Headlines and Hedgerows by John Craven

Author:John Craven
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781405932684
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2019-07-24T16:00:00+00:00

9. Saturday Mornings

When Danny Cohen took over as the youngest-ever controller of BBC One in 2010 he invited me to his glass-panelled office at New Broadcasting House for a ‘getting to know you’ chat. Now it’s always a little worrying for seasoned broadcasters like me when people who were born long after we started our careers begin taking over the shop. Are they going to play the card which now dares not speak its name – age – and politely show you the door?

After all, Danny had made his name running the youth channel BBC Three and was obviously going far, but would I be part of his future plans? My fears vanished as soon as I opened the door because the first thing he said after shaking hands proved he was a fan from way back – and what he said was a telephone number: 01-811-8055. That, as any child knows if they were growing up between 1976 and 1982 – and that included Danny – was the telephone number of Multi-Coloured Swap Shop, the Saturday morning show that helped change the way television interacts with its viewers.

It was a number ingrained in their memory as they tried in their thousands, all morning, week after week, to get through to speak live to one of the guest stars or swap something. I was lucky enough to be one of the presenters. Like Danny and a whole generation of kids watching along with him round the country, I have great affection for the show. Noel Edmonds, at the time the star of Radio One’s breakfast show and Top of the Pops, was the front man with Liverpudlian teenager Keith Chegwin out on location doing lots of swaps with crowds of children and Maggie Philbin and me helping out in the studio.

We all became great friends (something which does not necessarily happen when strangers are thrust together by television producers), and that camaraderie came across on the show, which lasted for 146 editions over six years.

It was the BBC’s first programme, apart from sports coverage and big occasions, to transmit for three hours non-stop and the first children’s programme without a script – there was a running order, but we improvised the rest.

Multi-Coloured Swap Shop began after the then controller of BBC One, Brian Cowgill, told Edward Barnes, assistant head of children’s TV and the creator of Newsround, that he was not happy with the audience figures for Saturday morning. As Edward recalls:

He said they were all right during the week – in fact ITV were nowhere near us – but they were dreadful on Saturday morning. I told him the reason was we had no money so we put on cartoons that children had seen at least twice already. Cowgill’s reply was: ‘You come up with the idea and I’ll find the money.’

Rosemary Gill, who had worked with me on Blue Peter, had had the notion sometime before of a half-hour show based around swapping, because she said children loved to swap things, but it didn’t happen because there wasn’t the budget.

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