Tiswas

Tiswas is without a doubt one of the greatest ever children's TV show ever made! It was an absolute treat to watch when I was a kid & after recently seeing the 'Best Of' DVD which I purchased, it is still hilariously funny! I badly wanted to be put into the cage & have buckets of water thrown over me every week, but I never managed to get on the show (I even tried getting on via Jim'll Fix It!).

The show itself was total nonsense. No real purpose at all; just lots of people doing very stupid things & getting extremely soaked by many things including, water, custard, semolina & baked beans, but the main one was the Phantom Flan Flinger who got the lucky job of throwing custard pies into the faces of many a big celebrity every week.

Classic scene for me was when Lenny Henry was reading the news as Trevor McDougal (pretending to be the legend, Trevor McDonald) & then the main man himself walked out with Lenny Henry knowing nothing about it!

While many of today's youngsters may not find this funny at all, Tiswas was, without a doubt, one of the best ever children's shows on TV. Had it not been done, a lot of the stuff we see today may not have been brought into existence.

A MUST SEE for anyone that remembers the show but look out, that Phantom Flan Flinger may still be around, so be careful......!!

10/10 classic stuff

When I was at junior school in tne 70's the kids at the front of the class watched swap shop and blue peter, and the kids at the back of the class watched tiswas and magpie. Tiswas was far too good for kids on a saturday morning, a lot of it was beyond us. I always remember my dad used to sit with me and my sisters laughing more than we were. In the early eighties they tried to do an adult version called O.T.T, it was awful. Why make an adult version when the kids' version had the adults laughing more than the kids. I occasionally see kids t.v on a saturday morning, how much happier they'd be if they had the phantom flan flinger and Algernon Razzmatazz.

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."

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.

As I sit here I am an old fart with with a 13 year old daughter so it is easy to say what she misses. But seriously this was it for people of my generation. I never knew any swap shop kids, maybe as a Brummie there was only one show to watch ?

But even now it makes me smile and laugh, because it was what child life should e, pushing the boundaries and anarchy. The likes of Ant and Dec and Dick and Dom are just pale imitations ...

And yes all I have to say is sally James !