Sandi Toskvig can appear 23, 45 and 63 all at once. Su Pollard was a great example of the people who appeared to be everywhere in the 80s but had no talent. I had a biscuit tin with a badge collection too !! Pride of place was my Grandad’s Gold enamelled N**i party badge ! Nice shout out to Stiff Little Fingers too !!!
This show was my earliest memory of Saturday morning tv also. I was born the first week of 1981 so I was pretty much at the perfect age for Saturday morning kids tv. But going live changed everything for me. I was obsessed with that show. Top banana and ghost train was some of my favourites too.
Bloody hell! This brings back Memories... I always wondered what happened to Andrea Arnold, I never realised she went on to be an OSCAR Winner!!! JESUS!!! I was always "here and there" with Number 73 back in the day... I used to love the Chaos that was TISWAS, So really it should have been perfect for me... Yet for some reason I was always channel hopping between ITV and BBC ... I just couldn't stick with 73... It was fun though! DAMN I am going to have to go through your videos now and see what other delights you have unearthed!!! There must be some Retrospectives on GET FRESH (God I HATED that Gilbert The Alien!!!), TX (A Very short lived Saturday Morning Show)... And more!
I loved this show so much yet I barely remember most of what happened, the sandwich game and that the house started to fall apart in the final season are the standout memories for me. I learnt the lyrics of the theme tune by heart, though damned if I can remember any of it now.
Another joy/sadness of Saturday morning Kids Shows of this era was knowing that after 3 plus hours of Cartoons,features, quizes, new song reviews, comedy bits & music in the late 80's...TV would then be dull til the evening. I remember an infinity dross of tedious world of sport /grandstand or old films on bbc 2/channel 4 til about 5 or 6 ish, then it would be a choice of the Krankies, Noel Edmonds or Knight rider/A Team on the other sides, Kids today they don't know real suffering. PS loving your reviews.
I love that you made the comparison with The Young Ones as that's always been my way of describing it to people who werent around to see it. Also All Round to Mrs Brown's is another great comparison. I dont think it can be overstated how bold a program this actually was, especially given it was the first major in house production from a TV station that was just two days old.
How Toksvig was meeting the one man orchestra on his level. she's nice, and that constant word play of hers really does betray those Danish roots, they go mad for puns and wordplay, absolute slags for it.
With the show being produced by TVS, it's unlikely we'll ever get any official uploads. As with most TVS shows, Number 73 is in a copyright purgatory with no-one exactly sure of who owns the rights.
I never saw this but I'm impressed with the respect and catholic approach to art. First time I saw Fred Talbot was on Magpie talking about space (the shuttle maybe?)
Absolutely loved No73. Great just to hear the theme tune again! I remember it went down hill after they left the house and based it at a Wild West theme park. (That did happen didn’t it??).
Aww, didn't include the proper sandwich quiz intro, that was iconic. It's time for the death defyingly dull, delectable, delicatessible, divinely decadent, sandwich quiz!
Always looked forward to seeing Kim, although after Ethel’s departure, was in fewer episodes. Like Desmonds, not every character was in each one…those absent Saturday, would appear in the shorter Sunday show, and more new characters came in…they included Nadia, Jules, and Rob
Neil's hangover cure... "A shave and a Donald Duck"... he can't mean...surely not? Somebody please put me out of my misery by telling me what it's meant to rhyme with!
The result of everyone playing characters but the 5 year old me being unable to understand this is that now every time Sandi appears on TV my brain goes "Ethel". Because why wouldn't she be called Ethel? After all Neil is called Neil.
It morphed into 7T3 because the house set was huge and once set up was kept in the same studio for the whole series. They couldn't afford to dedicate all those resources to it any more.
@@leeosborne3793 it's such a pity because it was one of the most creative shows of the era. I'm still a fan of Sandi Toksvig today, her comedy weas ahead of it's time and non patronising, the same with Neill Buchannan, his talent was amazing and went on to greater things
@@bletheringfool Oh, completely agree. I was just the right age for the show and I loved it. Apparently 7T3 was an attempt to try and keep it going and the intention was to make more of them, but it really didn't work.
I definitely remember seeing the later series of this, and certainly remember the sandwich quiz. 😛 I noticed you didn't mention that Gary Glitter must have been a guest at some point as he and his band obviously feature in the titles...😱
And then Sandi Toksvig left the show under Series 6. And the show began to fall apart. "Literally." The house begins to fall apart around them and the new evil landlord eventually succeeds in bulldozing the house down and turned it into a "Wild West Theme Park." (Because they ran out of ideas.)
It wasn't that they ran out of ideas it was that TVS ran out studio space. They very quickly became a big player within ITV and unfortunately Number 73 had a permanent set at Maidstone. The original idea was literally to take the show down the Corrie route and build the street for real on the Maidstone site, which would have allowed the addition of loads of additional characters, but somehow, somewhere they settled in the Wild West idea.😢
Is the guy who played Harry Rob Beckett's dad? And it seems like they just dropped the idea of Ethel being old after the first series, as not only did Sandi drop the dodgy accent, but she dressed younger too. I certainly didn't think of her as 'old' watching as a kid, or, at least, no more or less old than the other 20-somethings.
Trying to stay in character must have been tricky, I remember Harry got called Nick a few times. Bet he loved appearing in the bath. He was a bit camp. The home movies were a bit tedious and self indulgent weren’t they. He’s passed away now, but Cheryl named and shamed her fiancé for forgetting their wedding day that same Sat!
Whoever's running the UA-cam channel "Made in Maidstone" seems to have found the landfill site, because they've been posting production tapes of No. 73 recently, including the first ever episode.
@@mattermat1925 That's correct, I was gonna mention this myself. Within the first minute or so of Ep. 1, Ethel makes an odd joke about a baby. And Frankie Howerd shows up in another episode, if I remember correctly.
I never watched No 73, but a friend of mine bought the actual pinball machine (Williams Travel Time, pinball fans) and restored it. Was the pinball table a big part of the show, or just scenery?
The first season was only shown in the TVS region and has a different intro. After Ethel left, it still carried on - but in a mid week slot on ITV kids' schedule, but it had lost a lot of its appeal by then. It was my first introduction to Sandi Toksvig - and it was strange seeing her many years later in "Whose Line Is It Anyway?". It's weird that the roller skating girl(Andrea Arnold) ended up as an Oscar winning short film director. Neil Buchanan ended up doing "Art Attack" - and I think Kim Goody still does voice acting. Nick Staverson seems to have disappeared though. It isn't as well remembered as other early morning Saturday kids' TV shows like Tiswas, Saturday Morning Swap Shop, Going Live, Live & Kicking, etc. The "Sandwich Quiz" was quite novel - what with Ethel's introduction to it - which she was asked to repeat many years later on BBC 4's "The News Quiz".
I went with the school. It was fun for five minutes until you realise that this is literally it. They will be banging on bins for the next hour and a half.
I remember No.73, & Get Fresh as being a lot less Cheesy Dad Jokes than the Beeb was providing with Saturday Superstore, only Going Live later seeming though quite cosy was a bit more for the kids,Teens and hung over students. The Random bands dropping by was awesome, I'm sure Iggy Pop was naughty with a Teddy Bear on .73. I was the liveness that i loved, TFI had that in the 90's briefly, the show might not be good but it was happening RIGHT NOW and you were watching it with everyone else.
So since this video was made quite some time ago it turns out a YT channel Made in Maidstone has recently uploaded 45 episodes! ua-cam.com/play/PLObE-oZMcn6iqIv_WOJ2KBTQi8T8fZMtg.html&si=OAR3APWI-PxwuLLF
No 73 was the first Saturday morning show I got into. I remember it very fondly, but I buried the negatives for many years. With my experience of it, I enjoyed it when I first watched it but it was a steady downhill journey all the way from there. My first criticism of it would be that the stories required more attention than the average Saturday morning viewer was either willing or able to give them. You wanted something that you could dip in and out of, but 73 was very unforgiving to those who missed any detail. So my overwhelming memory of the plots, were of not understanding what the hell they were going on about. There were also slightly too many characters. It doesn't seem so when you look at it today, but at the time it felt like they needed to cut some of the driftwood out of it. But the ultimate demise of the show is one of the biggest examples of Jumping The Shark in history. It inexplicably revamped as 7T3, based in a wild west theme park type of setting, where nothing made any sense whatsoever. Nothing. My memory of watching it, which I did a lot less by that point, was of it feeling like some sort of mind game experiment in how far they could push a child's level of confusion. But if you ask me today if I liked No 73, the answer would be yes, without any hesitation. I know that the mind control worked, I just cannot resist it.
There was something about Sandi back then. I was 12 when this started and I couldn't put my finger on it (or hand round it), but Sandi definitely made a good impression on me. I can see why she would at the 15.38 mark. Sometimes she just looks so feminine in these clips. But now she just looks like a boss eyed lezza.
My god this sucked. Even more than this video. It was slightly more interesting than the narrators voice, even Steve interesting Davis on spitting image seems interesting now
Sandi Toskvig can appear 23, 45 and 63 all at once. Su Pollard was a great example of the people who appeared to be everywhere in the 80s but had no talent. I had a biscuit tin with a badge collection too !! Pride of place was my Grandad’s Gold enamelled N**i party badge ! Nice shout out to Stiff Little Fingers too !!!
“I had a sock like that as a teenager” I’m dying!
That and “weather nonce Fred Talbot” 😂😂😂
Brilliant. I couldn't tell which ones were played by Shearsmith and Pemberton at all.
😂😂😂
when i was a kid, our class visited albert docks for history class, and do you know, i was one of the few kids fred made come on his map.
Eek...bet that was embarrassing! 😳
Few? He made them all do it.
You'll be glad to know that when you google 'Weather nonce', Fred Talbot is the 3rd answer, closely followed by MIchal Fish
I thought Dawn was the coolest, I used to wear rollerskates all the time at home because of her!
Now she is an oscar winning director. Bizarre world eh?
This show was my earliest memory of Saturday morning tv also. I was born the first week of 1981 so I was pretty much at the perfect age for Saturday morning kids tv.
But going live changed everything for me. I was obsessed with that show.
Top banana and ghost train was some of my favourites too.
Still can't believe Depeche Mode was on this show. I think they played Master and Servant when they were on 😂.
Or The Redskins! Imagine any socialist anti-fascist band anywhere on TV now - the channel would be raided and shut down. "Only Ed Sheeran is allowed!"
Used to watch this as a small kid, no real memories of the content just that I watched it. Seems so much fun even in its weird semi-highbrow way
"Before he was jumping around weather maps or going to prison"
This very nearly caused me to spit Dr. Pepper on my laptop.
Bloody hell! This brings back Memories... I always wondered what happened to Andrea Arnold, I never realised she went on to be an OSCAR Winner!!! JESUS!!!
I was always "here and there" with Number 73 back in the day... I used to love the Chaos that was TISWAS, So really it should have been perfect for me... Yet for some reason I was always channel hopping between ITV and BBC ... I just couldn't stick with 73...
It was fun though! DAMN I am going to have to go through your videos now and see what other delights you have unearthed!!!
There must be some Retrospectives on GET FRESH (God I HATED that Gilbert The Alien!!!), TX (A Very short lived Saturday Morning Show)... And more!
I loved this show so much yet I barely remember most of what happened, the sandwich game and that the house started to fall apart in the final season are the standout memories for me. I learnt the lyrics of the theme tune by heart, though damned if I can remember any of it now.
Never seen nothing no place like this no number 73!
It was Green Gartside, the leader singer of Scritti politti talking about fine art.
I'm astounded that Mick Karn did this!! I love Mick!! zero cool points for that one.
Another joy/sadness of Saturday morning Kids Shows of this era was knowing that after 3 plus hours of Cartoons,features, quizes, new song reviews, comedy bits & music in the late 80's...TV would then be dull til the evening. I remember an infinity dross of tedious world of sport /grandstand or old films on bbc 2/channel 4 til about 5 or 6 ish, then it would be a choice of the Krankies, Noel Edmonds or Knight rider/A Team on the other sides, Kids today they don't know real suffering. PS loving your reviews.
That’s why you’d go out to wander round Woolies and the rest of the high street until it was time to go home for dinner.
Neil Buchanan, looking like he just stepped off the set of the video for Beat the Clock by Sparks.
I’m glad you liked this. I have a weird soft spot for the concept as, like you, it’s about the first Saturday morning show I remember.
I love that you made the comparison with The Young Ones as that's always been my way of describing it to people who werent around to see it. Also All Round to Mrs Brown's is another great comparison. I dont think it can be overstated how bold a program this actually was, especially given it was the first major in house production from a TV station that was just two days old.
Another great show packed with talent.
Number 73 was a fun place to visit.
How Toksvig was meeting the one man orchestra on his level. she's nice, and that constant word play of hers really does betray those Danish roots, they go mad for puns and wordplay, absolute slags for it.
With the show being produced by TVS, it's unlikely we'll ever get any official uploads. As with most TVS shows, Number 73 is in a copyright purgatory with no-one exactly sure of who owns the rights.
I had such a crush on Neil Buchanan 🤦🏻♂️
But only in this. I’d gone off him by Art Attack.
There is a school of Thought that Neil Buchanan is "Banksy" cant see it myself but.......
Especially as Banksy is Bristolian.
I had a sock like that when I was a teenager - fucking genius.
"A Toksvig Supergirl with big floppy knockers"
I never saw this but I'm impressed with the respect and catholic approach to art.
First time I saw Fred Talbot was on Magpie talking about space (the shuttle maybe?)
I was obsessed with this show! I genuinely thought I was the only one who had a childhood crush on Sandi Toksvig!
Absolutely loved No73. Great just to hear the theme tune again! I remember it went down hill after they left the house and based it at a Wild West theme park. (That did happen didn’t it??).
It did, though sadly no episodes of them living on an old West set like the Manson Family have made it to UA-cam yet.
Aww, didn't include the proper sandwich quiz intro, that was iconic.
It's time for the death defyingly dull, delectable, delicatessible, divinely decadent, sandwich quiz!
the beatbox man music sounds a lot like the theme to Blott on the Landscape
Having a Mandela Effect with this one, I was 100% sure Mike Myers was on this show, turns out he was actually on the Wide Awake Club
Used to hate it, avoided and watched Beeb 1 instead on Saturday mornings.
Once sound mixed on tape, the mouth orchestra guy was actually quite good.
Always looked forward to seeing Kim, although after Ethel’s departure, was in fewer episodes. Like Desmonds, not every character was in each one…those absent Saturday, would appear in the shorter Sunday show, and more new characters came in…they included Nadia, Jules, and Rob
Neil's hangover cure... "A shave and a Donald Duck"... he can't mean...surely not? Somebody please put me out of my misery by telling me what it's meant to rhyme with!
Sadly, it's a sneaky editing out of the word 'cartoon' which immediately followed.
@@StuartMillard Haha! Great work on this video by the way, really enjoyed it.
@@StuartMillard 'mate'
The result of everyone playing characters but the 5 year old me being unable to understand this is that now every time Sandi appears on TV my brain goes "Ethel". Because why wouldn't she be called Ethel? After all Neil is called Neil.
If you call her that, it's like the trigger phrase for a sleeper agent, and she'll be frantically searching for a loaf of bread.
Lots of episodes are now available on the Made in Maidstone channel. Including season one. youtube.com/@Made-in-Maidstone?si=7VoreF23Lx4S1I5S
i dont remember watching this show but that sandwich game gave me flashbacks, i must of watched it
If you ever went to Weymouth in the 70s and 80s you'd be aware of the sandman. Best thing about the place!
Jimmy Nail pretending to be blind is world class entertainment.
Oh wow, 80's Sandi Toskvig
The 7T3 version was totally crap when for whatever reason they were evicted from no. 73. If it ain't broke don't fix it
It morphed into 7T3 because the house set was huge and once set up was kept in the same studio for the whole series. They couldn't afford to dedicate all those resources to it any more.
@@leeosborne3793 it's such a pity because it was one of the most creative shows of the era. I'm still a fan of Sandi Toksvig today, her comedy weas ahead of it's time and non patronising, the same with Neill Buchannan, his talent was amazing and went on to greater things
@@bletheringfool Oh, completely agree. I was just the right age for the show and I loved it. Apparently 7T3 was an attempt to try and keep it going and the intention was to make more of them, but it really didn't work.
I definitely remember seeing the later series of this, and certainly remember the sandwich quiz. 😛 I noticed you didn't mention that Gary Glitter must have been a guest at some point as he and his band obviously feature in the titles...😱
Never heard of anyone having a crush on Sandi Toksvig. Sarah Greene was on the other side.
The roller skating redhead Dawn played by Andrea Arnold, is now a major indie director. It has to be the biggest career change ever.
She's 63 now, mate.
1:20 some early Hot Chip!
Mouth Orchestra Man "Search your feelings Beardyman. You know it to be true. I am your father."
And then Sandi Toksvig left the show under Series 6. And the show began to fall apart. "Literally." The house begins to fall apart around them and the new evil landlord eventually succeeds in bulldozing the house down and turned it into a "Wild West Theme Park." (Because they ran out of ideas.)
It wasn't that they ran out of ideas it was that TVS ran out studio space. They very quickly became a big player within ITV and unfortunately Number 73 had a permanent set at Maidstone. The original idea was literally to take the show down the Corrie route and build the street for real on the Maidstone site, which would have allowed the addition of loads of additional characters, but somehow, somewhere they settled in the Wild West idea.😢
Is the guy who played Harry Rob Beckett's dad? And it seems like they just dropped the idea of Ethel being old after the first series, as not only did Sandi drop the dodgy accent, but she dressed younger too. I certainly didn't think of her as 'old' watching as a kid, or, at least, no more or less old than the other 20-somethings.
I think the most memorable things were the serials and yes that includes the spoofs The Z Team and Jayne Blonde.
There's an episode which isn't on UA-cam anymore where Barrington Levy performs the Cannabis anthem "Under Mi Sensi"
Trying to stay in character must have been tricky, I remember Harry got called Nick a few times. Bet he loved appearing in the bath. He was a bit camp. The home movies were a bit tedious and self indulgent weren’t they. He’s passed away now, but Cheryl named and shamed her fiancé for forgetting their wedding day that same Sat!
Was that Ed Tudor Pole at the very end there?
Yep
I had a massive childhood crush on Dawn from Number 73.
22:42 proving Baddiel & Skinner's infamous statement rather incorrect.
And the fact that it was a TVS production means that the tapes are probably buried in a landfill somewhere
Whoever's running the UA-cam channel "Made in Maidstone" seems to have found the landfill site, because they've been posting production tapes of No. 73 recently, including the first ever episode.
@@mattermat1925 That's correct, I was gonna mention this myself. Within the first minute or so of Ep. 1, Ethel makes an odd joke about a baby. And Frankie Howerd shows up in another episode, if I remember correctly.
I never watched No 73, but a friend of mine bought the actual pinball machine (Williams Travel Time, pinball fans) and restored it.
Was the pinball table a big part of the show, or just scenery?
Oh wow, that's awesome.
It was never referred to in the episodes I saw, but I can't speak for the other 162.
In fairness to Pookiesnackenburger, they did make a decent contribution to the fictitious comedy metal genre with Iron Lung ('84ish)
The first season was only shown in the TVS region and has a different intro. After Ethel left, it still carried on - but in a mid week slot on ITV kids' schedule, but it had lost a lot of its appeal by then.
It was my first introduction to Sandi Toksvig - and it was strange seeing her many years later in "Whose Line Is It Anyway?". It's weird that the roller skating girl(Andrea Arnold) ended up as an Oscar winning short film director. Neil Buchanan ended up doing "Art Attack" - and I think Kim Goody still does voice acting. Nick Staverson seems to have disappeared though.
It isn't as well remembered as other early morning Saturday kids' TV shows like Tiswas, Saturday Morning Swap Shop, Going Live, Live & Kicking, etc.
The "Sandwich Quiz" was quite novel - what with Ethel's introduction to it - which she was asked to repeat many years later on BBC 4's "The News Quiz".
Didn't it change its name after Ethel left to 7T3?
@@AndrewHalliwell I think so.
Kids reviewing newspapers: "It gives you all the news..." You poor naive young fools!
7:28 I genuinely don't think I've ever met anyone who has seen Stomp.
Nobody who's willing to admit it.
It’s the kind of shit that even in that 5 second clip you quickly get tired of, sitting through an hour must feel interminable
I went with the school. It was fun for five minutes until you realise that this is literally it. They will be banging on bins for the next hour and a half.
Old Fred Talbot used to while away his weekends by jaunting around Speke Hall with his "friend" Dean Sullivan alias Jimmy Corkhill.
Rain or Shine..
A page in the newspaper for women 😅
Iggy and that teddy bear, though. I remember it for that.
I remember No.73, & Get Fresh as being a lot less Cheesy Dad Jokes than the Beeb was providing with Saturday Superstore, only Going Live later seeming though quite cosy was a bit more for the kids,Teens and hung over students. The Random bands dropping by was awesome, I'm sure Iggy Pop was naughty with a Teddy Bear on .73. I was the liveness that i loved, TFI had that in the 90's briefly, the show might not be good but it was happening RIGHT NOW and you were watching it with everyone else.
Isn't this where I saw Rent a Ghost?
I will never forget Iggy Pop shagging a teddy bear on this show.
Thank god i missed that as a youngster. Looks chit
24:00 is that Dirk Benedict?
I'm sure I have a memory of it changing names one year to number 7T3, or am I mis remembering?
So since this video was made quite some time ago it turns out a YT channel Made in Maidstone has recently uploaded 45 episodes!
ua-cam.com/play/PLObE-oZMcn6iqIv_WOJ2KBTQi8T8fZMtg.html&si=OAR3APWI-PxwuLLF
Any time travellers on their way......
Hahaha
Brilliant
No 73 was the first Saturday morning show I got into. I remember it very fondly, but I buried the negatives for many years. With my experience of it, I enjoyed it when I first watched it but it was a steady downhill journey all the way from there. My first criticism of it would be that the stories required more attention than the average Saturday morning viewer was either willing or able to give them. You wanted something that you could dip in and out of, but 73 was very unforgiving to those who missed any detail. So my overwhelming memory of the plots, were of not understanding what the hell they were going on about. There were also slightly too many characters. It doesn't seem so when you look at it today, but at the time it felt like they needed to cut some of the driftwood out of it. But the ultimate demise of the show is one of the biggest examples of Jumping The Shark in history. It inexplicably revamped as 7T3, based in a wild west theme park type of setting, where nothing made any sense whatsoever. Nothing. My memory of watching it, which I did a lot less by that point, was of it feeling like some sort of mind game experiment in how far they could push a child's level of confusion. But if you ask me today if I liked No 73, the answer would be yes, without any hesitation. I know that the mind control worked, I just cannot resist it.
I totally fancied Sandi Toksvig. Only God can judge me...
Oh, He will.
16:33 Billy Crystal is Vladimir Putin in Wait until sundown...
Sandy Tokzvig turned out to be a Dick Van Dyke!
I thought Ethel was the mother of all of them.
Hyperia or Spinball Whizzer?
There was something about Sandi back then. I was 12 when this started and I couldn't put my finger on it (or hand round it), but Sandi definitely made a good impression on me. I can see why she would at the 15.38 mark. Sometimes she just looks so feminine in these clips. But now she just looks like a boss eyed lezza.
My god this sucked. The narrator defo never saw this
My god this sucked. Even more than this video. It was slightly more interesting than the narrators voice, even Steve interesting Davis on spitting image seems interesting now