This is what you want: between the satire boom and the Alternative scene, before the Irony years and the comedy of Cruelty, Tiswas - it stood for 'Today is Saturday Wear A Smile' (among other acronyms) - roared into LWT like a coachload of Midlands monkeys and kids' telly was never the same again. Where would SMTV or Going Live be without Tiswas? (You can't really blame Tiswas for Noel's House Party though).
Every Saturday morning a still-cool Chris Tarrant and co-host, saucy Sally James, borough flan-flying anarchy to the box, while bemused children stood around crying with fear, and grown men and women, who knew this programme was really for them, clambered into cages for a violent drenching. (Later, the Tarrant-fronted OTT attempted the formula for an adult audience, but they needn't have bothered.) In my day, you were either a 'Swap Shop' person or a 'Tiswas' person. 'Swap Shop' was on a the same time on BBC1, and was for nice middle-class kids with 'hobbies', whose idea of fun was exchanging Mousetrap for a gonk or making pen-pals with a buck-toothed girl from Luxembourg. No contest.
One of this reviewer's favourite moments was when Lenny Henry's Trevor McDoughnut is surprised by the real Trevor McDonald, invited on set for a laugh. A stunned Henry is momentarily lost for words. Then, regaining his composure, embraces the newsreader, and in Trevor's own clipped tones remarks, "Well... good morning, Daddy."
