End of Paul Daniels Halloween Show then start of Sportscene - 31st October 1987

[Mintsauce27]

@angryheavyhand Yes

[p0ab]

@angryheavyhand no

[jeffrey44]

I remember watching this and then going to bed thinking he had been killed. I think my Dad told me the next morning that Paul Daniels had come back on later to confirm that he didn't really die - obvious with hindsight. I was only 7 years old at the time though.

[sh1ttyhorror]

@jeffrey44 I couldn't sleep! I was allowed to stay up to watch Sportscene then only went to bed after he'd appeared again. Earliest memories = trauma via Paul Daniels :). Glad it wasn't just me :)

[hiplingo]

This is when Paul Daniels pretended to die... then football got murdered.

[SBOWsteffan]

have u got 1992 to 1994 closing credits

[RobinCarmody]

Very good to see this again. I've got a feeling I saw this go out live, at a very young age - we may even have had a hollowed-out turnip (i.e. the *real* Hallowe'en). I think this show did much to make Hallowe'en a bigger event in the UK - people came to expect something like this.

Of course, this was the time when BBC1 Scotland was still showing regular Saturday night football highlights when England wasn't, so they had to delay the rest of the schedule rather than just opt out of MOTD.

[623058]

There nothing new in them delaying the rest of the schedule

[RobinCarmody]

Actually, I don't think they *did* delay the rest of the schedule on other occasions - as Sportscene ran for half an hour, I've got a very strong feeling they simply opted out of a network rerun of Monty Python's Flying Circus (something they'd also done for some of MPFC's original transmissions) and then rejoined the network for Cat's Eye. But they did delay the rest of the schedule on other occasions to fit in Sportscene.

[623058]

Back when MPFC was first transmitted did there ever broadcast them at a later date?

[RobinCarmody]

Yes. The second series, unbelievably, was hardly shown outside London on its original transmission in 1970, but was fully networked in 1971 - although minus the last episode with the Undertakers' Sketch (which wasn't networked until 1987, and even then may not necessarily have been shown in Scotland).

The BBC *really* didn't appreciate what they had ...

[623058]

Was the 3rd and 4th series just as badly treated?

[RobinCarmody]

No, thankfully. The third series was fully networked on BBC1, because it was shown on Thursdays (the second had been shown on Tuesdays, when the regions used to do their own thing - Barry Norman's Film series also started as a London-only thing at this time) and the fourth series was on BBC2, which was the same throughout the UK (hence why its announcers said "that's except for viewers in Scotland", etc.)

[RobinCarmody]

"on other occasions" = "on *this* occasion". They did delay the schedule on other occasions, as I said.

I need some sleep.