Guest Panellists: Mike Newman, Arlene Phillips, Simon Bates, Tessa Sanderson, Les Dennis and Hazell Dean.
There's a couple of panellists who only appeared this once, including Arlene Phillips. A choreographer, while you may recognise her from shows like Strictly Scraping The Barrel, for those of us who grew up with Blankety Blank, her name will probably be more familiar as one of the masterminds behind Hot Gossip on various Kenny Everett shows.
The other is singer Hazell Dean, who had two Top 10 hits in '83/'84, but then had a string of singles fall outside of the Top 40, which may explain her presence on the show. She'd be back in the Top 5 in 1988 with "Who's Leaving Who", but when she was recording this edition on 17th May 1986, it was the following week after her new single "ESP" had flopped, reaching No.98 for a one-week visit to the Top 100. And while Tessa Sanderson would continue to be a quiet yet pleasant guest in future shows, this was the last appearance of two men putting in their second showings: comedian Mike Newman and DJ Simon Bates.
There was a kind of innate - to use a very 1980s word - "naffness" to Radio DJs of the time, so much so that even though Bruno Brookes and Gary Davies were only in their late 20s at this stage, they seemed much older than their audience. Perhaps one of the most revealing books on the whole Radio 1 phenomenon of the '80s is Simon Garfield's 1993 exploration The Nation's Favourite. There Garfield was given access to Radio 1 when it was overhauled in the early '90s and the older DJs were cleared out.
It's this book where Simon Bates is quoted as saying of himself that: "I was old even then, and could hardly be considered a hip, groovy thing, so there was a great deal of work to be done to make up for that", while an old producer of his claimed: "the bad side of him was, certainly towards the end and through most of my relationship with him, that he was megalomanic and became totally uncontrollable."
Finally, this is also the third appearance on the show of Les Dennis. While Les would return once more in the original run, and once under the Lily Savage revival version, this is - if you can believe it - the last edition where he does his impression of Mavis Riley. In compiling the many anal stats and figures associated with Blankety Blank, perhaps the least expected was to discover that the percentage number under "Les Dennis doing Mavis Riley" only reaches 60.
If all involved seem like one of the less substantial panels of the age, then it was something noted by Les Dawson himself, telling the producer in jest: "They're has-beens before they was ones!" It continues as a running joke, with Les slating the panel throughout, elevating a standard edition into something pretty amusing. And while Les was never one for up-to-the-minute topical comedy, there's a rare example of political referencing in his work: "All this world today with radiation and AIDS... in our day all you got was diphtheria."
Guest Panellists: Les Dennis, Ruth Madoc, Henry Cooper, Dana, Bernie Winters and Fiona Richmond.
There's no doubt that Les enjoyed a few drinks while making the show. Episodes will even see him refer to the contestants having had one to settle their nerves, or, if you keep a close look out, you can see him making the traditional "fancy a drink after?" hand gesture to Mike Smith during the end credits of Episode 10.6.
Yet here it does appear as if Les might have enjoyed one or two more than usual. He's not plastered, but he fluffs his opening gag, and there's a bit more sibilance to his speech, the odd remark a little mumbled or slurred.
It scarcely matters, as it just makes him sillier and more abusive to everyone on the show, including the contestant who tells him she had a brittle jaw, but it's now healed: "Glad about that, because there's nothing wrong with your tongue."
It's a pretty amusing edition overall, with Les clearly comfortable with the panellists. Bernie Winters wears sunglasses as he claims to have a cyst on his eye, which might make cynics wonder if it's a cover story for a brawl, but then Bernie didn't seem the type.
Guest Panellists: Lionel Blair, Mary Parkinson, Gary Davies, Suzanne Dando, Bernie Winters and Janice Long/Joe Brown, Bertice Reading, Peter Powell, Linda Lusardi, Duncan Norvelle and Aimi MacDonald.
For a run that had featured five "gimmick" episodes, it's perhaps only fitting that series ten should end with one. Halfway through this edition the first panel get tired of Les's insults and "storm out", causing Les to select a second replacement panel. The idea of "two panels" had been done before in a couple of Wogan Christmas specials (including one where Les was a guest) and it's a nice enough idea for a bit of variety.
Hardcore Blankers may note that with the second panel, Duncan Norvelle finally gets to return to the lower centre seat, the "maverick" chair. His first appearance had seen Duncan in that spot, but since that point he had been relegated to the top left. This seemed to become Duncan's regular spot, except for the following year, where Episode 11.22 saw him pushed to top right in deference to Lionel Blair.
It's an odd situation, but then there's the suspicion that the panel order isn't quite as rigid during Les's area, even if the general set up is the same, and bottom left is always the "celebrity for Les to leer at" seat. On the subject of trivia, then Les does a lot of gags of the "has a week flown by already?" nature this series, making it clear which episodes were filmed second on the day. This is the most explicit here, where Les reflects: "It seems only a couple of hours ago I was doing the Christmas show."
As the conceit behind this one is that Les claims the first panel aren't good enough, then it is perhaps slightly suspicious that the first panel do perform so badly. It's not actually their fault, as at least one question gets a fairly obvious answer, but somehow the contestants end up with scores of 1-0. What's perhaps even more suspect is that the Supermatch Game of "Play [BLANK]" doesn't bring up the answer of "school" in any of the three chances. This feeling of a "set up" is even more obvious when Joe Brown gets the Head To Head game wrong, giving Les an excuse to bring back the previous panel to give the contestant a second go.
However, as it's the last of the series, with Les saying they'll see the viewers again - "we hope" - such an "end of term" mess around is appreciated. As seen with series nine, there is a tendency for the show to begin to drag when a 22 episode run is required, but this one has a lot more energy than most. Particularly helpful is the change in panel, with Bertice Reading going after Les, keeping the vibe upbeat. The episode ends with an uncredited Samantha Fox bringing on some champagne as a waitress.
Guest Panellists: Lionel Blair, Bertice Reading, Felix Bowness, Samantha Fox, Roy Kinnear and Maggie Moone.
The tenth series also starts with a gimmick, as we begin with another "a panel member hasn't turned up" routine. Previous results have seen Jimmy Krankie step into the breach, and Peter Powell breach into the steps, but here the show's warm-up man is given the gig. While the idea of an unknown warm-up man being thrust into the limelight is quite appealing, the novelty is taken away by the revelation that one of Blankety Blank's regular warm-up men was Felix Bowness, who only a couple of months later was being watched by over 14 million in a new series of Hi-De-Hi! as Fred Quilley, and had already had his own edition of This Is Your Life.
Despite the artifice of the situation, Felix is a welcome face, though this was sadly his only appearance on the panel. Bertice Reading is also on the show, and is good fun with Les as usual, mock-threatening him, while Les cowers back, crying: "Will you sit down, I'm losing an hour's daylight!" (As a point of trivia, note that, despite a reported height of 5'4, Felix appears to be slightly taller than Les.)
Les's mother-in-law had asked him to carry on doing jokes about her in tribute after her death, so he did so, but the fact remains that she died in 1975 and Les's second wife's parents had died before he met her, meaning he spent the whole of his Blankety Blank run doing "mother-in-law" gags without actually having one. Yet this edition goes deeper than that, as Les decides to open up the tenth series with a run of jokes about "the wife", just weeks before she would pass away. Other episodes also see him do jokes about her, and mentions of "the mother-in-law" often get reconfigured as "the wife's mother". Doing such routines must have hurt, but, in a bizarre way, it may have been Les's coping mechanism.
Guest Panellists: Peter Dean, Wendy Richard, Paul J. Medford, Gillian Taylforth, Leslie Grantham and Sandy Ratcliff.
In 2022 Eastenders has become so irrelevant that it barely scrapes into the Top 20 and is consistently beaten in the ratings by Emmerdale. However, this was 1986, when the show was front page news and a goliath in the ratings. It topped the charts the week this episode aired, with an average of 23.31 million across its two episodes and a Sunday omnibus. With the BBC now an 'Enders-led force in the ratings once more, the viewers didn't exactly flood to Blankety Blank as a result, but the 9.01m average of the first 11 episodes saw a jolt upwards to 10.6 million with this edition.
Wendy Richard, a regular since the fourth series, makes her tenth appearance on the show, and essentially it's like she's brought along five of her mates. Peter Dean (Pete Beale) and Paul J. Medford (Kelvin) never returned, and Sandy Ratcliff (Sue) only came back for one more show in series twelve. But while Leslie Grantham ("Dirty" Den) only did the one show in the original run, he returned a couple of times for the Lily Savage revival version.
Yet the main focus is Gillian Taylforth (Kathy Beale). Like a friend who's come with Wendy to see what a party's like, she clearly enjoys it throughout, and came back three more times with Les, and once with Lily. Taylforth actually had such a good time on the show she even mentioned it in her 1995 autobiography Kathy and Me, albeit in deference to another quiz show: "Although I lack self-confidence I am very extrovert. I’ve always enjoyed being on TV game shows, for instance. I went on Blankety Blank a few times with Les Dawson, which was a laugh, but the one I enjoyed most was Give Us a Clue."
Les is on form throughout, starting the show with his famous "candle blowing" routine, and introducing some racier material, such as the way to trap bears in frozen Canadian tundras by digging a hole in the snow and tempting them with Marrowfat Peas: "When the bear comes down for a pea you kick it in the ice hole." Both are old gags, with Dawson having done the polar bear routine at least as far back as his series Sez Les. But, while there may not have been a single original joke in his entire run of Blankety Blank, it is, as in so many cases, the way he tells 'em.
Thanks to EastEnders' more Earthy material, this is the first Blankety Blank episode where the host uses the word "rape", though, as we've already seen with the Lily Savage revival version, it wasn't, sadly, the last.
Guest Panellists: Lennie Bennett, Bella Emberg, Dixie Peach, Karen Kay, Rolf Harris and Lesley Judd.
Perhaps Blankety Blank in its purest essence, a chaotic mess of a show with so many "wrong" moments it's like looking into an alternate reality.
Where to start? Well, this edition marks the sole appearance of DJ Bernie Michael, under his stage name Dixie Peach. Introduced with one of Les's "piano lid opening" remarks, and later a reference to the lighting. The concept of having a black panellist as a guest on a show and then drawing attention to it may seem inconceivable today, but even "Dixie" was doing the same gags for whatever reason, telling Mike Read on his first Top of the Pops appearance: "Thanks Mike, I've been laying in the sun in anticipation."
Such feats continue when Les sees a black contestant with a moustache and hair gelled up high, causing him to start banging his feet on the floor, bellowing "Good Good Miss Molly", insisting the guy is Little Richard and then telling him a series of Jewish gags. Although an earlier entry decried the number of racial moments in Les's humour this series, this one goes so far, and so over the top that it's a shocking historical document of the times, rather than just small moments that could have been skipped. Take the dodgy moments out of this one and there's hardly a show left.
What makes this moment so uncomfortable - and yet so bizarrely watchable, like a car crash with a Ronnie Hazlehurst theme - is that the contestant doesn't look particularly pleased about it, shaking his head via a rueful smile, and muttering: "This is my big moment, you know", before letting out a dismissive breath of air.
Yet what makes this one really feel like pure, unadulterated Blankety Blank is that the panel are uncontrolled and involved in the show, too. What's perhaps most significant about this one is that it marks the one-off return of one of the formative series' key players: Lennie Bennett. (Misspelt as "Bennet" in the end credits.)
Lennie made nine appearances from the second pilot episode all the way up to the third series, and was always one of the "larger", more belligerent personalities. Since his last appearance, Lennie had gone on to success with ITV's comedy quiz Punchlines, which had run for four years, and showed Lennie to be a very good host when he didn't need to compete for the spotlight. (Despite a bold claim way, way back in the series two article that the Anorak Zone would never be sad enough to work out the ratings for every episode of Punchlines, we've now come so far on this journey of light entertainment statistics that it seemed wrong not to. However, to keep this summary on topic, this information is in the hidden text when you hover over the episode screenshot.)
The following year after Punchlines finished, Lennie returned to the BBC to be a team captain in The Railway Carriage Game (What? No, nor me) a show which lasted for just one series. From this point on, it was less than two years before Lennie would be doing a weekday, midday gameshow with ITV's Lucky Ladders.
No one's run at the top can last forever, and so this isn't Lennie coming back with his tail between his legs, though having to defer the "maverick seat" to Rolf Harris may have hurt. When Lennie later jokes about being driven out of the business, Les remarks "Well you're halfway through the door." (Speaking of Rolf, then the end credits see him beckoning the winning contestant to kiss him on the cheek, before turning his face at the last possible moment so he gets a stolen kiss on the mouth.)
Although Lennie brings a level of panel interaction not seen on the show for some time, it's tempered with respect for Les, who he's clearly well acquainted with. There's actually a joke reference to Terry Wogan from Lennie, as he tells Les: "I got the last man out of your job, you don't see too much of him on television these days."
With both Lennie and Karen Kay on the panel, along with a contestant who won't stop trying to make the most of her 5 minutes, there's a reenergised feel to this edition, tempered by chaos. You'll see sights like the abused "Little Richard" contestant, urged by Lennie Bennett to stand up and impersonate Les's big belly, or Karen Kay appearing to mouth the expression "oh shit" on camera.
For a programme based around innuendo, then vintage Blankety Blank is a surprisingly clean show, so much so that Kay's later use of the word "bloody" does seem a shock. In fact, swearing is introduced to the programme in series ten, with Les using "bloody" in four separate episodes. It may seem mild in an age where Eastenders was airing at primetime, but would have been almost unthinkable back when it started with Terry Wogan - a sign of how standards can change in such a relatively short space of time.
Les was, by all accounts, a kind man, and when he says goodbye to a losing contestant who had dreams of being a scriptwriter, you can hear him say privately: "I'll talk to you after." Yet there's also his customary insults, particularly to Karen Kay after another of her bits falls flat: "Let the laughs die down", or Bella Emberg's first job: "on the ghost train, frightening the kids."
Astonishingly, this and episode seven were the first two episodes Les recorded after his wife passed away, with Les back in the studio for this unhinged edition just 26 days after she'd died. Such was the unforgiving nature of the business that he even caught up from the break by recording four episodes the following week, working on the Saturday as well as the usual Sunday.
This is Blankety Blank almost as punk, or, at the very least, rock 'n' roll. A sweary, racist, abusive, haphazard, booze-soaked mess masquerading as a quiz show, with Les at full throttle, insanely recording the quiz not even a month after his wife had passed away. Blankety Blank... Bloody Hell.