Telly time machine

So, what was on telly on the day you were born?

If you are in the UK, a new search facility of the newly-digitised back issues of Radio Times will tell you!

I searched, and found this was the evening's line-up on the date I was born 51 years ago in August:

17.25 : FRANCIS DURBRIDGE PRESENTS - "The Desperate People", starring Denis Quilley, Hugh Cross, June Ellis, David William and Shirley Cain.

17.50 : THE NEWS
17.55 : TODAY'S SPORT, introduced by Alan Weeks.

18.00 : JUKE BOX JURY, with chair David Jacobs and panel members Carole Carr, Ted King and Barbara Windsor.

18.35 : THE THIRD MAN - TV adaptation starring Michael Rennie and Jonathan Harris.

19.00 : WELLS FARGO - the adventures of Special Agent Jim Hardie, played by Dale Robertson.

19.50 : THE DICK EMERY SHOW, with guests Joan Sims, Gary Miller, The Springfields, Mary Millar, Rex Garner and the Cliff Adams Singers.

20.35 : The Saturday Film - THE EAGLE AND THE HAWK, starring John Payne, Rhonda Fleming and Dennis O'Keefe.

22.15 : THE NEWS

22.25 : MAIGRET - classic crime series, starring Rupert Davies.

23.15 : Close Down

With that much entertainment on offer, you'd need to be in bed early.

Check out the BBC Genome Project for yourself - it's fun!

More about the venerable Radio Times in my blog back in 2011.

Flogging the family silver

Christmas 1923


BBC 2 opens April 1964


Jon Pertwee is Dr Who January 1970


Glenda Jackson is Elizabeth I February 1971


Joan Collins July 1989


Eastenders April 1994


Torchwood August 2011

What is happening to the BBC at the moment?

I know the government wants to cut its licence fee, but why should that mean we are faced with the prospect of the brilliant BBC4 (last vestige of intelligent broadcasting by the Beeb) being slashed to the bone in favour of the eternally pointless "yoof TV" channel BBC3 (the one that brought us such "wonders" as Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps , Mind, Body & Kick Ass Moves, Freaky Eaters and Jamelia: Whose Hair Is It Anyway?)? Ridiculous.

And today it is announced that institution of the British establishment the Radio Times is set to be flogged off to a private equity firm. We all know what that means...

I have many happy memories of getting hold of the new issue of the Radio Times (and of course its ITV opposite number TV Times), and the whole family taking it in turns to circle, asterisk or otherwise mark what programmes they wanted to watch in the coming week. Thus began the weekly tussle for supremacy between rival calls for Robin's Nest vs a Horizon documentary on Isaac Newton. Christmas-time was especially good, as you had the bumper double issues to look forward to, and only had to work out whether you had seen Chitty Chitty Bang Bang or the Bond film more times already, in order to decide which to watch.

Of course, in this day and age when TV listings can be published anywhere, and catch-up and on-demand TV are available at the click of a mouse, the whole idea of the magazine is a bit of an anachronism for many. But it has been published since 1923, and still sells bucketloads of issues - and after all, once you have flogged off the family silver, what happens when all you have left is the EPNS?

Radio Times on Wikipedia