RIP Brian Cant

Really saddened to hear of the death of Brian Cant today. The veteran children's TV presenter was 83 and had been suffering from Parkinson's for some time and was residing at Denville Hall, a retirement home for former entertainers.

Cant's gentle, reassuring and kindly tones helped provide the soundtrack to my childhood. He was the voice of Trumpton, Camberwick Green and Chigley, but he will perhaps be best known for his twenty-one year long association with the BBC's flagship children's programme Play School, which he started presenting in 1964, and for its sister show Play Away, which he hosted from 1971 to 1984.

Originally, Cant's career was that of an actor; he appeared in two Doctor Who stories in the 1960s, The Dalek Master Plan (1965, see picture below) and The Dominators (1968) opposite William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton respectively, as well as film roles in 1965's The Pleasure Girls and 1966's The Sandwich Man, but it was children's TV that became his staple. 

After Play School and Play Away, Cant presented Bric-a-Brac from 1980 to 1982 and played Brian the Farmer alongside a host of puppets in Dappledown Farm from 1990 to 2003, before returning to acting in later years with roles in the BBC afternoon drama Doctors and the 1995 film A Feast At Midnight, alongside Christopher Lee. In the late '90s, Cant's natural mischief allowed him to lightly send up his association with children's programmes when he lent his voice to The Organ Gang, a cartoon segment during Lee and Herring's This Morning With Richard Not Judy. Enjoying this new cultish recognition from a generation of twentysomethings that he had previously entertained, Cant went on to star in the music video for the Orbital track The Altogether. 

He was honoured with a special Children's BAFTA in 2010 recognising his outstanding services to children's TV and the happiness he brought to the generations of boys and girls who grew up in the UK from the '60s onwards.

RIP

Out On Blue Six : The Fall

One for the Lee and Herring fans out there.

End Transmission

Remember When...Gail Porter and Big Ben

Just recently I've been taking regular trips down memory lane thanks to Lee and Herring's This Morning With Richard Not Judy being available to watch on YouTube.

For those not in the know or simply too young to recall the last couple of years of the twentieth century, TMWRNJ (as it was known) was a satirical spoof magazine show that aired at Sunday daytime on BBC2. For two series in 1998 to 1999 it was required viewing for the late-teenage me.

Virtually every edition from the second series sees Stewart Lee performing a rant against what was a worrying trend at the time; female presenters from children's TV stripping off or dressing provocatively for the lads mags (a trend that was examined in Kirsten's Topless Ambition which I've previously blogged about) There were lots of these presenters doing this, but perhaps the biggest culprit was Gail Porter, who Lee neatly served up with this most spectacular roasting...

"This week I've been going into every newsagents in the UK and taking down all the copies of this month's FHM that I can find with the cover of Gail Porter's scrawny Kentucky Fried Chicken bargain bucket breasts, airbrushed bum newly-hatched raptor-foetus body, and drawing a yashmak on it and then putting them back on the shelf. Put your clothes on Gail. You won't get the Live and Kicking job now. Spare yourself a shred of dignity and spare the nation in turn the sick-making sight of your wrinkly walnut bum. You look like a tiny naked child. There's something very strange about it and it's not a very nice sight to see down at the corner shop first thing in the morning when all you want is a newspaper, a packet of fags and a Ribena Light. Get dressed, Gail. Wear a yashmak"

This, along with another reference explicitly regarding the incident that immediately came to mind, reminded me of the time when a 100ft Gail Porter, her bare arse and side boob was superimposed upon the Palaces of Westminster as a stunt for FHM magazine.

How? Why? Just bizarre. Its a stunt that would be unthinkable now, and reminds you just how very different the 1990s where. 

TMWRNJ: Histor's Eye, St George's Day Special, 1999

Celebrate St George's Day with Lee and Herring's two pirate time travelling crows, Histor and Pliny, from an episode of the second series of This Morning With Richard Not Judy. Come with me now, as the crow flies...

I've kept a teensy bit after the sketch on, just because I think Nathalie looks surprisingly fetching in her St George outfit!