"Ashley is an international footballer who has been single since last February. In his spare time he likes to behave like a prize div."

"I promised to get all my lovely ladies a date" says Paddy. "And here he is. Form an orderly queue and don't worry, he's not fussy."



Edit: I'd like to make it quite clear, when I say he's not fussy I'm referring to the seemingly endless array of young ladies coming out of the woodwork saying "me too". I am definitely not having a dig at his lovely wife. If I was married to her, you wouldn't catch me looking at other women - except for when her pretty bandmates come to tea.

And to bring this back on thread (sort of) - I'm sure this would be a massive ratings winner AND I bet he's got the ego to say yes if asked to take part.

They've shown EastEnders Revealed on BBC1 before now, in fact when Wendy Richard left on New Year's Day the other year they showed it between two episodes.

Also, when 'stEnders went four nights a week in 2001, on the first Friday night they did something exactly like what was suggested - there was an appalling Jonathan Ross-fronted celebratory special at 7pm, then the episode at 8pm and a compilation of Alistair McGowan's 'stEnders parodies at 8.30. But that was August. They also did a 'stEnders-themed Weakest Link before the episode where Phil was shot in March 2001 - they ran that at 7pm, the episode at 7.40 and the first of a new series of Ballykissangel at 8.20 to boost that a bit (fat lot of good it did, though, it was axed after that run).


Yes, as they also did on the occasion of its thirtieth anniversary in 1990, I remember they showed it on a Sunday night at 7.15... followed by a new episode of It'll Be Alright on the Night. That was a great night for me at the time. They also did a special anniversary show the following Sunday which I remember ONLY because Cliff Richard delivered a tribute while doing a concert, and he used a microphone without a lead OR an aerial, which blew me away, I'd never seen one of those before. I was a funny age at the time.

Previous 'stEnders anniversaries have been a bit crap, you'll remember that for the twentieth they were supposed to do Britain's Favourite EastEnder, which would have been a series like Britain's Best Sitcom and that, running over several weeks with a big phone vote at the end. But it was abandoned before it reached the screen due to lack of interest, the show was in a bit of a state at the time, and the only thing they did was a clip show on Easter Monday teatime.

For the fifteenth, they did an hour long episode on a Sunday, and a bloody awful "documentary" which was just full of Pat's earrings ha ha ha Pauline's cardigans ha ha ha and so on. Plus A Question of EastEnders. And for the tenth they ran the first year's episodes at 10am every day for a few months* and also The Unforgettable EastEnders, which was a series of repeats of classic episodes on Fridays at 8pm, which I don't think did that well at all.

* One of the other reasons why they showed those is because they'd extended Anne and Nick to start at 10am to get a head start on This Morning, bit it didn't work so they took the extra half hour off them.


I said this last week, but the name of the programme is Harry Hill's TV Burp. The first two words are very important. If you just want to see the clips, watch the programmes themselves. I want to see Harry Hill.

Yes i remember the 20th being a damp sqiub, the show was being eaten alive in the papers every week due to some bad story lines 'kidneygate' , falling ratings and the behaviour of Leslie Grantham and other stars.I think they may have shown some memorable episodes like sharongate at 2.35 weekdays after doctors/neighbours on the week leading up to the friday episode.I think the beeb wanted to keep it low key.This was the time they dropped the slogan 'eastenders-everyone is talking about it' because some newspaper kept using the slogan Eastenders- 'everyone is talking about how crap it is '


I remember in the early noughties for the big episodes like the who shot phil reveal, Dans trial etc Gaby Roslin used to present an show around 11am across the week building up to the storyline and its aftermath.It was presented from the set of Kathys cafe iirc.

There were rumours around 2005/06 that Eastenders could be cancelled and Gary Bushell ran a campaign to have it axed and delighted in its falling ratings. However, I predicted on Off The Telly in response to an article on soaps being cancelled that the EE brand was too big for the BBC to allow to die and that the most likely candidate to go was Neighbours .

Exactly.

It's kind of so un-BBC too. This is what the rest of the BBC's Saturday shows should be like, but they're all quite stuffy and stuck in their little bubble.

BTW, isn't Sky's Got to Dance simply a non-celeb rip-off of Let's Dance?

Harry Hill's TV Burp used to be about showing short TV clips accompanied by a quip from Harry, it was never about all this visual joke nonsense you get in it now.

For the 15th they also did those Happy Birthday shows with Gaby Roslin and Jeremy Spake every morning. And there was a special EE edition of Auntie's Bloomers.

For what its worth, EastEnders Live is still the most popular item on BBC iPlayer... I suspect it will become the most watched show on there with over 1m 'views'.

Yes ATV originally produced FF. And consistently huge ratings followed. Bob Monkhouse (tv great though either slick or smarmy depending on your opinion) presented for the first four series (arguably the shows heyday) before he was tempted into some proper Telly with his chatshow on BBC2 (this used to pull 8 million viewers but why the Beeb didnt sail it straight onto BBC1 still baffles me to this day).
Max Bygraves-(too slow imo) followed then Les Dennis, Bob M eventually resurfacing in game show form with the competitively popular Bobs Full House.
It would be interesting to have seen how Les Dennis would have progressed but for the untimely death of Dustin Gee with whom he had a passable double act and had their own starring series on BBC1-born out of Russ Abbott Madhouse shows. I used to love Madhouse, but I guess the appetite for those style of shows disappeared in the early nineties. Or tv execs decided their day had gone........

FF was best when Mob Bunkhouse presented it. The original series went out at 7pm on Sunday nights. However, it was rested in the late eighties and its comeback under Les Dennis was often blighted by being shown against Casualty.

Bob's BBC2 show was scheduled against Panorama. That's why it did so well. It would also partially clash with World In Action.



It was designed to give ITV a decent audience against what at the time was one of BBC1's biggest ratings hits and it did fine. Like BBC1 sticking Antiques Roadshow up against X Factor last autumn.

Yes it was, there was At Home With The Pop Idol Judges which went on for weeks, and I've got an episode from the first series where, as they weren't allowed to show clips from EastEnders, there's a sequence which takes up virtually the entire second half where Harry goes to TV Centre with a Twix and some Um Bongo as a present for Greg Dyke to try and convince him to let them use them.

And of course it's nonsense - it's Harry Hill! That's his job!

Iv been away all weekend (i always seem to be away when there are big ratings!!)

Very good for EE, and the EE extra thing on BBC3 :O I thought corrie might get a boost though...

Good for Take me out. I met Rhian in a club last night and somebody asked if they could take her out :P so she go a date afterall :P

I remember Mob Bunkhouse's chat show, he had Kenny Everett on once and he made a really dirty joke. However, I'm not surprised it beat Panorama as this was the era when it was filmed in a studio with a black set and tended to bring up such jolly subjects as the Militant Tendency.
Panorama being moved to a 9.25 slot and moving it out of the studio actually doubled its audience and allowed BBC1 to compete better with ITV during their traditionally weak Monday night schedule.
Re FF, I think it pulled in 8 million viewers to Casualty's 16, which isn't bad, but way down on its eighties ratings.

I think it'd be a good idea to place TV Burp in the Tuesday Night Flop Zone.

only if TV Burp is going to Sky.

Maybe there was less of a focus on it then or he didn't keep doing the same unfunny stuff over and over. That Heather with a sausage is rank.

I used to prefer it back in the days when he did the Emmerdale credits with brocolli. Then it was funny. It's not now.

I do kind of hope now Harry Hill does go to Sky and the rest of us are left to remember TV Burp at it's best as the decline has already set in - no coincidence coming with the increase in number of episodes.


Didn't they do A Question of EastEnders too?

I think we'd have cut ITV a bit of slack if a live soap had overrun.

I think there was a lot of disappointment when BBC One's 2009 Christmas Night schedule ran pretty much on time. I think there were a few Ratings Thread stopwatches poised that night.

Was it Fernandos?

Paddy made that show. If it wasn't for all the catchphrases and the northern delivery, and they'd gone with a plain presenter it could have been a flop. Hence why it looked like a flop on paper.

But now stuff like 'No likey, No lighty, let the pork see the scratchings, fernandos, single man reveal yourself' etc are now entering general public usage.

TV Burp is always varying quality, some people just can't cope with liking an ITV show so have to slag it off constantly. The K Factor thing lasts 3 minutes and often has gags referencing stuff from earlier in the episode such as the couple from Coach Trip or a bit of satire, such as that 'Knitted Ashley Cole' bit from last night.

Indeed, but there was also a thread in the soaps forum predicting that ITV would ruin the EE live episode by running over Corrie, complete with people criticising them in advance. It didn't happen in the end.

According to this forum the decline has been setting in for the past four years.