes. One day, out of the blue, he decided to ask a quiz question to the viewers, promising a small prize. A sackful of mail hit the Broad Street premises, which was impressive for a timeslot that barely registered any viewing figures.

Peter repeated the trick the next Saturday, and two mailbags came in over the next few days. Naturally, as the incoming mail multiplied each week, this became a regular feature. ATV management soon took notice and plans were put in to turn this into a show in its own right at the start of the following year. A spontaneous idea from an announcer was the embryo of Tiswas!

A flamboyant television producer, Peter Harris, was assigned to put the show together. One of his earliest positions working at ATV was as a puppeteer on the children’s show The Tingha And Tucker Club. Although he wouldn’t be producing Tiswas throughout its history, he would be instrumental in introducing some of the later innovations.

Curiously, the TV Times billing has Jim Stokoe credited as writer for Tiswas. His usual role at ATV involved promotions and presentations. When the company morphed into Central Independent Television in 1982, he became Head Of Promotions there.

Although not billed in some TV listings, Peter ‘Poochie’ Tomlinson did take part in these early shows and would officially be a presenter later in the year.

The film researcher and compiler was backroom boy Peter Mathews, who would be constantly referred to on air by the presenters, shouting to him the instruction to roll the telecine. He would have a long term role on Tiswas and on Central’s subsequent Saturday morning output.

The first series ended prematurely, due to an oversight on ATV’s part. We’ll go into detail about that in a later post.

Another point that needs to be made, is that while Tiswas certainly beat the BBC, it’s certainly not the first purpose-made children’s Saturday morning show on British television. Almost exactly a year earlier, Grampian Television launched Ron And Friends in northern Scotland. A while after that, HTV produced the spaceship-themed Orbit, seen in Wales and the west of England. By late 1973, London Weekend Television would give the capital Saturday Scene, fronted by a woman who would later be poached to present Tiswas, but we’ll save that story for another time.

Is Saturday still Tiswas Day?

Here in 2024, can we say Tiswas left a lasting legacy on Saturday morning programming? These days, both the major UK channels avoid a child audience and now tend to show culinary-based chat shows that feel like The One Show with recipes. Far from flan-flinging, it seems Saturday mornings are for quiche-creating.

However, there is no doubt Tiswas had a strong influence on children’s shows that followed, with many embracing the live ramshackle nature, bringing in elements like live phone-ins, comedy sketches and of course, dealing out messy consequences to guests and their studio audience.

As we celebrate half a century since the first show, we’ll be writing more about the show’s history from these early days, to its near-domination of ITV schedules in the early 1980s, plus the various revivals, tributes and substantial influences since then.