The Late, Late Breakfast Show
Encyclopedia
The Late, Late Breakfast Show was a BBC television
BBC Television
BBC Television is a service of the British Broadcasting Corporation. The corporation, which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a Royal Charter since 1927, has produced television programmes from its own studios since 1932, although the start of its regular service of television...

 light entertainment
Light entertainment
Light entertainment is a term used to describe a broad range of usually televisual performances. These include comedies, variety shows, quiz/game shows, sketch shows and people/surprise shows.-Light entertainment in Britain:...

 show broadcast live on Saturday evenings from 4 September 1982 to 8 November 1986. It was presented by Noel Edmonds
Noel Edmonds
Noel Ernest Edmonds, is an English broadcaster and executive, who made his name as a DJ on BBC Radio 1 in the UK. He has presented many light entertainment television programmes, including Multi-Coloured Swap Shop, Top of the Pops, The Late, Late Breakfast Show, Telly Addicts, Noel's Saturday...

, initially with co-host Leni Harper
Leni Harper
Leni Harper is a Scottish actress, best known for playing Maddie in Me And My Girl.Her breakthrough role was in a 1981 West End production of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas...

 and also featured Mike Smith
Mike Smith (television presenter)
Mike Smith is a British television, radio presenter, racing driver, pilot, and businessman.-Radio career:...

 and John Peel
John Peel
John Robert Parker Ravenscroft, OBE , known professionally as John Peel, was an English disc jockey, radio presenter, record producer and journalist. He was the longest-serving of the original BBC Radio 1 DJs, broadcasting regularly from 1967 until his death in 2004...

. It is remembered for several accidents during its regular "Give It A Whirl" stunt
Stunt
A stunt is an unusual and difficult physical feat, or any act requiring a special skill, performed for artistic purposes in TV, theatre, or cinema...

 slot; in particular, the 1986 death of Michael Lush.

Overview

The show was the first show Edmonds presented in the Saturday evening slot, moving up from the Saturday morning children's slot where he had presented the Multi-Coloured Swap Shop
Multi-Coloured Swap Shop
Multi-Coloured Swap Shop, more commonly known simply as Swap Shop, is a UK children's television programme. It was broadcast on Saturday mornings on BBC1 for 146 episodes in six series between 1976 and 1982...

. Its theme tune was written by Gary Kemp
Gary Kemp
Gary Kemp is an English pop musician and actor who is the guitar player and chief songwriter for the 1980s Synthpop band Spandau Ballet. His brother, Martin Kemp, plays bass guitar in the band...

 and performed by Spandau Ballet
Spandau Ballet
Spandau Ballet are a British band formed in London in the late 1970s. Initially inspired by, and an integral part of, the New Romantic fashion, their music has featured a mixture of funk, jazz, soul and synthpop. They were one of the most successful bands of the 1980s, achieving ten Top Ten singles...

. It was produced and directed by Michael Hurll. Initially, the show struggled in the ratings and seemed unlikely to survive beyond its first series. Initial co-host Leni Harper
Leni Harper
Leni Harper is a Scottish actress, best known for playing Maddie in Me And My Girl.Her breakthrough role was in a 1981 West End production of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas...

 was fired after the third show and various revamps took place to bolster the ratings. Eventually, the inclusion of some of the biggest names in the music business as special guests helped raise the profile and ratings for the show. The Swedish group ABBA
ABBA
ABBA was a Swedish pop group formed in Stockholm in 1970 which consisted of Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Agnetha Fältskog...

 appeared twice in the first series, making their last ever TV appearance on the show. Edmonds would often interview the music guests live via satellite, although it became obvious in many cases, most notably the appearances of Rod Stewart
Rod Stewart
Roderick David "Rod" Stewart, CBE is a British singer-songwriter and musician, born and raised in North London, England and currently residing in Epping. He is of Scottish and English ancestry....

 and Duran Duran
Duran Duran
Duran Duran are an English band, formed in Birmingham in 1978. They were one of the most successful bands of the 1980s and a leading band in the MTV-driven "Second British Invasion" of the United States...

 that he was in fact posing questions to an already recorded interview with another station and his questioning was being dubbed over the original interviewer.

The show was described as a "mag prog [magazine programme] especially for those who get up late on Saturday, featuring comedy, pop music & a few surprises". Regular features on the show included "The Hit Squad", which was a hidden camera section, pop music
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...

 performances, and "The Golden Egg Awards", which featured various outtakes. During the "Give It A Whirl" feature a member of the public would call in and have the "Whirly Wheel" spun to select a stunt, in a similar setup to gameshow Wheel of Fortune; after spending the week training, they would perform the stunt live on the next show.

Despite the appearance of choice, the wheel was in fact rigged to select a pre-arranged stunt; on one occasion the wheel chose the wrong stunt, and Edmonds called the hidden technician controlling the wheel out in front of the audience to apologise.

The author Helen Fielding
Helen Fielding
Helen Fielding is an English novelist and screenwriter, best known as the creator of the fictional character Bridget Jones, a sequence of novels and films that chronicle the life of a thirtysomething single woman in London as she tries to make sense of life and love.Her novels Bridget Jones's...

, who later wrote the Bridget Jones
Bridget Jones
Bridget Jones is a franchise based on the fictional character with the same name. English writer Helen Fielding started her Bridget Jones's Diary column in The Independent in 1995, chronicling the life of Bridget Jones as a thirtysomething single woman in London as she tries to make sense of life...

novels, worked for a time as a researcher on the programme.

Accidents

There had been concern that the show's stunts were too dangerous; indeed, the BBC was twice threatened with legal action by the Health and Safety Executive
Health and Safety Executive
The Health and Safety Executive is a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom. It is the body responsible for the encouragement, regulation and enforcement of workplace health, safety and welfare, and for research into occupational risks in England and Wales and Scotland...

 to stop planned stunts such as plucking a member of the public from an exploding chimney by helicopter. The BBC themselves described the stunts as "some of the most daring feats ever seen on British TV".

On 10 September 1983, stunt driver Richard Smith fractured his pelvis and injured his head, neck and back after crashing at 140 mph (63 m/s) during one such live stunt – an attempt to leap more than 230 feet in a car. Also in 1983, Barbara Sleeman broke her shoulder after being fired from a cannon; she would later say "The BBC don't give a damn. They just want the viewers."

Death of Michael Lush

On 13 November 1986, self-employed hod carrier Michael Lush was killed during his first rehearsal for another live stunt. The stunt, called "Hang 'em High", involved bungee jumping from an exploding box suspended from a 120 ft-high crane
Crane (machine)
A crane is a type of machine, generally equipped with a hoist, wire ropes or chains, and sheaves, that can be used both to lift and lower materials and to move them horizontally. It uses one or more simple machines to create mechanical advantage and thus move loads beyond the normal capability of...

. The carabiner clip
Carabiner
A carabiner or karabiner is a metal loop with a sprung or screwed gate that is used to quickly and reversibly connect components in safety-critical systems. The word comes from "Karabinerhaken", meaning "hook for a carbine" in German.-Use:...

 attaching his bungee rope to the crane sprang loose from its eyebolt during the jump. He died instantly of multiple injuries, and the Breakfast Show was 'cancelled as well as all future editions' on 15 November. This led to Edmonds's resignation.

Although the inquest
Inquest
Inquests in England and Wales are held into sudden and unexplained deaths and also into the circumstances of discovery of a certain class of valuable artefacts known as "treasure trove"...

 recorded a verdict of misadventure
Misadventure
Misadventure can refer to:* Ed, Edd n Eddy: The Mis-Edventures, a 2005 video game* The Misadventures of Merlin Jones, a 1964 Walt Disney film* The Misadventures of P.B...

, the jury were informed of several failures on the part of the BBC. Graham Games of the Health and Safety Executive stated that the clip could have been opened by the weight of a bag of sugar, and demonstrated that the clip sprang loose 14 times in 20. David Kirke, a bungee specialist from the Dangerous Sports Club
Dangerous Sports Club
The Dangerous Sports Club, a group of adventurers and extreme sports pioneers based in Oxford and London, were active from the late 1970s for about ten years, during which they developed modern bungee jumping and experimented with a variety of other innovative sporting activities.-Origins:The...

, stated that a similar stunt he had been involved with used three ropes, as opposed to the one rope used by the BBC, and shackles in the place of carabiner clips. There was no safety officer on hand, and no supervision or demonstration from a trained stuntman. There was also no way for Lush to contact the ground once he was in the air, and nobody in the air with him in case he changed his mind; the jury heard that he delayed for almost two minutes before finally being instructed to make the jump. Furthermore, despite advice against it, the BBC production team had insisted on the use of an elasticated bungee rope.

The BBC made an ex gratia
Ex gratia
Ex gratia is Latin for "by favour", and is most often used in a legal context. When something has been done ex gratia, it has been done voluntarily, out of kindness or grace...

 payment of approximately £120,000 to Lush's family. While the coroner
Coroner
A coroner is a government official who* Investigates human deaths* Determines cause of death* Issues death certificates* Maintains death records* Responds to deaths in mass disasters* Identifies unknown dead* Other functions depending on local laws...

 recommended that safety officers be available during any such future stunts, BBC managing director Bill Cotton
Bill Cotton
Sir William Frederick "Bill" Cotton, CBE was a British television producer and executive, and the son of big-band leader Billy Cotton....

 stated that there would be no future programmes that exposed members of the public to risk. After the inquest, Noel Edmonds was quoted as saying "If I was to continue my career at the BBC I would want to be fully confident about any production team I was provided with." He returned to the BBC's Saturday night lineup two years later, presenting Noel's Saturday Roadshow
Noel's Saturday Roadshow
Noel's Saturday Roadshow was a BBC television light entertainment show broadcast live on Saturday evenings from 3 September 1988 to 15 December 1990. It was presented by Noel Edmonds, his first major TV project since the demise of The Late, Late Breakfast Show two years earlier...

.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK