TV Nostalgia - Chain Letters

Here is the latest TV nostalgia column printed in the Portsmouth News on Saturday 16th June on Chain Letters... Enjoy!

"Change a letter, do it again and that's how you play Chain Letters.." An easy enough explaination of a gameshow, but this daytime show was a lot more then that. First broadcast in 1987 with Jeremy Beadle as host, it seemed like a cut price version of the letters round in Countdown.

Contestants were individually given words, and they must change one letter at a time to make new words. Though its never what it seems, from a simple four letter word, they would usual change it to what viewer at home was thinking about, usually leading to them using a different kind of four letter word instead!

Various hosts each had a go at presenting duties. From Jeremy's replacement, Andrew O'Connor to Dave or as he was billed back in 1997, David Spikey. Affable and genial, seem the words to describe him , at times though it did seem like he looked like he was caught in headlights! But he had needn't have worried as one of his main writers on the show was none other then a pre-Phoenix Nights Peter Kay, supplying the jokes for him. Though some good must have come out of it for Spikey and Kay, as they employed former host and warm up man for the show Ted Robbins and Spikey, made that version of himself into the character Jerry 'The Saint' Sinclair. 

Now who said that presenting gameshow wasn't good for the career, especially when you can get great material for future projects from them!

Off course you can...

Some people may question where about the quest and thirst for knowledge comes from, what makes up someone who wants to learn more and more. I will admit I've never been the most intelligent of beings, but I've always had a thirst for learning new things. After leaving school as a 16 yr old with no GCSE's this made me want to know more about the media and the industry surrounding it. Fine, I could read TV listings from a young age but I wanted to know about the companies behind the programmes and the people who made them.

Like many things nowadays, anything like this is seen in the newspapers as quirky and odd. These stories come with a 'Good for a Laugh' image, but I don't never see this as that. Since I have been tweeting I have learned more and more from various people and their knowledge of such things, where as I would have looked at a book and read now I can discuss with people about all angles of an industry set up to inform, educated and entertain us. 

Learning such information on my own seems like a little triumph for myself, knowing that I can know something that it might not be 100% right, but just the knowledge of knowing that particular fact. Then again some of the most influential people in the media and entertainment sphere have search for that knowing all their lives. By example Jeremy Beadle was supplying information to shows, Bob Monkhouse built up a huge collection of videos of shows and other items as well. We all want to be able to say 'Here's something that you don't know...' Maybe such not as pub trivia but being able to impart knowledge to other people each and every day. I read mostly reference books and autobiographies of people and have done all through my life, knowing what people have been through to get where they are today. A good true life story is as good as a fictional one, where as you could say that you couldn't make it up at all. 

By using this knowledge I can impart thing onto other people and help them in whatever I do, even by doing this and passing on little bits of knowledge to the likes of Iain Lee and Danny Baker, if they used them that was upto to them. But knowing I can provide a little bit of trivia and knowledge with what I do, it makes an audience sit up and listen. I'm not saying that I'm no memory champion as such, but when you are given a hand of cards to be able to sit in front of a television set, it'll be used to do so.

I was never going to be a world champion being able to kick a ball around, but knowing that Mickey Dolenz  

directed Metal Mickey, that's one thing I will take with me....