Tuesday, May 23

Eighties One Hit Wonder

For some reason best not examined too closely, the Gnome has, languishing in the deep uncharted depths of his iPod, a song by an eighties one hit wonders Matt Bianco.

Seeing their name spring up at him from the backlit screen this evening he was reminded of a wonderful incident from his childhood when, one fine Saturday morning long before the advent of 5-second delays on telephone calls to live shows, Matt Bianco were guests on Noel Edmonds 'Swap Shop'.

American readers will of course have no recollection of the important part this programme played in the upbringing of all of a similar age and nationality to the Gnome, nor of the intense rivalry with 'Tiswas' - the equivalent Saturday morning entertainment on the opposite channel, but let us not digress too far from our main message with talk of custard pies, swapping a complete set of Top Trumps for a Scalectrix set and of course Sally James.

Matt Bianco were, as is always the case with pop groups on such programmes, taking questions from viewers. The interview started well with the typical banal questions 8 - 13 year olds ask of their pop idols but then a magic moment occurred. Noel introduced Joe Bloggs from Nuneaton on line 5 and invited him to ask his question.

"Matt Bianco?" queried Joe, in as friendly a manner as one could wish for, "I'd just like to say you are all a bunch of wankers" and then (quite understandably) slammed the phone down.

You don't get TV like that any more - kids of today don't know what they're missing...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I was watching the programme on TV when this call took place, must be at least 25 years ago.
As I remember, there was an short awkward silence then they just carried on with the show. I was no Matt Bianco music fan, but still felt bad for them.
This might have been the first, and possibly last time that this sort of occurrence happened on kids' TV, which is why it's still remembered to this day. Surely they've used a delay ever since.

No doubt it's been repeated ad nauseum on these 'Worst TV Moments' type shows.