Guest Panellists: Rodney Bewes, Joan Sims, Colin Berry, Gillian Taylforth, Paul Shane and Pamela Armstrong.
Despite their joint origins in a somewhat bawdy, innuendo-strewn background, there's very little crossover between Blankety Blank and Carry On movies. The core cast hadn't really appeared - the article on series seven detailed how Kenneth Williams was a fan of Les Dawson, but regarded the show as witless. Of the "regulars" from Carry On, then Jack Douglas appeared eight times in the early days, and Barbara Windsor seven, leaving perhaps the only remaining connection being the similarity in appearance between Les and Peter Butterworth. (It was something Peter's widow Janet Brown herself noted, writing in 1985's Prime Mimicker: "He and Pete both had what I call a 'chunky' look, and it wasn't unusual to find Pete being approached and asked to 'give us your autograph, Les,' and vice versa.")
All of which statistical rambling brings us to the appearance of Joan Sims on this edition, clearly having fun. Also making sole appearances are DJ Colin Berry and Rodney Bewes, while it's the last appearances of Paul Shane and Pamela Armstrong. Gillian Taylforth is also on the panel, but would return for a Lily Savage episode on ITV in the next century. "There's a good feel about tonight," says Les at one point, and it perfectly sums up the show. The panel might seem to be laughing more than the viewers, but it's warm hearted, with all involved clearly enjoying being in Les's company.
Guest Panellists: Dave Lee Travis, Bella Emberg, John Virgo, Linda Nolan, Stan Boardman and Diana Moran.
The first ten episodes of this run (basically, all the episodes shown in 1989, save for the Christmas special) were relegated to a Thursday night slot. Unfortunately for a large chunk of this run, then the only ratings available were "Top 30 per channel", which meant that some viewing figures are unavailable, as even the BBC1 Top 30 was sometimes beyond it.
This is the edition were there's no ratings information, whereas the other nine from the Thursday slots at least have the chart placing available - an average of 56th place, with even the opener outside the Top 40. The actual viewing figures are even harder to locate, with 13.4, 13.6 and 13.7 all unavailable, though the remaining 7 editions averaged at 7.03 million.
Speaking of trivia, then this was the last edition before they took Blankety Blank off the air for six weeks to screen The Les Dawson Show, a sporadically running variety showcase that Les had appeared in since 1978. The decision to blend the two series together in the same timeslot was one that dismayed Les.
In No Tears For The Clown, he noted: "I thought the series would be a big success, but a strange programme planning decision was made: instead of waiting for the series of Blankety Blank to complete its run, the variety series was stuck in between the Blankety Blank shows. I was devastated. The ratings for the variety shows were very poor, and indeed, when I lost my Friday night slot for Blankety Blank it too dropped alarmingly in popularity. It looked as if I was on my way out. Had some august figure at the BBC declared that Dawson was to be made redundant? Had I offended someone there? Never handling money well, I was not in a position to get out of the business; saving for a rainy day was never a favourite axiom of mine and I viewed the future with apprehension."
Sadly, while comedy is, as frequently said in these articles, subjective, the 1989 series of The Les Dawson Show sees Les with almost none of his comic acumen left. Using jokes that are, in some cases, two decades old, most of the shows involve music and dancers, while Les usually just appears in one sketch with a guest star, trading carefully rehearsed insults that are supposedly off-the-cuff. It's a very old-fashioned show, even for the time, and while not every show that Les has ever made has been studied for these articles, this one seemed apt to view as its fate is tied in so closely with this run of Blankety Blank.
It is worth noting that Lesley Grantham appears on one edition, and does scripted banter about how much he hated being on Blankety Blank and he'd never do it again. A Christmas special later in the same year was a little better, and saw Les asking Terry Wogan if rumours were true that he was going to take Blankety Blank back off him. Yet the tide was really turning against Les, and even the BBC's own listings magazine, The Radio Times, wrote of the Les Dawson Show Christmas Special that: "Les Dawson is like your favourite store at sale time - you wish he'd wrap up. Here is Les entertaining us as only he knows how.... or why."
Guest Panellists: Doc Cox, Mo Moreland, Kevin Woodford, Sharron Davies, Frank Carson and Jenny Hanley.
Les doesn't appear to be especially well on this edition, sweating more than usual, and almost continually coughing throughout the entire show. However, despite this he seems in good spirits, and Frank Carson is always good value on the show. Sharron Davies is another panellist who seemed to be on the show more than she actually was, as she has a rapport with Les, but this was just her third appearance, and first since series nine.
Also appearing is celebrity chef Kevin Woodford, who would return for a couple of Lily Savage ITV episodes. Kevin's appearance is a stark reminder that although the IMDb is used for research for these articles, it's a site that can only represent what people put into it. Consequently this was listed as Kevin's first television appearance, despite the fact he'd had his own BBC2 cookery show the previous year. The show in question - The Reluctant Cook - has now been added, but research shall continue in the name of pure nerdism, and other Woodford appearances will be submitted when found.
The contestants on this edition also add to the fun, with an Iain Matthew from Birmingham who laughs so much at Les's gags he can hardly stand up when he - spoiler - goes for the Supermatch and Head To Head. Yet despite the fun involved, this is the other of two episodes that failed to make the Top 100. In 100th place with 4.5 million viewers was The Sweeney episode "In from the Cold"... a 13-year-old repeat.
Guest Panellists: Joe Brown, Rustie Lee, Trevor Brooking, Dana, Jimmy Hill and Judi Spiers.
An edition featuring the sole appearance of former footballers Trevor Brooking and Jimmy Hill. Not much is known about football here at The Anorak Zone, perhaps a surprise admission from a website dedicated to science fiction and cult TV. Yet Jimmy Hill's appearance brings up a curious sociological question of playground slang. During the early-mid 80s (by this point it was dying out) you could hear bizarre phrases like "skill" (good), "head the ball" (stupid person), and "chinny reckon".
The latter of these was accompanied by the stroking of the chin, as if stroking an imaginary beard in mock disbelief, and was sometimes replaced with the terms "itchy beard" or, the reason for its mention, "Jimmy Hill". This raises the curious question, not of the origins of such phrases, but as to how such phrases travelled the length of most of the UK when they didn't appear on television and this was long before the dawn of the internet and social media?
Surprisingly Jimmy's autobiography, the imaginatively-titled The Jimmy Hill Story, doesn't contain extensive chapters on his mandible, only briefly referring to it as "a nationally known chin", though reports suspect it might be the result of malocclusion, ie. bite problems. Because, with all the due respect in the world, Jimmy Hill had a big chin. Massive. Enormous.
Yet despite the obvious comedy target, Les doesn't make a single jibe in Jimmy's direction. This is the same Les who once told a contestant with big teeth they looked like a racehorse, or that Bella Emberg was so ugly lipstick backed into the tube when she tried to put make-up on. Yet Jimmy sits comfortably in the middle row, completely unscathed by derision.
In fact, the whole panel get off largely scot free in this edition, whereas most of the attention goes towards Rustie Lee's biscuits, or a second Supermatch Game where the question is "Horse [BLANK]". For some reason this produces hysterics in everyone, as if the phrase "horse shit" had some inescapable gravitational pull for all involved. Dana prolongs her suggestion of "horse sh - oe", just to get Les worried, while Rustie goes for "manure". It's a strange element of the show, yet possibly hints at bits that weren't shown on screen.
While the contestants can't usually get a word in during this series, and are usually just human prop recipients for Les's puns, one female contestant gets to be involved in the show, largely due to her ability to do a backflip. An attractive contestant, she perfectly illustrates how the standards of the show have changed - possibly due to Les getting married - in that he doesn't letch over any of them, and, here, she's confused when she goes to give him a kiss on the cheek but is just given a kiss on the hand in return.
Guest Panellists: Henry Kelly, Bertice Reading, Bill Buckley, Kathy Tayler, Tom O'Connor and Jilly Goolden.
So, as we near the end of this article, it's something of a bittersweet moment on a personal level, if you'll bear this moment of self-indulgence. Stuck indoors under a global pandemic, I put on an episode of this quite silly quiz show just to watch something "light" under trying times. For some odd reason I got curious about the different events behind the scenes, and put up a Twitter poll asking if people would be interested in reading articles on the show, little dreaming that the answer would be "yes", or that they'd become the most-read things I'd ever placed on this site.
Yet probably the saddest part about this final run is the knowledge that the panellists are appearing with Les for the final time. Food and Drink's Jill Goolden makes her sole appearance on the show here, and while some of the others didn't have a major rapport with Les, here's Bertice Reading, having great fun with Les, along with yelling at him, and receiving multiple cracks about her weight.
Les is on solid form in this one, and though it does seem as if his routines have been extremely toned down at this late stage, there's still a moment of shock when a contestant who wants to belly bump with Les is, as pictured, body slammed across the studio.
Perhaps most notable on the panel here is Tom O'Connor, as it's his eighth appearance on the show, stretching all the way back to the third series. Henry Kelly, who had upgraded to the bottom middle seat after his first appearance, here spends his fourth consigned to the upper left in deference to O'Connor. There's also laughs from the audience and panel towards things that aren't always seen on screen.
Guest Panellists: Aiden J. Harvey, Nerys Hughes, Billy Pearce, Vicki Michelle, Roy Walker and Debbie McGee.
After the Christmas Special, the show was pushed into a disastrous Monday night slot for 1990. Shown opposite a shiny new show called Strike It Lucky with an energetic, manic performer in his 30s, it was an opposition that Blankety Blank couldn't compete with. Strike It Lucky was just in its fifth series, having been on the air a little over three years, while Blankety Blank had been on for over a decade. While this final series of the original run is fun, the show had gradually turned into very much a "mainstay", and these episodes amuse but also rarely surprise. Michael Barrymore's manic energy isn't for everyone, but for a mainstream audience a 58-year-old telling the same jokes wasn't as enticing.
Five of the episodes that aired against Strike It Lucky averaged at 4.4 million and 96th place in the charts - the remaining two, as we've seen, didn't even make the Top 100. Yet there were three episodes shown in 1990 that were spared the fate of going against Barrymore's quiz. The first, pre-Lucky edition (13.12) managed to get 6.4 million viewers and 70th place against Mr. Bean, while 13.16 was brought forward an hour due to a later BBC1 broadcast of footage from The Commonwealth Games, so avoiding the Lucky face off, and managing 65th place/6.3 million viewers when the direct competition was Wish You Were Here.
Which brings us to 13.18, the highest-rated episode of the last series*, attracting 8.4 million (49th place) when Strike It Lucky was taken off for a week for a World In Action Special. (* The ratings for Episodes 13.4 and 13.7 are not available, so this might not be absolutely true, but the chart positions of those two shows are, so this would be extremely likely to be accurate.)
Held back in the run, this was the eighth episode to be recorded, back on 20th May 1989, over eight months before it was actually shown. What's perhaps curious is that all three male panellists were contestants from ITV's talent show New Faces, albeit different eras of the show. Aiden J. Harvey was the winner of the second series back in 1974, while Roy Walker did win a show in 1976 but didn't make it to the final. Billy Pearce was part of the revival version of the show hosted by Marti Caine, and made it to the final in 1986, though didn't win.
Billy's act was an odd one, in that it was stereotypically "camp", but never explicitly related to a Norvellesque parody of homosexuality - in fact, his act on the New Faces final saw him chatting up women in the audience. An interview with The Yorkshire Post in 2016 contained a reference to Les being instrumental in his career years earlier when he was working as part of the technical crew in Yorkshire Television: "It was Dawson, he says, who encouraged him to look for work in front of the scenery instead of moving it, and Pearce made his professional debut, as had so many before, as a Redcoat at Butlins."
Seeing an earlier episode shown among later ones does highlight that Les has more energy at this stage, even though his breathing is bad and he has a cough throughout. There's the slightly combative relationship with Debbie McGee, Les getting a good response from the audience when Debbie tells him she just got his last joke - "It'll keep your husband going for the next twelve months." In fact, Les's battles with the panel, largely absent throughout this run, are here in force for this edition, and are what makes this one nab first place: Aiden J. Harvey, a comic impressionist, is asked "will you do us an impression of a failure?", while Nerys Hughes, producing what she refers to as "a funny answer, really", is met with "Well it'll be the first time."
There's also a gag that, perhaps indulgently, makes the studio laugh but would have been lost on the viewers at home - Les introducing Roy Walker as "a man whose sons are pinching all his gags". While comedian Bobby Bragg was the main warm-up man for series 13, with ten editions, Roy's son Phil Walker had taken on the role the day this edition was recorded. (For one final point of extremely anal trivia, then Phil did the warm up for six editions, while the remaining five editions had warm ups performed by Bruce Thompson.)
And so, there we have it. 219 episodes, plus two unscreened pilots. Eleven years, two months to be aired on the BBC, and two years, seven months to be published as articles. Plus countless hours reading autobiographies, conducting research, etc. Thanks to all who have helped towards these articles, your input was essential. Some of the revival shows may be looked at in the future, as some already have been, but in terms of the original, "proper" Blankety Blank, with this article we come to an end.
If you'd like to treat me to a coffee for this daft odyssey through Blankety Blank, then the button is below, but if you don't, that's fine too. It's been fun.