With Les being discharged from hospital after the events of the eighth series, the new series ran from September 1985 to March 1986, a mammoth run. Please join me as I rate the series from worst to best...
Guest Panellists (in panel order): Jack Douglas, Lynda Baron, John Dunn, Leslie Ash, Bernie Clifton and Tracey Childs.
As fun as the Les Dawson era could often be, it became way too stretched out. So much so that some episodes of series nine were actually repeated within series nine itself, and by the time this run ended, it had been on air for 26 weeks over a 28 week period. Les can be funny, but naturally over such a long run it becomes formulaic, and, while a fairly amusing show, it's just, when all said and done, a quiz where people try not to say "willy".
That such a lightweight concept is stretched out for over half a year is to its detriment, and really there's only so many times you can talk about the same elements without falling into repetition, or the show feeling "made to order". This is the episode where Les is surprised by contestants who are identical twins, an okay gimmick that doesn't really stretch to 33 minutes, particularly as the twins aren't allowed to display much in the way of personality.
It also seems very unlikely Les wouldn't have known that there were going to be twins on the show beforehand, as he often talks about rehearsals with the contestants. Yet he does seem genuinely surprised, as he does when he turns round and the panel have suddenly disguised themselves with cardboard cut outs of Les. It's perhaps churlish to over-analyse what is supposed to be just "a bit of fun", but by forcing Les out of his curmudgeonly persona and into someone genuinely upbeat, it perhaps causes the show to lose a dimension. Blankety Blank isn't a particularly weighty concept, and having Les deconstruct it gives it something of an edge; take this away and you're not left with a lot. And if you wanted to be really miserable, you could also argue that having twin contestants does feel a bit like a way to artificially insert some variety in a reasonable ninth series that does suffer from feeling "samey".
Bernie Clifton makes a return appearance for the first time since the fourth series, and - despite being a laughter vacuum throughout - went on to become a Les semi-regular. Jack Douglas, a regular during the Wogan years, makes his sole Dawson appearance, while actress Tracey Childs puts in her only appearance in the entire show. Altogether 20 celebrities made one-off appearances in this ninth series, Childs included. Also on the panel is John Dunn, a man who mainly worked in radio, and may not be familiar even to those of us who were around at the time.
Although Les is upbeat in this one, he doesn't seem particularly healthy. Not only is he sweating quite heavily throughout, but he also has a cough - probably a smoker's cough, as he admitted that he was smoking over 50 cigarettes a day. This is particularly distressing during the Head To Head game, where his shallow breathing can be heard.
Before moving on to the next entry, it's worth acknowledging the continuing nostalgic popularity of the show. The weekend before this article was published, a Wogan episode (2.16) was repeated on BBC4 at 9:10pm. The Saturday night, 6th August broadcast was reportedly so successful it had 120,000 viewers, which was pretty big for BBC4 - a rare post-publish edit will be done on this bit when BARB give confirmation of the figures.
Guest Panellists: Gary Wilmot, Mollie Sugden, Tom O'Connor, Debbie Greenwood, John Inman and Aimi MacDonald.
With the ninth series averaging at 17th place in the charts, this was the only edition not to make the Top 30. Although the 10.68 million that tuned in was a sizeable audience and not the lowest from the run, the competitive Christmas viewing market meant that it reached 41st place for the week.
The special marks John Inman's third and final appearance in the series, along with the debut on the panel of Debbie Greenwood. Greenwood is perhaps one of the more forgotten minor celebrities of the age, perhaps because she worked as a presenter rather than an actress, so isn't in as many repeats, but at the time she was a TV crush on the same level as Sabina Franklin.
Miss Great Britain 1984, Greenwood now works as a "celebrant", which means you can book her to arrange your wedding or christening in one of four different languages - provided you live in London or Surrey.
As this look at series nine is relatively low on content from autobiographies (though the following entry starts us off there), I decided to quiz a few of the panellists on that marvel of considered discourse and sophisticated debate, Twitter. Naturally, most of the celebrities who appeared have very little memories of the show, bizarrely not thinking about Blankety Blank on an almost weekly basis. Debbie Greenwood echoed this, telling me: "It was such a long time ago - can't really remember much about it except that Les Dawson was nice."
So, why is this Christmas Special ranked so low in this ranking, when they have a history of being very highly placed? Well, there is a very workmanlike feel to this one, lacking the special Christmas vibe of shows gone past, instead feeling just like a regular episode with a bit of tinsel thrown at it, and people (including Les) plugging their pantos. Possibly it's just due to the fact that it lacks the "last day of school before the holidays" feel as the show was back on the air just the following week, and there were a further eight episodes (including repeats) before the end of the run.
Guest Panellists: Michael Parkinson, Sandra Dickinson, Dave Wolfe, Cheryl Baker, Danny La Rue and Diana Moran.
Over the last two Blankety Blank articles, attention has been given to Les Dawson's first autobiography, A Clown Too Many, which covered his life from birth up to the end of series eight. In 1992 he published a second volume, No Tears For The Clown, which, despite its hopeful tone as he described the love he had with his second wife and the birth of their child, would ultimately be bittersweet, as he died less than nine months after it was published.
One thing that resonates throughout the book is how much Les wanted to be a successful novelist, even admitting he only agreed to write his first autobiography in a deal to get another of his moderately-selling novels released. Although a worthwhile read, No Tears For The Clown perhaps lacks the sincerity and full insight of his first. One is that it naturally covers a much shorter timespan; although 1985-1992 was an eventful period in Les's life, it has to compete with over 50 years detailed in his first.
But perhaps more crucially than that, Les can't resist putting in jokes, and mixing them with serious points, sometimes making it unclear whether what he's describing really happened, or whether it's pure comic exaggeration just for a gag. So, while it's very unlikely his second wife Tracy attacked him with a "carving knife" any more than his dog put its paw down its throat to bring up the neighbours' cooking, being placed at the end of an otherwise-serious write-up of a fraught holiday leaves you in some doubt.
Speaking of the second autobiography, then it was stated in the series eight article that Les never mentioned Danny La Rue in print, which isn't actually quite true. No Tears For The Clown does give a fleeting mention, which suggested he greatly admired Danny: "It felt so good for an old ham like me to play an audience and pit my wits against the likes of Joe Brown, Lionel Blair, dear old Bernie Winters and Danny la Rue, not to mention the contestants who could be pretty handy with a snappy line." Les gets laughs impersonating Danny and talking about how grandiose he is, while there's also a brief bit of trivia whereby the guests are credited in alphabetical order by surname, except for Danny, who goes after Michael Parkinson. This suggests that whoever did the credits thought "La" was his middle name, though as it's a fictitious professional name for Daniel Carroll, it perhaps scarcely matters.
A somewhat sad note is that this is Sandra Dickinson's last episode. A Wogan regular from series two onwards, she made a big impression with 13 appearances during Terry's run. For whatever reason, she doesn't make the same impact under Les, appearing just once in each of his first three years, and then in the top middle seat, usually reserved for the "ageing actress". Okay, during series six she had to defer the "airhead" seat to Lorraine Chase, but in all of her Les appearances she doesn't even get bottom row. She does make a reference to the air being thin so high up, but it's not really expanded on, and, like Beryl Reid, another Wogan regular, she just disappears from the series rather than goes out with a bang.
Also on this edition is Michael Parkinson ("Straight to the point, nothing humorous. Dull as ditchwater, that's our Mike.") but the real draw with this edition for hardcore Blankers is seeing Dave Wolfe make a return. After his appearance in series eight which saw Les being slightly unpleasant towards him, this is a much warmer showing, with a far more relaxed and pleasant atmosphere. This said, Dave brings along a stuffed toy owl, but Les just uses it - as with most of the panel - as a feed for another corny pun, instead of seriously interacting with the them.
It's somewhat symptomatic of Les's era at its worst, where whoever is on the panel that week is now seemingly regarded as being of so little importance that the "panel take it in turns to wave to camera in the opening titles" is discarded in favour of just letting viewers hear the theme tune play out. While still fun, the shows lack the standout moments they used to have when panellists would, for example, walk off, or irritate the rest of the panel.
Guest Panellists: Peter Goodwright, Bertice Reading, Eddie Kidd, Anneka Rice, Charlie Daze and Polly James.
For those not around at the time, it's difficult to describe how big Eddie Kidd was. A motorcycle stuntman who performed in many James Bond films, no playground debate in the '80s was complete without a "Who would have won a stunt bike competition - Eddie Kidd or Evil Knievel?" (Eddie eventually beat Evil's son in the early '90s, but the eras of Kidd and Daddy Knievel only briefly overlapped.) A handsome man even with a black mullet, Les tells him to "stop looking like a matinee idol".
Also making their debuts on this episode are Polly James, Charlie Daze and Peter Goodwright, with at least Daze perhaps needing an explanation. Daze was an Irish stand up, though his background is so unclear some sources state that he was born in Scotland and moved to Ireland at an early age, while other sources state he was Irish by birth. Regardless, while he's no ground-breaking comic, he's likeable enough, and joins in with the fun here, as do all the panel. Sadly, despite the rapport she has with Les, this is the last appearance of Anneka Rice on the show.
The show is nailed to its time by the presence of a Supermatch answer of "Half Penny", along with a contestant bringing the house down by having the job role of "VDU Operator". (If you're confused as to why that should get a laugh, then this was still a relatively formal age for discussing sexually transmitted diseases, with venereal disease still going by the somewhat staid term "VD". Just hearing those two letters is enough to raise a response from the audience, unless they really did find the idea of a computer operator hilarious.)
Yet there's a slightly "off" atmosphere to this one. Les looks a little uncomfortable, fiddling with his suit throughout, and also seems to stumble on some of his gags. Yet worse than this is the laughter of the studio audience. It comes in and fades out so suddenly it's, at best, a case of it being too artificially balanced in the mix and, at worst, canned. Possibly there was a technical fault on the day - Les's microphone gets a momentary slight echo when he introduces the Head To Head - but as this episode and 9.8 had Mike Felton in charge of the sound mix, it seems something more deliberate.