TV - Reviews by BiggieTembo

TV - Reviews by BiggieTembo

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Member	Item		Review/Comment
BiggieTembo 14th May 2015		TV Tiswas (1974 - 1982)	Review Heh heh great comments guys ;-) Sorry to hear you missed out on it, biffbangpow :( Apologies also for you being a Swap Shop fan TopP. It must have been hell being beaten up every day at school! So you didn't have a crush on Edmonds then? Well there was always Maggie Philbin... Seriously though, these two shows (yes I did flip the channel to Swap Shop occasionally - know your enemy and all that) left indelible pieces of information ingrained in my memory. I can even remember their postal addresses: Tiswas was Birmingham B1 2JP. When someone uploads an entry to Swap Shop, the world will once again get to know their telephone number. Topic for a Forum discussion maybe - Tiswas vs. Swap Shop? Could even follow with World Of Sport vs. Grandstand too ;-) What gave Tiswas the edge over Swap Shop for me was the fact that there were top comedy entertainers as guests (as mentioned by biffbangpow) plus the fact that the show was loosely structured - giving them the chance to improvise and really show their talents. Russ Abbott, for example, used to do a turn as Cooperman - a cross between Tommy Cooper and Superman. He was much funnier and looser than his dedicated TV series on the BBC. John Gorman of Scaffold fame did turns as Smellows, the smelly gardener and The Masked Poet, an intense dressed-in-black guy going around reciting dire verse. The Frank Carson appearances were of course (like everything he ever did) stomach-achingly funny. And the late David Rappaport of Time Bandits fame, taking the mick out of the BBC's Blue Peter with his whistle-themed Green Nigel... The band Darts were regulars too, especially vocalist Den Heggarty, who once showed the nation his amazingly long-eyebrow hair. Ginger-afro'ed brummie comedian Ian "Sludge" Lees also got a bucket of water on many occasions. He used to have a pink suit with a Bassett's licorice allsorts pattern on it (he still does). Lenny Henry also did turns as the aforementioned Trevor McDonut, the very positive rasta Algernon with his condensed milk sandwiches and his catchphrase ("OoooooKaaaayyyy!") and David Bellamy impersonation, usually with his false beard peeling off and him and Chris Tarrant cracking up. As a kid, for me all this was total anarchy and freedom - the diametrical opposite of Swap Shop with its constrained, controlled, BBC-discipline. It wasn't until Trev and Simon did their hilarious turns on BBC1's Going Live! in the 90s, that the BBC's saturday-morning TV record was redeemed, ironically with a touch of Tiswas-like looseness. 1 person found this review helpful. ✔︎ Helpful Review?