First viewed : 31 August 1992
After another Victor Lewis-Smith insert, TV Hell continued with Storm in an Egg-Cup , a documentary tracing the short but eventful history of TV-am. ITV's first breakfast operation was in the hands of Peter "Jim Callaghan's son-in-law" Jay and was to be presented by the so-called "Famous Five". Actually it was the Famous Four and a half really as Michael Parkinson, Anna Ford, David Frost and Angela Rippon were joined by Jay's mate, dry old Panorama reporter Robert Kee, hardly a household name. Kee's presence on the sofa indicated the catastrophic mistake in Jay's thinking, that people wanted serious news analysis first thing in the morning. Perhaps in his Guardian-reading upper middle class world they did but that audience wasn't going to give them the numbers the advertisers wanted. Jay's infamous "mission to explain" was doomed to failure from the start.
Just six weeks after its launch, Jay was bumped by investors led by seedy Tory MP Jonathan Aitken. Ford and Rippon were sacked for protesting about Jay's departure. Kee was found a backroom job and Frost was moved to the Sunday show, leaving only Parkinson to present alongside Roland Rat as the station went downmarket.
Commercially it saved them but there were further problems down the line with technicians taking union action against the later chief executive, hard-nosed Aussie Bruce Gyngell. Despite his victory in that struggle, the station lost out to GMTV in the 1992 franchise auction, drawing that rarest of things , an apology from Margaret Thatcher which Gyngell was quick to make public.
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