The Saturday Banana: Southern Television: November 1978

The only existing recording of Southern's live Saturday morning offering. Many of the team went on to produce "No. 73" from TVS (Southern's successor).

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Saturday
• Banana
• Bill
• Oddie
• Susan
• Tully
• Metal
• Mickey
• Southern
• TV
• Childrens
• ITV
• Southampton

[BarneyWobba]

Now, Meridian hold the franchise for the ITV region. Sadly, the accountants and shreholders run the show now, and all they ever do now is the regional news, with a few programmes bought in by indie companys like Topical TV. It's all about profit now, not quality TV. Staff numbers have dropped from 2500 odd plus freelancers in TVS's day, to about 100 or so with Meridian.

[TheMeakers]

Sad isn't it. I was at a Southern do a few weeks' ago :)

[bluesbrother37]

Actually i retract that statement, in my region we had this before TISWAS and Bill Oddie was one of my heroes from the GOODIES!

[bluesbrother37]

Have all the episodes been wiped?

[converse91970]

@blueturtle01 Any ideas what became of Bill Gamon? I remember him on this show as Bill Oddie's sidekick.

[LeDodger1]

@BarneyWobba I worked at Southern TV at this time, a lot of dross was churned out at times....this one was not STV's finest hour [can't think what was though!]

[supergav67]

Without doubt,the most BORING kids prog EVER.Bills hungover chat at the begining summed it all up.We got it in STVland one summer & I painfully remember the helter skelter in the studio & Bill wanting to talk about crime & punishment, for ninety minutes! Fortunately the summers were warm then. ,This,the Mersey Pirate,Fun Factory,You got the feeling that if they did well during the summer the never networked TISWAS was outta here! Never happened.Like most things TIS got axed from within!

[cursorminer]

CHOON

[blueturtle01]

I lived in Southampton in the late 70s and loved Saturday Banana and everything else about Southern. Bill Gamon was my drama teacher at school before he left for a job at Southern TV. That's him standing in the brief shot with Bill Oddie near the end as they watch the banana being hoisted.

[Feisty1967]

I remember the Saturday Banana, it was shown in the Yorkshire TV region up until Spring 1979, then we had the Mersey Pirate, but following the ITV strike of Aug-Oct of 1979 it was replaced by Tiswas. A far superior programme!! I cheered when we could finally get Tiswas without fuzzy reception from the Midlands ariel!!

[arthurvasey]

We in the Tyne Tees region were denied access to Saturday Banana, Our Show, The Mersey Pirate, Fun Factory and, other than the final series, Tiswas. Tyne Tees felt that old films were more suitable for kids - I mean really old films - often black-and-white ones!

[arthurvasey]

... regular programmes, old films and American imports - some regions even had the duty announcer doing the same thing - I lived in the Tyne Tees region at the time and we had that - old films (war films, usually). Spare a thought for TSW - their predecessors Westward allowed them access to Tiswas - once they took over, they tried to pass off Survival and University Challenge as kids' programmes! Tyne Tees, incidentally, allowed us access to Tiswas for its final series in 1981/2!

[arthurvasey]

@anthonythirteen Southern had it running until Xmas (head of kids' TV Lewis Rudd couldn't stand Tiswas and created this instead) - by Autumn, Tiswas was back - but Southern kept the Banana running - some regions opted out to accommodate Tiswas or LWT's Our Show - others stuck with the Banana - some regions up to 1981 still had their own variant on either Tiswas or the Banana - a fairly madcap parochial show with presenters culled from the local ILR stations, some of which linked around ...

[moonboots69]

best thing about this was the theme tune... no wonder Bill is in therapy these days, he's getting flashbacks of his time on this show...