From the early morning of 23rd March 1991 (I think), it's the last 11 minutes or so of Top Banana, followed by a load of Timmy Mallett's links from Hey Hey It's Saturday, plus some ad breaks. I'm afraid I've had to cut out the cartoons (Dink the Little Dinosaur x2, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Captain N), but there's still more than enough here to be getting on with.

The Top Banana segment - presented by Mike Brosnan - sort of takes the form of a live-action board game. A wheel is spun to determine the category of question to be asked, and you have the choice of an easy-peasy piece-of-cake one, or you can "go bananas" and take a trickier conundrum. Get the former correct and you move on to the next space; get the latter right and you advance two spaces. There's a bit more to it than that, of course, but basically first contestant all the way round and back to the beginning is the winner.

Following that, Timmy Mallett and Magic are on duty for Hey Hey It's Saturday. It seems to be the weekend before Easter, so that forms part of the theme of the day, along with a few plugs for Wacaday (as the holidays have just started). There's a nice arty-crafty flowery card 'make' which Magic does his best to sabotage by flapping his wings, and a special giant fluffy guest makes an appearance. Other things to note are a promo around 28:20 for Dappledown Farm presented by the legendary Brian Cant, and a good two-way between the TV-am studios and the Motormouth team at TVS around 32:50.

Incidentally, do we agree that the bear in the ad at 32:15 is as "cute" and "cuddly" as the narrator suggests? Those eyes looked quite sinister to me...

Many thanks to David for providing this tape.

(To the best of my knowledge, the contents of this video have never been available commercially anywhere in the world. Please also note that I don't monetise any of my uploads. Nevertheless, if you are a copyright holder and have an objection, please don't hesitate to contact me.)

свернуть