166 It's A Knockout

First  watched  : Uncertain

I  might  have  caught  this  earlier   but  it  was  Friday  evenings  from  May  1974  when  I  started  watching  it  regularly.

It's  A  Knockout  was  a  strange  show  for  the  BBC  to  be  broadcasting    and  it  was  probably  the  fact  that  it  was  an  international  competition  like  the  Eurovision  Song  Contest  that  persuaded  the  bosses  to  give  it  the  go  ahead. It  had  been  running  since  1966  and  the  basic  premise  was  that  teams  of  ordinary,  but  reasonably  fit,  people  would  compete  against  each  other  in  silly  games  that  usually  involved  either  dressing  in  ludicrously  impractical  costumes  or  falling  in  giant  inflatable  pools. It  started  off  with  regional  heats  in  Britain  with  teams  from  particular  towns  - I've  no  idea  how  the  selection  process  was  organised-  battling  it  out  and  then  the  winners  went  to  Europe  for  the  international  contest  under  the  title  "Je  Seux  Frontiers".

For  better  or  worse  the  show  is  remembered  for  the  manic  presenting  style  of  compere  Stuart  Hall   whose  laughter  at  the  slapstick   sometimes  sounded  genuinely  deranged. Now  I'm  going  to  put  my  head  over  the  parapet  here  and  say  I  still  have  a  certain  amount  of  sympathy  for  Stuart  Hall. Most  of  the  crimes  he  admitted  to  ( and  let's  not  forget  that  which  puts  him  alone  among  the  celebrity  offenders  )  were  minor   and  the  more  serious  ones  were  committed  within a  close  circle  of  family  friends  in  a  short  time  frame  when  Hall  seems  to  have  had  some  sort  of  mid-life  crisis.  None  were  more  recent  than  1986. He  doesn't  deserve  to  be  bracketed  with  Jimmy  Savile. Yes  he  was foolish  to  make  that  speech  outside  the  court  but  at  the  time  he  was  being  charged  with  a  rape  that  later  got  dropped  and  expecting  a  guy  in  his  mid-eighties  to  exercise  good  judgement  under   such  strain  is  a  big  ask.

Anyhow  I  enjoyed  the  programme  at  the  time  but  gradually  my  interest  fell  away  and  I  wasn't  still  watching  when  it  was  axed  as  a  regular  series  in  1982. Thereafter  it  has  been  periodically  revived  in  one-off  specials  most  notoriously  in  1989  when  the  BBC  ill-advisedly  allowed  failed  paratrooper  Edward  Windsor  to  launch  his  so-called  broadcasting  career  with  a  special  Royal  edition. Even  without  Hall's  damaged  rep,  his  interview,  dressed  as  Henry  VIII  ,with  a  clearly  highly  reluctant  Princess  Anne  would  stand  out  as  a  buttock-clenching  embarrassment. And  of  course  Edward's  flouncing  out  when  reporters  failed  to  hail  him  as  the  new  Lew  Grade  for  reviving  a  camp  old  favourite  with  his  famous  relatives   has  been  identified  as  a  key  moment  in  the  British  media's  loss  of  deference  towards  the  Royal  Family.

Nevertheless  the  revivals  have  continued  including  a  two  year  run  on  Channel  5  around  Millennium  time  and  a  recent  revival  on the  BBC  in  a  flimsy  disguise  as  Total  Wipeout.