Twenty-five years ago this month, a new broadcasting concept was born - "Children's BBC". Of course, the Beeb had always been at the forefront of programming for kids, with such wonderful productions as Playschool, Blue Peter, Jackanory, Animal Magic, Watch with Mother and the pre-News ten-minute animations by the likes of Oliver Postgate. Cosy programming, all home-grown and wholesome, formed the backbone to my growing-up.
In the savvy 80s, however, the tone changed slightly as Auntie began to hand over a bit of control to the "yoof" of the day. It began of course with Saturday morning telly, as the programmers woke up to the fact that after ITV had invented the manic Tiswas, nothing could ever be the same again...
Plots in Grange Hill were already getting grittier, and US action cartoons continued to invade. Real change began to hit weekday afternoons as cheeky chappie Phillip Schofield arrived, speaking straight at the audience live from his "broom cupboard", accompanied by a rather anarchic puppet called Gordon The Gopher.
The novelty of a remarkably camp young man bantering with a squeaking glove caught on - and over the following decades, many fresh-faced presenters cut their teeth in that self-same live scenario. Andy Crane, Andi Peters and Zoe Ball all squeezed into the "broom cupboard", inevitably with their fingers up the backside of a puppet (like the Gopher's replacement Edd the Duck), and general madness ruled.
To celebrate this Silver Anniversary, the BBC has dug out some of its rare archives (most of the banter and mayhem of the links was done live, so few clips remain), and has created a whole section of the website dedicated to those years - so why not revisit the Broom Cupboard one more time?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/
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