30th Anniversary of Noel's House Party

[lobster]

Seems like a good place to ask this…

In the 1996 titles, where was the house and gardens filmed?

https://youtu.be/ZuL3phYLuzE

From 2.33

[Steve in Pudsey]

Please tell me I'm not alone in having thought (assumed?) that the Saturday Roadshow was live

[deejay]

What struck me watching that is all the clips where Noel waxes lyrical about how “no other broadcaster would attempt such a complex programme and do it live every week”. I can’t help but think now that this was slightly pompous - although completely of the time,. The BBC had a very high opinion of itself in the 1990s - that it was the worlds finest broadcaster and that no one else could possibly come close. It still designed it’s own kit, trained it’s own staff, had its own bespoke ways of working in many areas. It was undoubtedly a very fine institution and its technical and professional standards were extremely high. But to say that no one else made live Saturday night television was patent rubbish, But it was all part of the narrative of the time - particularly in entertainment. BBC entertainment shows were still living in the (fading?) limelight of Morecambe and Wise, The Two Ronnies, The Generation Game and so on. As the decade wore on, Producer Choice eroded budgets, studios became a business, staff went freelance and costs went up. In many ways, the story of Noels House Party is also a story of how the BBC changed in that decade. It started with dedicated crews, all staff, highly trained, rotating through productions in any of the 8 main block studios at the TV Centre, It ended with BBC Resources buying freelance people in (many of them the same people).

I loved NHP. The early series were as exciting as they could be - the fact they were live was obvious and a marked contrast to the equally shiny but nonetheless taped stuff on ITV coming from LWT. Wait Til I Get You Home was comedy genius, the Gotchas were brilliantly produced and NTV was the moment where genuinely anything could happen. It was unusual outside Children in Need to see guest stars dropping in and breaking character, particularly ones from ‘the other side’. NHP genuinely seemed to be trendsetting in the mid 90s. How sad it was in later series where the games became more ridiculous, the set became unrecognisable as a house and the script simply wasn’t funny.

Great to relive it. Sad to recall how it faded towards the end.

[Steve Williams]

Please tell me I'm not alone in having thought (assumed?) that the Saturday Roadshow was live

Well, they certainly didn't go out of their way to say it wasn't live, and as with all of Noel's work they were happy to leave in all the corpsing and cock-ups. I think you can see it as a bit of a reaction to how the Late Late ended, I know there was a Spitting Image sketch around the same time referring to it as The Safe Safe Breakfast Show, and to that end the show was relentlessly silly and didn't take anything seriously at all, and presumably being pre-recorded added an extra level of security.

In the Radio Times interview to promote the first series of the House Party, it emphasised that it was going to be live and Noel talked about how he preferred that. At the time the House Party felt a bigger thing to me partly because of that interview in the Radio Times, in that the Saturday Roadshow never got taken that seriously, I read far more about it in Fast Forward than I did in the Radio Times and it always felt like a bit of a kids' show.

Funnily enough I do remember reading earlier in 1991 an appeal in the Radio Times for people to take part in the next series of the Saturday Roadshow, I remember they were after people to take part in a feature called Icebreakers where they would help people who wanted to surprise their friends with proposals and so on. That never happened on the House Party, and I wonder how far along the line they got with a new series of the Saturday Roadshow before they decided to revamp it all.

That said though as much as the show needed to end when it did, if not beforehand, for the next few years the BBC really did miss such a fixture in the Saturday night scheduled and even two decades on they may have Autumn sorted with Strictly but Q1 is still missing a reliable returnable format on the BBC.

Of course, the planned replacement for it was Red Alert, the lottery show with Lulu and Terry Alderton, which was commissioned with the idea of it being a show that could run for 26 weeks a year, but it was an enormous flop. And of course the week after the House Party finished they started the first series of Families at War with Reeves and Mortimer which everyone hoped would revitalise Saturday night shows like Shooting Stars revitalised panel shows, and it was very exciting at the time. But it wasn't quite as good as I think everyone had hoped, and the Beeb seemed to completely lose confidence in it and gave it a terrible teatime slot.

It's quite an interesting period, between 1999 and 2004, because there wasn't a long-running live show on Saturday night BBC1, and from 2001 there wasn't Match of the Day either, so the two big staples weren't there. They managed alright without them and there were some successful shows there, but there wasn't anything consistent there so the ratings would vary wildly from huge highs to incredible lows. Shades a bit of the late eighties, after the Late Late ended and there wasn't a regular MOTD either. Then of course in 2004 both things returned with Strictly and Match of the Day coming back, and remarkably both are still in place seventeen years later (which I think is particularly impressive for MOTD which is now enjoying its longest ever continuous run on Saturday nights, which I think is good going in an era when sporting rights switch channels at the drop of a hat).

You're probably right to say Q1 can be a bit inconsistent, but I reckon there were probably just as many bad shows and fillers on a Saturday night in the nineties as there are today, the difference is that in those days we had the House Party, and Blind Date on ITV, running six months of the year to disguise that a bit. The dates fell the same way as this year in 1993 and I'm not sure the schedules for the equivalent Saturday are all that - https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/se...7#at-17.30

Happy Families was a flop, they'd moved the Gen Game to Fridays to make way for it, and as you can see they've moved it much earlier than it was at the start of the run with Dad's Army filling the gap. You've got Big Break which people look back on fondly now but it was the worst example of pile-'em-high game shows recorded in bulk and dashed off quickly, and The Hit List, Blankety Blank and The Wheel do all that show did with higher production values and a bit more wit about them, I think. And then you've got the flop Michael Elphick drama Harry as well, I suppose you can say it's nice to have a bit of variety aside from non-stop shiny floor shows, but it wasn't very good or popular. But then you've got the House Party in the middle livening everything up.

I suppose it's the mantra now of fewer, bigger, better, because in terms of hours on air and budget Strictly is probably quite similar to the House Party, but there are fewer, but longer, episodes. And similarly, probably better to have ten episodes of The Hit List or The Wheel with high production values and decent prizes than three times as many episodes of Big Break for the same price. Blankety Blank is the obvious example, there were more episodes in the original run, but the new run puts more of the money on screen.

[Bluecortina]

What struck me watching that is all the clips where Noel waxes lyrical about how “no other broadcaster would attempt such a complex programme and do it live every week”. I can’t help but think now that this was slightly pompous - although completely of the time,. The BBC had a very high opinion of itself in the 1990s - that it was the worlds finest broadcaster and that no one else could possibly come close. It still designed it’s own kit, trained it’s own staff, had its own bespoke ways of working in many areas. It was undoubtedly a very fine institution and its technical and professional standards were extremely high. But to say that no one else made live Saturday night television was patent rubbish, But it was all part of the narrative of the time - particularly in entertainment. BBC entertainment shows were still living in the (fading?) limelight of Morecambe and Wise, The Two Ronnies, The Generation Game and so on. As the decade wore on, Producer Choice eroded budgets, studios became a business, staff went freelance and costs went up. In many ways, the story of Noels House Party is also a story of how the BBC changed in that decade. It started with dedicated crews, all staff, highly trained, rotating through productions in any of the 8 main block studios at the TV Centre, It ended with BBC Resources buying freelance people in (many of them the same people).

I loved NHP. The early series were as exciting as they could be - the fact they were live was obvious and a marked contrast to the equally shiny but nonetheless taped stuff on ITV coming from LWT. Wait Til I Get You Home was comedy genius, the Gotchas were brilliantly produced and NTV was the moment where genuinely anything could happen. It was unusual outside Children in Need to see guest stars dropping in and breaking character, particularly ones from ‘the other side’. NHP genuinely seemed to be trendsetting in the mid 90s. How sad it was in later series where the games became more ridiculous, the set became unrecognisable as a house and the script simply wasn’t funny.

Great to relive it. Sad to recall how it faded towards the end.

Only slightly pompous?

[Inspector Sands]

What struck me watching that is all the clips where Noel waxes lyrical about how “no other broadcaster would attempt such a complex programme and do it live every week”. I can’t help but think now that this was slightly pompous - although completely of the time,.

And not really true, was NHP any more complex than Dont Forget Your Toothbrush? That was very similar to NHP, had NTV-type live elements, set ups for audience members etc plus a live band and a game show. Hugely complicated and live for an hour every week

Then years later Ant and Dec did it from the same studio, again just as complex.

[Inspector Sands]

Please tell me I'm not alone in having thought (assumed?) that the Saturday Roadshow was live

No, I always did too. I seem to remember it having some sort of telephone based game, though with Noel dialling out and presumably with the person on the other end didn't need to see the telly to play

[tellyblues]

You're probably right to say Q1 can be a bit inconsistent, but I reckon there were probably just as many bad shows and fillers on a Saturday night in the nineties as there are today, the difference is that in those days we had the House Party, and Blind Date on ITV, running six months of the year to disguise that a bit. The dates fell the same way as this year in 1993 and I'm not sure the schedules for the equivalent Saturday are all that - https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/se...7#at-17.30

An ancient sitcom and as you say a flop in Happy Families but at least they weren't on in the heart of primetime where NHP and BB do the business.

On the other side...

https://tvrdb.com/listings/1993-11-27

Murder She Wrote no idea if it was new but the rest popular and going strong and screamed Saturday night unlike today where we have the dire Moneyball, a past-its-best Catchphrase and a celebrity edition of a quiz that is never off. I'm A Celeb... definitely missable as ratings show.

[buster]

Funnily enough I do remember reading earlier in 1991 an appeal in the Radio Times for people to take part in the next series of the Saturday Roadshow, I remember they were after people to take part in a feature called Icebreakers where they would help people who wanted to surprise their friends with proposals and so on. That never happened on the House Party, and I wonder how far along the line they got with a new series of the Saturday Roadshow before they decided to revamp it all.

Icebreakers was actually plugged again in the penultimate episode of House Party series 1, but never appeared in series 2. I guess they just didn't get the material from the submissions that they needed to work with.

Some absolutely fascinating material in that BBC archive/Richard Latto piece. The sequence where Edmonds and Leggo are on the half constructed set is fascinating as Noel looks like a kid in a sweetshop as it's clearly all going so much better than they'd hoped. (incidentally on a geeky point because the gunge tank turntable hasn't been put in place yet, in that clip you can see the tiny "cat flap" at the back that the victims presumably exited from. Not particularly dignified given you were already dripping wet by that point). Also great to see the studio off air stuff that has been leaking out over the years finally go "official", particularly the material from the final show. When Andy Pearman put that up as audio only a while back I assumed the cameras had been turned off or something so good to see it survives. And look at the slightly curt relationship between Noel and the final producer, telling Starr to "do him' with the gunge. A world away from embracing Michael Leggo. I noticed the running time was exactly 58 minutes which suggests they have an eye on a BBC4 slot at some point - some of Latto's Twitter replies suggests they are hopeful of it at least getting on iPlayer.

And thanks Inspector for the plug for the new site which has been a lot of fun for Robin and I to put together. The extensive YouTube uploads were something of an inspiration to try and build a home for the show outside of YT/wikipedia (and I notice Andy gets a much deserved credit at the end of the BBC piece too). All the series are ready to go and will be put live over the next few weeks. Funnily enough there was a lot more to say about the latter series. We hope for it to grow beyond that too with ratings guides, interviews, etc.

[buster]

Seems like a good place to ask this…

In the 1996 titles, where was the house and gardens filmed?

https://youtu.be/ZuL3phYLuzE

From 2.33

Broughton Castle
https://www.broughtoncastle.com/

[Steve Williams]

And not really true, was NHP any more complex than Dont Forget Your Toothbrush? That was very similar to NHP, had NTV-type live elements, set ups for audience members etc plus a live band and a game show. Hugely complicated and live for an hour every week

Then years later Ant and Dec did it from the same studio, again just as complex.

Noel was always a big one for trying new things and talking up innovations - you can see that on his Christmas shows in the eighties where he 's always referring to "another televison first" and "the first time family entertainment has ever been presented in this way". On Telly Addicts he was always referring to records, I remember there was a tie once and he got very excited, saying it had never happened before in "the modern history of Telly Addicts". Even on Swap Shop you can see him get excited about new gadgets and talking up some new idea they'd had.

Obviously Toothbrush gave it all a bit of a boot up the arse, although Evans was always quick to say how much he loved the House Party and how much of an influence it was, I love the Evans NTV because there's clearly so much mutual respect between the two. As mentioned on the blog, it was perfectly possible to stand up in the mid-nineties and say you loved House Party, I've got a Radio Times where they interview Muriel Gray in the My Choice feature and she says she loved watching House Party because it's so innovative and she thought Noel was a brilliant presenter, "I'm waiting for him to make a mistake and he never does".

[deejay]

Telly Addicts was another show that, for me at least, completely lost its way. It started off as a simple two-team game show and ended up with all kinds of nonsense.

[Hatton Cross]

Some absolutely fascinating material in that BBC archive/Richard Latto piece. The sequence where Edmonds and Leggo are on the half constructed set is fascinating as Noel looks like a kid in a sweetshop as it's clearly all going so much better than they'd hoped. (incidentally on a geeky point because the gunge tank turntable hasn't been put in place yet, in that clip you can see the tiny "cat flap" at the back that the victims presumably exited from. Not particularly dignified given you were already dripping wet by that point). Also great to see the studio off air stuff that has been leaking out over the years finally go "official", particularly the material from the final show. When Andy Pearman put that up as audio only a while back I assumed the cameras had been turned off or something so good to see it survives. And look at the slightly curt relationship between Noel and the final producer, telling Starr to "do him' with the gunge. A world away from embracing Michael Leggo. I noticed the running time was exactly 58 minutes which suggests they have an eye on a BBC4 slot at some point - some of Latto's Twitter replies suggests they are hopeful of it at least getting on iPlayer.

I've watched this 'video presentation' and whilst it's a nice little diverting watch, with plenty of well researched clips, as it is, it nowhere good enough to catch the casual viewer for BBC Four, or even I-player.

It's too 'fanboy' in style (which I know is part of the idea) with overly long clips to pad it out.
I liked how we saw more of the pre/post show footage which Andy Pearman has held back from uploading before.

If I may quote Steve Williams over on the other place - there is a good 'rise and fall' documentary of NHP to be made - but this isn't it. Dropping some of the longer clips, and getting talking heads like Guy Freeman, Mike Leggo and Noel himself, sourcing additional behind the scenes footage, if it exists, clips of the pilot (although some would argue that was basically the three previous series of the Saturday Roadshow) any overseas versions (I know Germany did one for a short time) and rostum camera'ed production photos and concept drawings of the great hall of the house, then, you have a good documentary and a nice legacy retrospective that the show needs.

[VMPhil]

Yes the video doesn't seem like it's "TV ready" - there is a long bit of just slow motion footage of Mr Blobby for example, which felt a bit padded out.

But I did find it thoroughly interesting, and a lot of it was still very entertaining to watch. (The concept for doing NTV from a cinema was genius)

It really made me realise that, for a time, what a truly innovative show it was, and a rare instance of that kind of show being respected by both viewers and critics alike. That respect seems to have been hugely undermined by the show falling dramatically and simultaneously Noel's ego going out of control. And because its the kind of show that will never ever get repeated, seemingly the idea of it being trash Saturday night TV will persist.

However I would suggest that maybe they overused Mr Blobby…

[RyoG]

Maybe I missed it, but I was surprised there weren't any references to Mr Blobby originally being part of the Gotcha's.