And it was too! With classic features such as flan your folks, compost corner, the dying fly "there's people lying on their backs kicking their arms and feet in the air!", Matthew butlers legendary rendition of bright eyes, the bucket of water song and a fabulous theme tune Saturday certainly was tiswas day.
Presented in a very loose style by Chris Tarrant, Sally James, Lenny Henry, Bob Carolgees (with spit the dog and the largely hated cough the cat), John Gorman and many more the show largely consisted of utter chaos and stupidity (which was the shows strength) bought to you in a well organised chaos sort of way. Characters such as Trevor McDoughnut, Clive 'the wizard' Webb and many others were present to give the show its mad edge. The shows main strength is that nobody seemed to know what was happening and nobody seemed to care as long as they were having fun.
A classic moment came in about 1980 when Sally James doing one of her tricks decided to do the walk through a postcard trick. Chris Tarrant who was sat next to her went into a hilarious tirade starting with "A POSTCARD! Its a postcard everybody! Its a trick with a postcard in YEAAAHHH!" and ending with him having run an entire lap of the studio (even the broadcasting galleries) Before exclaiming "no wonder Noel Edmonds is out of work!" before sally completed her trick. This and many other things are what makes tiswas my no1 programme of all time and its probably made me the person I am today (Oh god!).
According to a recent t.v programme there were 372 tiswas episodes made but only 12! still exist in the Atv/Central archive. Criminal!
THIS IS WHAT THEY WANT! Tiswas the best of is now available on network video!
Weblink: www.tiswasonline.com is actually partly run by Matthew lewis (a.k.a butler) and is very good.
