TISWAS - UKTV Saturday Morning children's programme
TISWAS was created by a team led by Peter Harris, a producer with extensive experience in theatre and children's television. The show was initially developed at UKTV broadcaster, Associated Television in the early 1970s. This led to the decision to create a full-fledged show that would air on Saturday mornings, starting in 1974.
The Clash are thought top have appeared;
25 November 1978 to promote Tommy Gun
and January 1980
They also appeared on (a different programme), the Saturday Morning Show January 1979
TISWAS (This Is Saturday - Watch and Smile) was a chaotic and anarchic British children's television series that aired on Saturday mornings from 1974 to 1982. It was produced by ATV and broadcast on the ITV network. The show featured a mix of competitions, film clips, pop music, sketches, and slapstick comedy.
TISWAS included Presenters includeded Chris Tarrant, Sally James, Lenny Henry, and Bob Carolgees were among the main presenters.
The Cage: A popular feature where audience members, parents, and even celebrities were confined and doused with water.
Phantom Flan Flinger: A masked character who threw custard pies at guests and presenters.
Music: The show featured pop promos and occasional live performances
TISWAS was known for its irreverent humor and appeal to both children and adults, often featuring catchphrases and characters that became part of popular culture.
TISWAS Overview - Once Upon a Time in the 70s
TISWAS - Wikipedia TISWAS Information - TV Pop Diaries
TISWAS - IMDb TISWAS History - Birmingham Roundabout
TISWAS Overview
Sally James in her Clash T-shirt
TISWAS Saturday 25 November 1978. (The Clash were on the show).
The Clash - TISWAS (05-01-80)
the clash on tiswas.wmv
Wayne Spencer - Their first appearance on TISWAS was actually on Saturday 25 November 1978. They were on the show to promote Tommy Gun which was released one day before. Sally from that show where she’s wearing a Sort It Out Tour 78 T-shirt, for the tour that was currently happening at the time of this first TISWAS interview.
And a photo from her interview with The Clash on that show. And a brief video clip here from that show showing Sally in the Clash T-shirt.
And if that brief clip of Sally James in her Clash T-shirt from TISWAS on 25 November 1978 exists, then maybe her interview with The Clash from that same show is still out there somewhere.
Video
https://youtu.be/yonF13sUedk
https://youtu.be/yonF13sUedk
That clip is from The 1970s: Those Were The Days. Part 2 of a two part documentary. Shown on Channel 5 in the UK last night on Saturday 1 June 2024.
6 January 1979
Saturday Morning Show
Interview with the band by (another) Steve Jones and Elvis Payne
Archive footage when - the clash - appeared on the saturday morning show on 6 january 1979. The official music video of tommy gun was played - this is now available on vevo - and cannot be uploaded here. Joe strummer - paul simonon - topper headon - were live in the studio and were interviewed by elvis payne. It was tx on lwt in london area only - rest of country watched tiswas.
Saturday morning show was introduced by steve jones and elvis payne. The saturday morning show - tx in london area only - ran for 16 shows eventually replaced by the itv networked show - tiswas - with chris tarrant from atv in the midlands.
January 1979
The Clash appearing on Saturday morning kid’s T.V. show ‘Tiswas’ in January 1980!
Songs Smiths | Facebook
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxD2s_oE0KQ
Imagine being a pre-teen kid tuning into your favourite TV show but getting the Clash in an awkward guest appearance to promote “London Calling” instead of the usual kid stuff (though this was a kind of anarchic children’s tv series, guesting Motorhead, Rainbow, Madness or The Jam).
Truth is that the record companies were paying the appearance fees to get their bands on various TV shows and the Clash were on a major label since 1977 when they were signed by CBS. Struggling to dismiss criticism of having sold out to the establishment by the press and fans since then, the band had famously snubbed Top Of The Pops and other TV shows to avoid lip-sync performances, so one can only imagine the awkwardness of being interviewed on a kid show
Fact remains that the Clash were on their way to become the biggest r’n’r band of the era and that London Calling is without a doubt one of punk’s most beloved albums.
Dave Gale - Remember seeing this and they were covered in gunge in the cage but no footage of that anywhere but they had fun
Sally James & The Clash, 1980
Record Mirror This is what they want
26 January 1980 - TISWAS - UK TV with regular star guests
HEREHERE
There's a revolution happening on Saturday mornings
There's a revolution happening on Saturday mornings... and its supporters are coming out of the closet to turn their tellies on faster than maggots appear on a leg of rotten chicken.
It started in Birmingham — of which more later. It grabbed two hours of TV time in what was a more-dead-than-alive slot at 10:30 a.m. And it became so popular that virtually every TV station in the country snapped it up straight after the TV strike last year.
Tiswas now has more than five million viewers over the two hours every Saturday; two hours where what seems like a cast of idiots entertain a studio audience of clean and shiny children with live water fights, custard pie fights, pop interviews, competitions, chart videos, film clips and probably the best collection of ad lib entertainers in Britain.
Besides Tiswas the opposition's Multi-Coloured Swop Shop (which has the advantage of an hour earlier start) looks like a vicarage tea party for children with stage school diplomas.
Beside the anarchic Chris Tarrant — producer and presenter of Tiswas — Noel Edmonds and his army of aides look like Christmas robots that didn't come with batteries included. And already the savage effects are sweeping the country, as they have been doing for the six years that Tiswas has remained a cult programme in the Midlands.
"THIS IS WHAT THEY WANT!" is the slogan, and you'd better take it while it's coming. "This is Saturday, Watch And Smile," Chris Tarrant and Sally James said hopefully at the beginning. Then it became "This Is Saturday Watch And Suffer," and everyone began to enjoy it a whole lot more.
Actually "Getting on" Tiswas is extremely difficult — no surprise. With only 70 kids (estimated) per show they're already full up until the end of the current series in the summer. And competition to appear in the near-legendary messy slots — The Stocks (tremble), The Cage (cower) and best of all Flan Your Folks (where a kid watches his parents being soaked and sauced) — is immense. Groups of college students vie with each other to write the best letter underlining why they should be in the Cage — a small enclosure where they stand soaking wet and dirty, for two hours. The present waiting list is anything up to a year.
As for The Stocks, well ask Ronnie Gurr. Where else can you have 12 eggs, two bottles of tomato ketchup, two bottles of brown sauce and a dead fish rubbed mercilessly into your head… and still be a celebrity? But to return, we didn't just try — we succeeded. All in the cause of a good story and a new clothing allowance.
9:30 am. Arrive at ATVLand in Birmingham. Pleasantly reminded of Mike Harding's old joke — "if the world had an armpit, it'd be Birmingham". Giggling children in clean clothes are lined up against the wall, truncated from their parents from the next two hours of carnage. They bellow at Spit the dog, gasp at Pan's Grannies limbering up, and most of them look like they ought to do number ones before they get in the studio. "Which one's for the cage and which one for the stocks?
10:25 am. The kids are in, and the stars are hear. Ronnie Gurr is "locked" in the stocks, and I'm hemmed in by a mass of volunteers in the cage, wearing everything but a rubber ring. As the programme credits roll, Chris Tarrant leads the first battery of kids in a charge towards the cage, all screaming: "This is What We Want". They wield foam flans and buckets of water, aiming them at the cage. Mercifully most of them land on each other. It's a start.
11.30 am. Elvis Costello has arrived, literally with nothing to spare. As his video rolls he saunters into the studio, casually taking his overcoat off seconds before sitting down to be interviewed live. He then attempts to break the record for throwing buckets of water at the cage. He's useless, and Chris Tarrant, John Gorman and the kids help out.
12 pm. No hitches so far. Chris Tarrant having successfully negotiated his sixth change of clothing. John Gorman has eaten a vile dead fish, and Sally James has attempted to chew real dog food. We've had films of the Skids and Ben Hur, a haunted house and skateboarding. Ronnie Gurr is given his "dose," his hair and nostrils an indistinguishable mass of congealing raw egg and ketchup. He can't breathe, and the lovely children nearest him start kicking and taunting. I'm soaked to the skin, insidious soot having wormed its way as far as the Y-fronts and the cracks between the teeth.
12:25. Allowed out of the cage and the stocks at last — objects of immense ridicule. Quite by chance a huge flan and water fight begins as the credits roll, virtually everybody in the studio diving in to slip, chuck and hurl anything to hand. Eggs and ketchup fly about in a blur of real artistic beauty and the fight is so good that the closing video — of Dollar — is interrupted by live returns to the studio.
"It's the bargain basement of television," Sally James affirms. "It doesn't cost a lot, but it doesn't look cheap."
"And, anyway," says Tarrant, "if I had huge budgets, I think we'd lose the rough and ready feel. Tiswas has got an atmosphere — one we've built up — and only certain things will fit into that. So I think, the format will stay the same.
"We're running a successful series, and one that is slowly changing. We're adapting to a wider audience — across the country, and to a wider age range. It's just a question of dropping an item when it gets tired — like we did with the 'Do The Dying Fly' — then bringing it back again.
"You don't want to switch on every week and see the 'Bucket Of Water Song' at 11:20, and 'Compost Corner' at 10:43. We'd die in a week."
Tiswas is essentially Chris Tarrant's baby. He's managed, with the help of the likes of John Gorman, Frank Carson, Spit and Sally, to simultaneously carve out an audience for Saturday morning TV.
"We took in ideas and items from anywhere, getting right away from that static format: this is Saturday, this is a kid's programme," says Tarrant. "It works because there's a very small production team, and the people who are involved are right for Tiswas. Not everything on it appeals to everybody — impossible.
"But at least we're not aiming for a particular audience and sticking with that audience — Blue Peter style. Some of Tiswas — like when the cameramen make a joke, live, all part of the atmosphere, etc, etc — doesn't reach every watcher. God help it would. But in there somewhere is something that does."
Admirable. But for Tarrant, and for Sally James, the flak is just beginning. Adored in the Midlands for years (and very protectively so, at that) Tiswas has been received unkindly now that its gone 'national'. Although, you, the Record Mirror readers did make it the only non-networked show to make the poll.
"Entertainment — it's shambles. Cruel to children. Vile and debasing."
Just a selection of some of the TV critics' comments; brilliant in their ability to miss the mark.
Chris Tarrant, father of a daughter, and Sally James, married with no children, just laugh the whole thing off. Cruel? "Do they watch the show?" Tarrant asks incredulously. "We don't lift children up by their ears, we just hold them."
Debasing? "What, with people queuing up to get on? Everyone enjoys the mess and chaos. If it was getting boring we'd stop it and put something else in."
Shambles? "Of course it is, that's what they want! I'd love someone to look and talk to these kids when they come out. There's nothing cruel or obscene about it. They love watching kids their own age dancing. They love watching people getting messed up. And if they don't — there's always the films"
Tarrant: "You don't put kids up on a pedestal and then say this is what you want, because it isn't. You find out what they do want, then give it to them."
Sally James: "We just treat children as what they are, people. They're little adults, so that's the way you talk to them.
And, surely, the last word must go to Chris Tarrant, affable, in his thirties, and "nut case" producer. "I think I'm the same as everyone else really. I like nice kids, and I can't stand nasty ones. You get horrible, snivelly spoilt little brats, clean boring ones, and bright talented ones. Why not say so? And if you've got that 'orrible mixture — and a load of older people who watch Tiswas — how can you give them a programme about stamp collecting?"
Chris Tarrant: Producer and presenter, not averse to getting wet.
Sally James: Famed for near-legendary interviews. Looks even nicer wet.
John Gorman: Ex-Scaffold, and prime force behind the "Bucket Of Water" song. Starts rehearsing for Tiswas with all-night session on Friday at the Garryown.
Bob Carolgees: Owner of Spit, the famous punk dog. Judge in the Spit look-alike competitions. Heeuch! A genius.
Frank Carson, Ian Sludge Lees And Lenny: Services above the call of duty. Also like getting wet.
Pan's Grannies: the legendary nine-year-old dance troupe.
Flan Your Folks: Watch your mum and dad humiliated!
The Cage And The Stocks: played by themselves unless holding either Ronnie Gurr or John Shearlaw.
Thanks also to: Telly Selly Time, The Dying Fly, Compost Corner, The Kids Who Hang By Their Ears, The Men Who Put Ice In The Water... and anybody else who appeared.
Coming Soon: The great Tiswas nationwide talent contest. Be there or look normal!
HEREHERE
HEREHERE
8 Record Mirror, January 26, 1980
THIS IS WHAT THEY WANT
SALLY JAMES and Clash in one of the "near legendary" interviews.
Uncle JOHN SHEARLAW travelled to ATVland to see if it really is.
EY YOU! You the big star what's appearing on 'Tiswas'? Just a word in your ear then.
"Would you rather get wet or be a wimp? Get soaked, or just look soft and stupid?"
The programme imposes its own discipline on the artists appearing - a welcome change. But in the final analysis, just as the red light flickers on at 10.30 on Saturday morning, it's up to the Act themselves to decide whether they'll join in the fun and risk pneumonia! or take a quiet back seat as Sally James conducts another of her near-legendary pop interviews.
You mean, we ask all disappointed, you give them a choice? To pie or not to pie, as it were?
Chris Tarrant laughs. "I'm not going to mention any names, yet. but yes we do. Take your typical pop star in London Jimmy Glitter or something. Then take this berk's manager. He'll be on the phone and say: 'Great, love the show, love the exposure, love to do it, but my boy see, he's not going to get his new suit ruined. Cost a thousand pounds it did.'
"You can't do a thing. Then he gets here and he dives in, loves every minute of it, gets all wet and messy and starts shouting for more. This is what he wants! it's all down to luck, and usually they're pretty good."
So not everybody has to subject themselves to the brilliance of the 'Bucket of Water Song (entries so far include the Tourists, Mike Oldfield, Paul McCartney and Dr Hook!). Nor do pies arrive without prior agreement to the concept, not the timing it should be added. But Chris and Sally are increasingly finding that the Act, rather than face ridicule back home for being so feeble, is happy to do anything the programme requires.
"There are kids there, it's live and anything could happen. If they don't do it we put something else in." Quite so. How many of you noticed that Elvis Costello refused to throw a bucket of water over helpless Ronnie Gurr in the stocks on the grounds that "he might get bad press"?
"Instead he threw the water all over the monitors, the big fairy." Tarrant says, without malice. "Going for the record for the number of buckets thrown at the Cage and he soaks the bloody studio!"
But they've had more triumphs than disasters. Mike Oldfield, clad only in a leotard, soaked himself in the car park on a winter's day. and took to his bed for a week afterwards. Linda McCartney got water poured over her by her husband. And Darts virtually exhausted Birmingham's water supply with their enthusiasm.
"The more competition there is between them to add something to the show the better it is for us, Tarrant says. "But there's still times when it's hopeless, even if they do provide good videos..." Sally James, heroine of so many 'at virtually no cost at all, interviews, smiles sweetly in her wet jeans.
"Look at her there," says Tarrant. "When I brought her here five years ago she was a straight broadcaster, all that 'Saturday Scene mentality. Now she'll take anything.
"The point is, we get 'em first or Sally does. And they'll do 'Tiswas' when they won't do anything else. WE GIVE THEM WHAT THEY WANT!"
HEREHERE
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