21st Century Dodos: A Collection of Endangered Objects (and Other Stuff) (18 page)

Whether the idea of a mysterious stranger sneaking up on kids while they were tucking into a glass of milk would pass muster with today’s child safety-obsessed media is a matter for debate. At the time, everyone loved it.

There was even a range of merchandise you could purchase from your milkman, including mugs, T-shirts, hats, badges, and stickers, some of which crop up on eBay from time to time and fetch a fair few bob.

Although Humphrey himself has not been sighted for over 30 years, he was, as we have established, a master of disguise, so he could still be walking among us, for all we know.

Best keep a close eye on your pinta.

Dodo Rating:

Grandstand

Grandstand
was the BBC’s flagship sports programme, and was one of the longest-running television shows in history, airing across six decades from, 1958 to 2007.

During that time, the show covered 23 summer and winter Olympic Games, 13 Commonwealth Games, broadcast the first ever live hole-in-one at a golf tournament (Tony Jacklin in the 1967 Dunlop Masters), the first televised streaker (a 1974 England rugby match), and was also live on the scene for two of British sport’s most tragic events, the Bradford City fire and the Hillsborough disaster. It also showed the 1966 World Cup Final and drew in an audience of over 27 million people.

Despite running for over 3,000 editions,
Grandstand
only ever had four main presenters (supplemented by many guest presenters over the years). These were David Coleman, Frank Bough, Des Lynam, and Steve Rider, with Des becoming an unlikely sex symbol during his tenure. I met Des once; he called me a scruffy bastard.

For nearly 20 years (1968 to 1985),
Grandstand
ran head to head against its ITV rival
World of Sport
but there was very little crossover, apart from a bit of horse racing and football, between the two schedules. While ITV favoured wrestling and angling, the BBC was a bit more upmarket, with skiing, horse jumping, and athletics.

In its later years
Grandstand
relied less on a studio presenter and more on live outside broadcasts with commentators and experts at each event. This, coupled with the decision to carve off
Football Focus
and
Final Score
into separate programmes, led to the show being cancelled, with the last episode broadcast on 27 January 2007.

Dodo Rating:

World of Sport

It’s Saturday, it’s half past twelve, and the opening bars of a familiar theme tune burst through the television speaker as a fleet of light aircraft trail three words behind them.

Those words are, of course, WORLD, OF, and SPORT.

For the rest of Saturday afternoon the show would broadcast a range of sports, from bowls to wrestling, to a grateful nation. It was ITV’s answer to BBC’s hugely popular
Grandstand
, and, although the two shows were in competition, they rarely clashed in terms of the sports being shown. The more prim and proper BBC was not interested in the shenanigans of Giant Haystacks and Big Daddy, or niche sports such as speedway and ten-pin bowling, and was content to let ITV dabble in such things.

The truth was, of course, that the BBC owned the rights to pretty most all the major sporting events, and ITV, through
World of Sport
, was forced to cover specialist interest sports around a central spine of football scores and horse racing.

To give you an idea of a typical
World of Sport
broadcast, here is the actual listing from 8 November 1980:

12.35 ON THE BALL

Ian St John presents a round-up of this week’s European action, where Britain’s leading clubs have been striving to achieve further success. Plus features, analysis, and news.

1.00 INTERNATIONAL SPORTS SPECIAL – 1

The Angling Times Champion of Champions

from Weirwood Reservoir, Sussex

Ace anglers compete for a £750 first prize in this first event staged for television. Weirwood Reservoir, near East Grinstead, holds large quantities of 2-lb-plus roach, so an exceptional winning weight is possible. Reporter Jonathan Webb guides you through an event which features the fastest fishermen in the business.

1.15 ITN NEWS

1.20 THE ITV SEVEN

John Oaksey at Doncaster introduces four races on this final day of the 1980 flat racing season, and Ken Butler at Windsor introduces three races ‘over the sticks’. Your card:

1.30 Doncaster
– Poppy H’cap (
5f.
)

1.45 Windsor
– Buckinghamshire H’cap Chase (
2m.40yd
)

2.00 Doncaster
– Steel Plate Autumn Stakes (
7f.
)

2.15 Windsor
– Launderette Fortnight Stakes (H’cap Hurdle) (
2m.30yd
)

2.30 Doncaster
– Amoco Jockeys Trophy (
7f.
)

2.45 Windsor
– World-Wide Assurance Novices’ Chase (
2m.40yd.
)

3.00 Doncaster
– William Hill November H’cap (
1½m.
)

3.10 INTERNATIONAL SPORTS SPECIAL – 2

Karting

The Mazda Cars Race of Champions

from Hoddesdon, Herts.

Top home and overseas drivers contest the biggest and richest karting event ever staged in this country. It’s a sport that breeds Grand Prix stars – such as the current world champion, Alan Jones. Today’s main race of 25 laps is for karts of 100c.c. Without gears or clutch, they still top speeds of 75mph. In action, too, are the juniors – British schoolboys, between the ages of 13 and 16.

3.50 HALF-TIME SOCCER ROUND-UP

4.00 WRESTLING

from Lincoln

HEAVYWEIGHT:
Big Pat Roach (Birmingham) v. Iron Duke (Salford)

TAG MATCH:
Big Daddy and Sammy Lee v. King Kong Kirk and Sharky Ward

CATCHWEIGHT:
Mick McMichael (Doncaster) v. The American Dream (Miami, Florida)

4.50 RESULTS SERVICE

*
Times are subject to change.

The show was hosted from 1968, till its demise in 1985, by the Mallen-streaked Dickie Davies, Eamonn Andrews having chaired proceedings when WoS started in 1965. Fred ‘Gambit’ Dineage and ITV’s answer to Steve Ryder, Jim Rosenthal, would step in as cover when Dickie was off getting his hair done.

One of the iconic images of
World of Sport
was the array of typists sitting behind the presenter. Viewers, including me, assumed that these were reporters and secretaries busy collating all the latest news and results from around the world. In fact, it was all for show, they were actually admin staff for London Weekend Television working on internal memos, letters, and the like.

Perhaps the two most famous segments of the show were
On the Ball
and the wrestling.

On the Ball
starred former footballers Ian St John and Jimmy Greaves, who would banter their way through a 30-minute show previewing the day’s football fixtures. The pairing was so popular
that when
World of Sport
ended, their slot continued as a separate programme under the name
Saint & Greavsie
.

The wrestling was something of an anachronism in a sports show. This staged piece of pantomime did have a huge live following around the UK, and millions of people used to tune in at 4pm to watch goodies like Dynamite Kid take on baddies such as Mark ‘Rollerball’ Rocco. The two biggest stars, quite literally, were the 26-stone Big Daddy (Cheers!) and his nemesis, the 48-stone Giant Haystacks (Boo! Hiss!). Despite its loyal audience, it struggled to survive when
World of Sport
was pulled and finally gave way to the more flamboyant
WWF
from the US.

In 1985, ITV decided to stop broadcasting the programme. They were changing the way sport was to be shown on the channel, and an entire Saturday afternoon was seen as surplus to requirements. You could argue that they have never quite managed to attain the same level of success for their sports coverage since – their on-off relationship with Premier League highlights has become something of a running joke, never being able to compete with the BBC’s
Match of the Day
, their brief flirtation with Formula 1 racing and the Oxford v. Cambridge boat race didn’t really amount to much either, and now, with Sky dominating in almost every other area, they are left with Champions League football on weekday evenings for part of the year.

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