21st Century Dodos: A Collection of Endangered Objects (and Other Stuff) (19 page)

Massive Viewing Figures

At various points during the ’70s and ’80s you could walk into the school playground or workplace in the morning, safe in the knowledge that everyone, everywhere, would have watched the same television programme the night before.

It is an experience that is unlikely to happen again. Unless the Queen dies or England ever make it to a World Cup Final.

Cast your mind back to the days of only four television channels. Heck, let’s go back even further to the time when we only had BBC1, BBC2, and ITV. That was it. If you wanted to watch something on the telly, you had three choices.

As a result, the viewing audience would, from time to time, congregate around one televisual event: one live show, one soap episode, one sporting occasion, one sitcom. And because so many people were tuning in to the same thing, there was a shared sense of experience. When you laughed at Morecambe and Wise preparing breakfast in time to ‘The Stripper’, the whole nation was laughing with you. If you gasped at the sheer audacity of Den handing Angie the divorce papers on Christmas Day, the chances are that the rest of the people in your street were doing the same thing.

Let’s look at some numbers, but not the usual ones you always hear about. When you study the most watched broadcasts in British television history, there are some remarkable examples.

• In November 1979, 23.95 million people watched the series finale of
  To the Manor Born
  .
  
• 22.22 million viewers tuned in to see an episode of
  This is Your Life
  . The subject? Lord Mountbatten. This was in 1977, Silver Jubilee year, so perhaps people were feeling particularly royalist.
  
• • To put those two in perspective, a ‘mere’ 21.6 million turned on
  Dallas
  to find out who shot J.R.
  
• We know that Brits watched the wedding of Charles and Diana in their droves (28.4 million, to be precise), but that number was only slightly higher than the audience for the marriage of Princess Anne to Captain Mark Phillips (27.6 million) in 1973.
  
• Comedian Mike Yarwood is hardly held in the same sort of esteem as his contemporaries, such as Morecambe and Wise or The Two Ronnies, and yet his Christmas show in 1977 drew in 21.4 million, more than the others ever achieved.
  
• There are other oddities. The FA Cup Final replay between Chelsea and Leeds in 1970 was watched by more people (28.49 million) than any other sporting event in history, apart from England’s World Cup Final victory in 1966 (32.3 million).
  
• And back in the days before dedicated film channels, a big premiere on terrestrial could really pull in the punters. The first showing of
  Live and Let Die
  on ITV in 1980 saw 23.5 million people tuning it. That’s more than watched the infamous
  Panorama
  interview with Princess Diana in 1995.
  

These are remarkable numbers when you bear in mind that the most watched television show on Christmas Day 2010 was
Eastenders
, with 15.8 million viewers.

Dodo Rating:

Closedown

Twenty-four-hour television is actually quite a new phenomenon, certainly in the UK. As recently at 1997, the BBC would effectively shut down every night at about 1am, not to resurface until breakfast television started in the morning. Instead of programmes, viewers would be treated to a test card or pages from Ceefax (both accompanied by some generic muzak), although there was a time when the transmitters were completely switched off, and all you could see was static.

But the BBC being the BBC, there was a certain regimen to be followed.

BBC1 would usually run through the next day’s programmes, chuck in a quick weather report, and then play the national anthem while a clock ticked over on screen. BBC2 would sign off with the dulcet tones of the continuity announcer but, for some reason, no anthem.

With both channels, you would often get a few minutes of blank screen and then a voice would remind you: ‘Don’t forget to switch off your television set’, which, if you had nodded off in the meantime, was enough to scare the living bejesus out of you.

Various ITV networks experimented with 24-hour television, but all channels had a closedown of sorts until the mid-1980s, and it wasn’t until the introduction of satellite and cable to most homes that true 24-hour television really kicked in.

And while I, like many men, am quite happy to flick through 100 channels at two in the morning on the off-chance of a sex scene or car crash, and welcome the fact that I am able to do so, I do rather miss the polite good night that television used to offer viewers who had bothered to stay up until the early hours. I swear blind that I once heard a voice on BBC2 say something along the lines of:

‘And from all of us here at BBC2, a very good night.’

[Long pause]

‘Not that anyone is still up at this time. I am basically speaking to myself. I could pretty much say anything I wanted to. But I’d best not.’

[Another pause]

‘Sweet dreams.’

At the time of writing, I note with interest that the BBC is considering bringing back closedown in a move to save money. So, perhaps this is one dodo that is about to be resurrected, although I wonder what will actually be shown on screen during the break in programming – a test card, pages from Ceefax? Could this spark a revival of many of the items listed in this section?

Probably not.

Dodo Rating:

Advertising Slogans

Some of the dodos featured in this book are not physical objects. They are not tangible things. They are ideas, concepts, or, in this case, phrases.

Some of the most famous advertising slogans and jingles of all time are ones that haven’t actually been used for years – decades, even. Often the product they were thought up to sell doesn’t even exist any more.

And yet they linger in the mind.

Why?

Well, I would argue that, like the very best song lyrics or beautiful lines of poetry, they have the ability to lodge in your brain and stay there forever.

Consider the following examples. How many can you remember?

A finger of Fudge is just enough to give your kids a treat.

If you like a lotta chocolate on your biscuit, join our club.

A man’s gotta chew what a man’s gotta chew.

Splash it all over.

You’ll never put a better bit of butter on your knife.

For mash get Smash.

Do the Shake ’n’ Vac and put the freshness back.

It’s too orangey for crows.

Um Bongo, Um Bongo, they drink it in the Congo.

It’s frothy man.

Tell them about the honey, mummy.

So big you gotta grin to get it in.

Everyone’s a fruit and nut case.

I’m a secret lemonade drinker.

Don’t just book it, Thomas Cook it.

Birdseye Potato Waffles are waffly versatile.

Hands that do dishes can feel soft as your face, with mild green Fairy Liquid.

Rerecord, not fade away.

Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet.

What has a hazelnut in every bite?

Made to make your mouth water.

The Man from Del Monte, he say ‘Yes!’

All because the lady loves Milk Tray.

Only the crumbliest, flakiest chocolate.

Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions all wrapped up in a sesame seed bun.

Hello Tosh, Gotta Toshiba?

Anytime, anyplace, anywhere. There’s a wonderful world you can share. It’s the bright one, it’s the right one, it’s Martini.

Clunk Click every trip.

Refreshes the parts other beers cannot reach.

You only get an ‘OO’ with Typhoo.

I bet he drinks Carling Black Label.

Nuts, whole hazelnuts, Cadburys take ’em and they cover them with chocolate.

Although they are no longer heard on the airwaves, lots of them will live on for many years to come. They are like echoes of a time gone by.