Guest Panellists: Barry Cryer, Floella Benjamin, Greg Rogers, Jenny Hanley, Tom O'Connor and Dinah Sheridan.
The panel here contains two new faces in the form of Dinah Sheridan's actress daughter Jenny Hanley, and stand-up comedian Greg Rogers. Tracing the career of Rogers has been difficult as his TV appearances were scattered, such as guest spots on things like the Trade Descriptions Act-defying Laughter Show. Rogers has a fairly amusing face and audiences warm to him, but sadly his material - while not terrible - is highly generic. While he should have stood out, he instead slotted right in, becoming one of a number of comedians doing pretty much identikit jokes on summertime shows.
However, Rogers' most consistent piece of TV employment was playing a lift operator in the kids' music/comedy show Lift Off!, which later evolved into the David Copperfield vehicle Lift Off! With Coppers and Co!. Yet while his contribution to stand-up may not have been the most unique, he's a pretty good panellist, with a decent rapport with Les.
Lastly, despite the article on Series 9 stating that Les's series had a constant redesign each time, this is only half true with Series 10. Although it still retains the grey/pink scheme of the previous run, there are certain aesthetic differences and updates - but the logo remains the same. At the risk of calling myself a liar, it's Les's final three series where there's a large overhaul and new logo each year.
Guest Panellists: Peter Powell, Lynda Lee-Potter, Barry Sheene, Linda Lusardi, Gary Wilmot and Lynn Faulds Wood.
This edition marks the first of five appearances from Linda Lusardi, another Page 3 model. While such a job is still perhaps questionable today, it feels less illicit than Samantha Fox's role in the same industry, given that Lusardi was 7-and-a-half years older, and didn't model topless until she was 18. By the time of this Blankety Blank appearance, recorded on April 5th 1986, she was 27.
Linda actually spoke about Les in a Channel 5 special screened in August 2022, Les Dawson's Funniest Moments. Lusardi recalled: "Going on Blankety Blank, you always knew what you were in for with Les. Whatever I put down, he would always rip me for. No one was ever offended by Les, you couldn't be offended by Les. You were flattered if he took the mickey out of you."
Also on the show is retired motorcyclist Barry Sheene, who Les claims was originally due to appear on the show before he got ill, so presumably an unmade Series 8 episode. And while the variety of panellists of Series 10 is a good thing, it does have to be acknowledged that there's a significant drop in "names" this time around, with Daily Mail columnist Lynda Lee-Potter and presenter Lynn Faulds Wood making up the panel.
This is not to be snobbish towards lesser-known guests, but simply to note that a comedy game show needs people of a certain drive to go with it, not newspaper journalists. Such a move may seem like a budgetary consideration, but if you've read the Series 9 article you may recall mention of a letter from producer Stanley Appel, which will be returned to from time to time. Appel wrote that: "I really cannot recall the fees I paid. All I can recall is that everyone received the same ammount (sic)."
Guest Panellists: Jeffrey Holland, Ruth Madoc, David Griffin, Linda Regan, Paul Shane and Su Pollard.
The vast majority of series ten was recorded from March-June 1986, with just four episodes left to finish in another recording block on 16th and 23rd November: the final two episodes, the Christmas special, and, of course, this one, which is why it's been brought up here.
By this stage Les had begun to enter another depression, as his first wife had died in April 1986, and it was beginning to have a bad effect on him again, including excess drinking. Such was the "show must go on" mentality of the age that Les was back in the studio less than a month after she'd passed away, but here, just over five months after the last Blank recording block, Les had begun to get not only overwhelmed with emotions, but also conflicted guilt, as he'd also met his future second wife Tracy at this point.
In
No Tears For The Clown, Les would recall: "I went out a lot and once or twice in a drunken stupor I would go out with a woman then instantly regret it before anything came of it. I couldn't forget Meg..... But sometimes I would think of Tracy behind the bar, with her broad smile.... I was confused and diving into a well of self-imposed depression again. The answer was to work, and I shot off to London to finish a series of Blankety Blank."
As might be expected, this is just an okay episode under the circumstances, though the other three from the November recordings rank higher up this listing. One thing that marks series ten out as a little bit different is a number of "specials", where a panel is based wholly around another TV show. It continued in Series 11, which had a Holiday '87 panel of all things, but in this run we have panels made up exclusively of people from Eastenders, 'Allo 'Allo!, a "Beverley Sisters/weathermen" mash up, and, here, a Hi-de-Hi! special.
David Griffin (Squadron Leader Clive Dempster) shows himself to be a bit of fun, and there's a point where Su Pollard threatens to get out of first gear, but it mainly settles for amicable but forgettable, which is perhaps all that could be asked for, all things considered. Ruth Madoc and Paul Shane were, and continued to be, show regulars, but none of the "guests" to make up the panel returned to the show before 2022. While her appearance on this edition is a little underwhelming, Su Pollard will return to Blankety Blank the week after this article is published, taking part in the new version of the show with Bradley Walsh on October 8th.
While the programme's choice of sitcoms might seem very middle-of-the-road, they were what was popular at the time, and even in its final year Hi-de-Hi! was (mostly) a Top 10 show. But such statistical ramblings aren't the major point of investigation here. What really needs to be looked as is the moment where two of the contestants have to go through two tie-breakers. After the first is a draw, the female contestant wins at the second attempt with a match of the word "popcorn". Yet for some reason the male contestant doesn't even try to raise his card, despite the fact that, as pictured, he was caught on camera having written down that exact word beforehand. It's possible that it's lost in the edit, as Les jokes that he can take home "three quarters of the video film it's just took us to shoot that bit", but it's a curious moment from the competition side of things.
Guest Panellists: Emlyn Hughes, Claire Rayner, Mike Nolan, Suzanne Dando, Frank Carson and Janice Long.
A well-meaning and amiable edition of the show, even if the atmosphere is a little subdued at points. Frank Carson tells Les that he'd love to meet the man who edits the show, suggesting that the funniest stuff ended up on the cutting room floor, and there's the clear sound of canned laughter to prop up some flagging moments.
Yet it's hard to dislike an edition so good natured, even if it does often feel like people in search of a laugh. The main curiosity in this one perhaps extends towards Mike Nolan on the panel. A member of Buck's Fizz, those who have read the series eight article may recall that his scheduled series seven appearance was postponed after the band were involved in a coach crash and Mike entered a coma. Mike appears here after recovering, and is actually chattier and more relaxed than on his first appearance. However, he's still very softly-spoken and shy, still a seemingly sweet yet quiet individual.
This is one of the highest-scoring games of Blankety Blank, with the contestants getting 23 out of 26 possible matches. However, it should also be noted that many of the questions only have one possible answer. Talking of trivia, then Les's "our viewer in Cheltenham" is now his standard sign off, appearing in 19 of the 22 episodes.
Most significant in this incredibly nerdy exploration is that Les has settled on the name of the viewer as "Arthur". There are three episodes where he doesn't give a name, but in others Les fills in some background, such as Arthur having a wife called Doris, and living with a man called George, but they're "just friends".
Guest Panellists: Gary Davies, Mary Parkinson, William Gaunt, Mandy Shires, Nicholas Smith and Madhur Jaffrey.
One of the great things about this run of Blankety Blank is how diverse the panels are. Not "diverse" in the way it's often used today, but just a wider mixture of faces. Altogether 118 separate guests occupy the panel, with 98 of them doing just one show each. None of the guests take part in more than two shows, unless you count Samantha Fox's uncredited cameo as a waitress at the very end of the series, which pushes her up to three appearances.
Not only that, but 32 of the celebrity guests appeared just the once. Two of them are here, with Madhur Jaffrey and Miss United Kingdom Mandy Shires. Les opens with a gag where he complains to the producer that the barrel has been scraped in terms of lack of big names on the panel, and takes out a gun to shoot them all. However, while a gag like that could work with some bigger names, it does seem a little close to home in a situation like this.
One recurring discussion in these articles has been a mixture of shock/outraged amusement/contextual justification for some of what could be termed the ... "dodgier" moments. Series 10 has more than an average number of such moments, as Les seems to amp up the racial material. So it is that black members of the panel are told their smiles look like piano lids opening, and there are five separate racial terms used throughout the series for Chinese and/or Japanese people, including three uses of the word "sl*nt".
What makes this particularly uncomfortable is that, with shows recorded in 1986, it was getting far too near a different era for this to be regarded as "of its time". Delhi-born Madhur has an accent that speaks of the various places she's lived in an eventful life, though does contain an Indian lilt as part of it. Seeing Les put on an "Indian" accent and waggling his head to speak to her is pretty embarrassing today, though not as much when he does the same to Sneh Gupta in Episode 10.16 - who speaks with an English accent.
This is not to suggest that doing an Indian accent to someone with one is "okay", but just to note how it's even more insulting to do it to someone who doesn't have one, but just has an Indian background. Lastly, a very small piece of trivia is that although William Gaunt is credited accordingly, his name panel within the show itself is "Bill".
Guest Panellists: Ian McCaskill, Joy Beverley Sister, John Kettley, Teddie Beverley Sister, Michael Fish and Babs Beverley Sister.
Another "gimmick" episode, but one perhaps slightly stranger than most: the male panellists are all weather forecasters, while the female panellists are the Beverley Sisters.
The Beverley Sisters, a harmony group from Bethnal Green, had been professionals since the 1940s, so their appearances on multiple light entertainment shows throughout the 1980s is a testament to how TV liked to "hang on" to yesteryear. Nine months after this episode was broadcast, they appeared as guests on The Last Resort, playfully making fun of Jonathan Ross's speech impediment. While I personally took it as just a harmless leg-pull, my grandfather watched it with me and remarked on how impolite it was, to insult someone when you've been invited on as a guest - the concept of old-school manners that had alluded three women who were by then in their sixties.
As for the weathermen, then this was Ian McCaskill's second of three appearances, and, while Michael Fish would return under the Lily Savage revival show, this was his only showing under Les. Both Michael (who gets the biggest cheer) and John Kettley were just before their peak notoriety here. Just under eight months after broadcast, Fish was involved in a much-repeated clip that saw him predict there wasn't going to be a hurricane, before the worst winds in centuries hit Britain. Fish stated several factors, claiming that he was referring to a hurricane in the US, and what happened in Britain wasn't technically a hurricane, just very bad winds, but whether or not such things are true, history has largely chosen to forget them.
As for John Kettley, then he wasn't the first BBC weatherman to have a song named after him, though Rachel & Nicki's "I wish I wish Michael Fish" didn't chart in 1985. It wasn't until December 1988 that "John Kettley (Is A Weatherman)" by Tribe of Toffs almost made the Top 20, stalling at 21st place. (A song which does, of course, also mention Michael and Ian.)
The pre-tribute John gets the least applause when introduced on this edition, but seems to take it well. He actually recalled the episode in his 2009 autobiography Weatherman: "'Blankety Blank', originally made famous by Terry Wogan, was first quiz programme in which I appeared alongside Ian and Mike. The Beverley Sisters provided more attractive contestants and Les Dawson was the new host of my first show in front of an audience. I have little recollection of how the programme went, although I have an everlasting image of a little man turning a wheel behind the set which brought the contestants round to face the audience! Les was also a perfect gentleman being very complimentary and charming in hospitality afterwards."