ONE, ONE, ONE, ONE, ONE [508]

Aside from when, in 2011, host Matt Baker asked then Prime Minister David Cameron “how on Earth do you sleep at night?”, because he sincerely wanted to know, the defining moment of “The One Show” was in its Wednesday 27^th September 2017 episode where Mel Brooks, of all people, started saying, “what a crazy show this is”, confounded by a show that, after all the attempts made on British television to replicate American chat shows, has proven to be the one show that worked.

“The One Show” began on BBC One in 2006 as a continuation of the old current affairs series “Nationwide”, but is more like an adult version of “Blue Peter”, covering various consumer items and colourful, interesting stories from around the UK, bridging the gap on weeknights between the regional news and the rest of the evening’s viewing. After a pilot run of shows in Birmingham, it moved to west London in 2007, then in 2014 to BBC Broadcasting House, just off Oxford Street, increasing its ability to attract big-name guests talking about their current projects, but not at the expense of the show’s existing mix of items, gaining it a reputation for varying degrees of randomness in its subjects, and the occasional handbrake turn in tone.

This makes sense for me. I watch “The One Show” every day, and I never usually watch other chat shows as a result. The usual go-round of promotions means you will see people talking about their projects in multiple places, and to that end, both “The One Show” and the weekly “The Graham Norton Show” usually bring out all their guests at once to increase engagement. Perhaps, with most high-profile people having their own podcast, they don’t need the likes of a Michael Parkinson, Terry Wogan or Johnny Carson to open them up for the public. If anything, being interviewed on “The One Show” means having to compete with the stories brought by the show itself.

Back to 2017, “The One Show” had gone from talking to Mel Brooks about his stage adaptation of “Young Frankenstein”, to picking up a story about someone named Patricia, who was trying to find a lost relative. Alongside Brooks was, of course, Russell Crowe, there to perform with his band as well as talk about his career; and Lesley Joseph and Ross Noble, who were starring in “Young Frankenstein”. Said Matt Baker, “we just turn the page and move on,” while co-host Alex Jones joking said, “right, now let’s focus Patricia now, alright?” Replied Brooks, “this is nuts, I want you to understand that.” The same episode included items about picking up rubbish from motorways, an award ceremony for vending machines, and finding manta rays off the Hebrides. 

Admittedly, this episode of “The One Show” was an hour in length, as it normally shoves this much material into half that time – the most recent broadcast, on Thursday 21^st August 2025, had actors Brian Cox and James Norton in the studio, but also filmed and live pieces ahead of the Women’s Rugby World Cup, and the unveiling of the latest “Strictly Come Dancing” contestant.

However, “The One Show” has answered the question that eluded British television for years: how to have a nightly chat show, particularly in the form presented in the United States by the likes of Johnny Carson, Jay Leno, David Letterman and Stephen Colbert. There have been recent efforts, like ITV’s “The Nightly Show”, that only lasted for two months in 2017, and “V Graham Norton”, lasting for eighteen months on Channel 4 in 2002-03, before Norton moved to the BBC for a weekly show that is currently only broadcast for half the year. “The Jack Docherty Show”, which launched with Channel 5 in 1997, was the closest these shows came to matching the American formula, with house band, host monologue, sketches and other items before the chat, while coming from a theatre in London’s West End – however, it was cut from five to three episodes after a year. Even when Terry Wogan had his evening chat show on BBC One from 1985-92, it wasn't every night, Tuesdays and Thursdays being taken by "EastEnders" instead.

The only US chat show I see with any regularity, via YouTube, is “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert”, although I have also seen, when they have come up on TV, similar shows hosted by David Letterman, Jay Leno, Craig Ferguson and Conan O’Brien. In all cases, I will tune in for the monologue, then the sketch or further item afterwards – my favourite of these has been Letterman’s “Is This Anything?”, a collection of various circus and vaudeville acts all appearing at once, followed by the phrase, “wow, that was really something!” After that, I usually turn off – the only variation on the standard celebrity interview on any of these shows is the “Colbert Questionert” (pronounced “questionnaire”, to rhyme with “Colbert”), where everyone is asked the same questions to gain insight: window or aisle seat, first concert, apples or oranges, describing themselves in five words.

I guess what I want more are review shows – instead of celebrities talking about what new films, shows or albums are coming soon, I want someone to tell me what they are like. In the meantime, “The One Show” will provide enough time for an interview, before talking about gardening, or the price of electricity bills.

I’LL BE THERE, FOLLOWING YOU AROUND [428]

We open on Eric Morecambe & Ernie Wise asleep in bed like Laurel & Hardy as Father Christmas comes down the chimney with a sack to steal the silverware. After the opening titles feature Morecambe’s trademark slaps of Wise’s cheeks between appearances of the show’s guests, their personal popularity is measured in sizes of commemorative tankards. Later, they will appear as bell-ringing monks, using candlesticks to pull pints of beer, and as turkeys ready for the yuletide chop, before dancing with actress Glenda Jackson like they were Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers – the increasing size of Morecambe’s cane is done so deftly that the audience doesn’t notice the first time it’s done, but they do the others. They then spar with a very real-life authority, a conductor of a symphony orchestra who turns out to be as funny as they are.

I have always liked Morecambe & Wise – for my generation, they are the link between Laurel & Hardy and Reeves & Mortimer, all comedy double acts that were perfectly surreal, perfectly timed, and perfectly tuned. There is a line in the above episode, which was their Christmas special of 1971, where upon seeing the first tankard, Wise says “Great Scott”, to which Morecambe replies “He’s not in there is he? He’s everywhere else!” I don’t care that makes no sense, but the energy of the delivery made me laugh. 

I personally think this special may be the greatest hour of television ever made in the UK, but saying that is very subjective indeed, having also said it in May 2022. I used this Carlsbergian statement then to justify the extreme lengths made to save a 1968 episode of the show by using laser cutting and X-rays on a fused film reel. With the BBC run of “The Morecambe & Wise Show” from 1968 to 1977 being a milestone in both the comedy history of the UK, and of its cultural history, its Christmas specials often bringing literally half the population together, the effort to save one lost episode was rewarded.

With compilations of Morecambe & Wise sketches being prevalent on British television through the decades, along with memories of individual sketches, the power of the 1971 Christmas special lies in seeing how many of the duo’s classic sketches are from this one show, just as when you realise the episodes of “Fawlty Towers” about the fire alarm and the Germans are the same episode. This special has the “Grieg’s Piano Concerto by Grieg” with André Previn/Preview/Privet, Glenda Jackson's dance routine, and Shirley Bassey singing “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” as her stuck shoe is replaced by a hobnail boot. The final sketch, Wise’s “play what I wrote” was “Robin Hood” featuring Francis Matthews, known to audiences as the radio voice of Paul Temple, and the TV voice of Captain Scarlet.

The 1971 Christmas special also saw the coalescing of the various changes made to “The Morecambe & Wise Show”. The first BBC series was much like the previous 1960s for ITV, staged sketches written by Sid Green & Dick Hills, with Ernie Wise very much the straight man to Eric Morecambe’s unpredictable and zany persona, successful in a few appearances in the United States on “The Ed Sullivan Show” but did not travel further. Eddie Braben was brought in by the BBC to write subsequent series, changing Wise’s persona to be a self-important writer and Morecambe’s close friend, as sketches and routines brought classical Hollywood spectacle and production values. Dance routines were choreographed by Ernest Maxin, producer of later episodes, and music was arranged for orchestra and conducted by Peter Knight, who later did the same for The Carpenters’ version of the song “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft”.

“The Morecambe & Wise Show” would become the show to appear on if you were famous. BBC faces like Michael Parkinson, Frank Bough, Patrick Moore of “The Sky at Night” and newsreader Robert Dougall appear in the 1971 special were making other programmes elsewhere in BBC Television Centre, but Glenda Jackson’s appearance followed that of actors Peter Cushing and Edward Woodward. The 1973 Christmas special boasted Vanessa Redgrave and The New Seekers in the studio, and Yehudi Menuhin, Rudolf Nureyev and Laurence Olivier appearing in filmed insert jokes about why they couldn’t appear in person.

“The Morecambe & Wise Show” became the Rolls-Royce, or Lincoln Continental, of UK TV shows: parodies of “Opportunity Knocks” and “Mastermind” had their real hosts Hughie Green and Magnus Magnusson respectively appear, instead of Morecambe or Wise impersonating them, and their spin on routines from “South Pacific”, “Singin’ in the Rain” and other classical Hollywood musicals were eagerly awaited. 

But the epitome of these was Eddie Braben’s own favourite sketch from those he wrote for Eric & Ernie, from the 1971 Christmas special and featuring André Previn, then the principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, being much more naturally funny than expected: “Thank you for that tremendous introduction, that doesn’t come out of my fee, doesn’t it?” Having been “tricked” into thinking he would conduct Yehudi Menuhin instead of Eric Morecambe, it shouldn’t have been surprising that an accomplished musician and conductor would have had good timing, saying “I’ll get my baton, it’s in Chicago” - Morecambe then seemingly breaks character, saying “Pow! He’s in. I like him.” With a full orchestra and Steinway piano, the piece reworks an earlier 1963 sketch with Previn taking the place of Ernie Wise as the exasperated conductor of a smaller band, Wise now acting as Morecambe’s support and mediator against a very real authority, making the grabbing of Previn’s lapels, and Morecambe’s line “I’m playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order, I’ll give you that”, followed by the slap on Previn’s cheek, all the funnier. Seeing Morecambe’s own applause at the end of the sketch, you can see he is genuinely happy that the sketch has gone so well.

I didn’t need an excuse to write about Morecambe & Wise, or one of their Christmas specials, but people will keep returning to it, or discovering it anew, so we will continue to talk about it.

EVERYONE YOU SEE IS FULL OF LIFE [292]

The words “breakfast television” conjure a picture of two people, one man and one woman, sitting on a sofa in front of a coffee table, in what looks like the viewers’ own living room, talking about the news, introducing topical items and interviewing celebrities, with no item lasting long enough to distract people from starting their day.

This is not so much drawing up a stereotype as taking an average: all breakfast shows on British television since 1983, when the BBC’s “Breakfast Time” became Europe’s first TV breakfast show, include these elements in some way, and despite experimentation with these elements, like Channel 4’s anarchic “The Big Breakfast,” this average is pretty much the only format that has worked.

 

The show most representing this format was the first to be named “Good Morning Britain,” airing on ITV from 1983 to 1992, and was produced by TV-am, which had won the licence created to provide breakfast television on the network. It is best remembered as a lightweight and breezy mix of celebrity interviews and topical features presented by more celebrities, presided over by the likeable presenting duo of Anne Diamond and Nick Owen, later joined by Richard Keys, Mike Morris, Kay Burley and Lorraine Kelly, the latter of which has presented at this time of day ever since, with the occasional interjection on school holidays by the puppet Roland Rat, and later Timmy Mallett with “Wacaday”. 

 

“Good Morning Britain” had begun as a diet of hard news and heavyweight interviews, presented by big-name presenters like David Frost, Michael Parkinson, Angela Rippon, Anna Ford and Robert Kee, but viewers deserted once the novelty of breakfast television wore off. TV-am had misjudged the BBC which, having been expected to present a similar news-based show, instead went with a lighter, folksier mix of news and current affairs presented by former “Grandstand” presenter Frank Bough, alongside the newsreader Selina Scott. On the week it began, “Breakfast Time” editor Ron Neil told the “Radio Times” it had learned from the US TV networks to relax the viewer into the day: “If we pummel people with facts and analysis at that time of the morning, they just won’t want to know.” Similar emphasis was placed on conversation, even when talking to news reporters, while relying less on visual displays of information to prevent rooting the audience to their chairs.

 

The response at TV-am was panic, as audiences for “Good Morning Britain” sank to only 100,000 within its first few weeks. Once presenters and management were fired or, in the case of David Frost, shunted to Sundays to carry on the political interviews, the response was to copy the BBC’s formula, bringing in similar exercise and cookery spots, TV reviews, an “on this day” feature, an agony aunt slot, and even reading out the bingo numbers from that day’s newspapers… and bring in Roland Rat. With TV-am engaged in a battle of survival both to meet viewers’ expectations and attract advertisers, they rose to become the more natural place for bright and breezy morning TV than the BBC, which eventually relaunched “Breakfast Time” in 1986 as the hard news programme, presented from a desk, that TV-am had originally expected from them. By the 1990s, “Good Morning Britain” had an audience of 2.7 million people, seventy per cent of the available audience, and nearly three times that of the BBC’s renamed “Breakfast News.”

 

“Good Morning Britain” only stopped broadcasting in 1992 because TV-am lost their licence to broadcast, but replacements GMTV (1993-2010), “Daybreak” (2010-14) and the neo-“Good Morning Britain” from 2014 all had problems when they initially began, from sets being too dark for 6am, to their features not being distinctive enough, or having too many presenters on screen at once. In all cases, some element of the TV-am formula returned, from the sofa and coffee table, to simply having brighter colours on the set – the first “Good Morning Britain” began with an brick-walled set emulating a chich apartment, which over time was painted salmon pink and filled with more and more potted plants. The only continuity between these shows for ITV has been the engaging and professional tone of its presenters like Kate Garraway, Richard Arnold, Ben Shephard, Dr Hilary Jones and Lorraine Kelly.

 

The current “Good Morning Britain” is a different beast, particularly in the combative and controversial arguments and subject matters discussed when Piers Morgan appeared as a presented from October 2015 to March 2021, when he talked himself off the show due to his comments regarding Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. As polarising and infuriating as the programme became under Morgan – long, combative interviews, pushing out fixed and reliable times for news bulletins, weather and anything else – it succeeded in prolonging the audience for the show beyond its finish time, recycling clips from the programme through the day through online news sites and social media, much like news items from the BBC’s “Breakfast” being replayed through the day on the BBC News Channel. The content that comes out of the current “Good Morning Britain” is more important than the time it was originally broadcast, an option not available to TV-am. 

 

However, the pattern established by the original “Good Morning Britain” continues, except it appears to have been reclaimed by the BBC. “Breakfast” continues primarily as a news programme, but it fits the image I began with, down to the sofa and coffee table, and especially in the calmer, more relaxed atmosphere. The red livery of BBC News is replaced with a more morning-friendly orange, just as the previous “Breakfast News” used to substitute blue for pink.

 

Breakfast television took until 1983 to begin in the UK because it took a long time to establish that an audience would be there to watch it – as programmes for schools took up the later mornings on BBC One and ITV, regular television didn’t often start until lunchtime. Even now, breakfast television in the UK is still a minority pursuit, attracting only between five and six million viewers across all channels at 8.00am, while eighteen million are listening to the radio at that time – Zoë Ball’s BBC Radio 2 breakfast show has a greater audience than for all of television.

I WON’T DO WHAT YOU TELL ME [129]

“If you didn’t live in that time, you’re not allowed an opinion in my view.”

“If you didn’t live in that time, you’re not allowed an opinion in my view.”

“If you didn’t live in that time, you’re not allowed an opinion in my view.”

This sentence has rattled through my head for the last week, because I have never heard anyone say something like this before. I also cannot think of a situation where you could get away with saying something like it. How do you respond to it? Am I allowed?

When writing about why I don’t like chat shows [link], I came across an interview gave to the “Mail on Sunday” newspaper in 2016 [link], just as a book on his encounters with Muhammad Ali was published. Even if I wouldn’t have made a point of tuning in to “Parkinson” in the 1970s, if I had been around then, I probably would have if Ali, or Billy Connolly, or Peter Sellers, or Kenneth Williams was a guest – some people are worth hearing, even if they are mainly there to promote something.

Although the article was to promote the Ali book, the headlines came from when Parkinson was asked if there were any moments in his career that he regretted. Saying he has been accused of being old-fashioned, Parkinson used the example of the 1975 interview he had with Helen Mirren, who was introduced on the show was the “sex queen” of the Royal Shakespeare Company and, after a theatre critic was quoted as saying Mirren was good at “sluttish eroticism,” Parkinson asked if Mirren thought her “equipment” got in her way of performing as an actress. After clarifying he was referring to her figure, Mirren replied, “Serious actresses can't have big bosoms, is that what you mean?”

The interview can easily be found online, and while it has since been decried as sexist since, it was perfectly fine for broadcast in 1975 – “it was OK at the time” is a phrase often heard in cases like this, usually because it may not be these days. In the “Mail on Sunday” interview, Parkinson said he may have overreacted, but he was reacting to the provocative figure Mirren presented. When asked if they had made up since, Parkinson said, “I don't want to. Nor does she. I don't regard what happened there as being anything other than good television. There is no need to apologise, not at all. She didn't want to do an interview and after about ten minutes I didn't want to interview her. There's no problem, it's not World War III for God's sake.”

For her part, Dame Helen Mirren, later quoted in an article for “The Telegraph” website [link], said, “That’s the first talk show I’d ever done. I was terrified. I watched it and I actually thought, bloody hell! ... I did really well. I was so young and inexperienced. And he was such a f------ sexist old fart. He was. He denies it to this day that it was sexist, but of course he was.”

This leads me to where I became unstuck. In his interview, Parkinson is reported reacting to the notion of his interview with Mirren being a defining moment of the “sexist” Seventies: You have to judge it by what happened in that time. If you didn't live in that time, you're not allowed an opinion in my view [my underline].... I’ve not done anything that I'm ashamed of. I can see everything in the context of the time I did it. I can think, 'Ooh, I wouldn't do that now.' But that doesn't mean to say I was wrong at the time.”

The interviewer, challenging that one sentence, writes, “if one of his guests had said that, he would have challenged them strongly,” but I wished it was challenged in this interview, although we do get the odd quote later, “Am I a sexist? No, I'm Yorkshire. I don't know what the answer is or what a sexist means, basically. I've been married for 57 years so something must be going right. I wouldn't say I'm a sexist at all.”

To be honest, I just needed to write about that one sentence, “If you didn’t live in that time, you’re not allowed an opinion in my view,” but I also needed to present the context in which that was uttered. I will go with Dame Helen’s reaction to the interview, because she definitely was there at the time, but to say you are not allowed to have an opinion on something is a red flag that needs as much oxygen as possible – if I said that to anyone, I would be demolished in response. Perhaps it is easier, for Sir Michael Parkinson, not to use his chat shows as primary sources.

I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT [128]

Last week, the “Radio Times” published an article by former TV talk show host Sir Michael Parkinson, calling for UK television to have a US-style chat show for five nights a week. According to him, the only time it was tried was when Channel 5 launched with “The Jack Docherty Show” in 1997. However, research digs up Channel 4’s “V Graham Norton” (2002-03), Norton having first presented a chat show by standing in for Docherty; BBC Three’s “Johnny Vaughan Tonight” (2003), and most recently ITV’s “The Nightly Show” (2017), before you count shows from Paul O’Grady, Alan Titchmarsh and Richard & Judy during daytime hours. Parkinson then suggested Piers Morgan as host, someone who already had his own chat show, on CNN, which was cancelled in 2014 following declining ratings.

Television isn’t exactly bereft of different ways to have one person interviewing someone else, but the reason I am not a fan of it when presented to me as a chat show is because there is something that feels insincere about them. Rarely would anyone turn up on a chat show because they fancy a chat, and even less if they like the host – it is more likely there is something to tell, or sell, about themselves, or something that involves them. News and current affairs programmes, in search of truth, are more likely to probing of their interviewees than when they are sat on the sofas of Graham Norton and Jonathan Ross’s shows, because they are set up to be more entertaining, which can also be read as less demanding – the one late-night interview show we have in the UK is “Newsnight,” which originally began in 1980 instead of giving more nights to Parkinson’s show. While his article talks of combining showbiz, politics, popular culture and sport in one show, Parkinson could have easily become a presenter of “Newsnight” instead.

Reading the “Radio Times” article, I don’t get why the effort of putting on a US-style chat show in the UK is being demanded by Parkinson – there is something about it being an important and entertaining fixture, and if it works in the US, it should work here, but the implication is that our own shows don’t work – Parkinson has often criticised other chat show presenters, including Terry Wogan, Graham Norton, Davina McCall and Lily Allen, both for the quality of their shows and the rigour of their interviewing skills, especially with the remark in 2016, “I wouldn't ever say that Terry Wogan's claim to fame was as an interviewer. Not at all.”

I should say that I do watch chat shows from the US on a regular basis, as they upload clips to YouTube, but when I do, they are usually from the first half of the hour, before the guests have come out. The US tradition is to begin with the host’s monologue about the day’s events, supplanting the nightly news bulletin, and follow it with another feature, sketch or a game – Stephen Colbert has built his current reputation on the quality of his monologues about Donald Trump, while James Corden and Jimmy Fallon’s interactions with guests are more memorable when they are framed within rap battles and “Carpool Karaoke.” Add in a musical performance at the end of the show, and US chat shows don’t have a lot to do with chat.

In fact, there is already a show on UK television, in prime time, that has guests from Hollywood and the West End, that have as much factual content and musical performances as the US shows do, and it is “The One Show,” which is just as close to “Blue Peter” – famously, in 2011, presenter Matt Baker asked David Cameron, when he was Prime Minister, “how on Earth do you sleep at night,” because he genuinely, innocently, wanted to know.