I was saddened to hear recently of the death of actor and voiceover artist Stephen Hope-Wynne at the far too young age of 63. Stephen's career took in many highlights , but it was of course his role as part of the cast of Parallel 9 that led me to speak to him for my series of retrospective pieces about the programme in 2022. Everyone I interviewed was very generous with their time and dredging…
A space station sits on the surface of a barren, red, rocky planet. The mission of its staff? To research Earth - aided and abetted by two dinosaurs and a Little Green Man... This is the concluding part of the story of a largely forgotten ambitious Saturday morning children's TV show called Parallel 9. In a project that initially just involved me writing down what I remembered and uploading my old…
Welcome back to my (not so) brief history of Parallel 9! If you're new here, you've missed a fair old journey. What started as a two part jaunt through my old VHS tapes as an anniversary tribute to a much missed/barely remembered (delete as applicable) Saturday morning TV show from thirty years ago turned into an opportunity to properly tell the story of how the programme was made for the first…
A man emerges from a caravan seemingly in a barren wasteland. He seems surprised to see us but explains he's helping aliens research Earth, and we can come with him if we want. Cue titles... This is the story of a largely forgotten Saturday morning programme that mixed fictional elements set on an alien planet with the standard Saturday morning TV fare. At the age of 8, Parallel 9 completely…
Dedicated to the memory of Stephen Hope-Wynne , 1962-2025. Parallel 9 was my first TV obsession. Aged 8, I spent the summer of 1992 watching the show religiously - and, from the start of the summer holidays, recording it on video each week. Over the years whenever I revisited those tapes I found myself appreciating different parts of the programme. It ticks a number of my favourite boxes -…
Welcome to part 2 of my "(Not So) Brief History of Parallel 9" or as one Twitter user perceptively described it, a "deep dive". Part 1 covered the vision, the launch and first 14 shows. This part covers the second "phase" of the series as it returned from the mid-series break with a renewed confidence that would ultimately lead to the run concluding on a high. But first, we've unfinished…
Between 1992 and 1994, the prestigious Children's BBC's Saturday morning slot was occupied during the summer months by a programme called Parallel 9. Set deep in outer space on a far away planet, it mixed the usual Saturday morning fare of special guests, musical performances, games and cartoons with fictional characters, storylines and other dramatic elements. Welcome to my history of Parallel 9.…
Welcome to my seventh compilation of archive University Radio York output. Yes, seventh! Haven't I got anything better to do? I often ask myself this question. It turns out the answer over the past 18 months was an emphatic yes, with a pandemic, a new daughter and moving house 200 miles across the country meaning this got pushed down the priority list somewhat. We've reached Autumn 2004 and the…
This blog is a tribute to a long-serving colleague of mine that I have worked with on-and-off for 16 years and is now entering semi-retirement. Yes, it's my £25 Argos desk. It was bought as a short-term solution but is somehow still in use many moves later. It's not quite as self-indulgent as a 9-part series on my student radio years , but if you like hearing about cheap furniture lasting for a…
Summer 2004. Tony Blair announces a referendum on the new EU constitution (which sounds a TERRIFIC idea), some programme called Strictly Come Dancing is launched and some bloke called Piers Morgan is sacked as editor of the Daily Mirror. URY Summer 2004: the schedule poster to be distributed to campus (credit: Chris Osborne) Meanwhile in a corner of York known only as Heslington I'm nearing the…
January, February and March 2004. The BBC is rocked by the Hutton Report whitewash and the government pushes top-up fees through by a whisker. Meanwhile in the charts Peter Andre has an unlikely comeback nestling alongside Michelle McManus and Britney Spears at the top of the charts. On TV I'm a Celebrity hooks Andre and Katie Price up, and on 2nd February a new company called "ITV plc" is formed.…
October, November and December 2003. The country is still reeling from the Iraq War fallout and the opposition are in disarray. On television, Dirty Den has risen from the dead and it's just been announced that Doctor Who will shortly be doing the same. On the radio Sara Cox is about to leave the Radio 1 Breakfast Show and Chris Moyles has been announced as the next host. In the charts the Black…
This is my third compilation of audio memories from University Radio York fifteen years ago, and we've reached the end of my first year, and the long hot summer of 2003. If you've missed round 1 and round 2 then let me fill you in. In my student days I presented on the University of York's student radio station URY, and recently I've found the tapes. As well as my own, there's plenty of random…
This is my second compilation of University Radio York output, this time featuring highlights from Spring 2003 - my second term at uni, and my first on air on URY (cringe). As with last time , it's all from cassettes that have been sat in my parents' loft for over a decade, all recorded from medium wave, so adjust your audio expectations accordingly. Unless someone else was pressing…
This is my first compilation of University Radio York output, starting appropriately enough with half an hour of output from my first term in York in Autumn 2002. What I didn't realise until I started combing through my cassettes (which, other than a date , are largely unlabelled) was quite how much of the campus radio station I'd recorded upon my arrival in October 2002. I'm not really sure why…
2016 marked our fifth trip to the Fringe! You can read about 2012 here , 2014 here and 2015 here . I clearly couldn't be bothered to write anything in 2010. This trip was a cheeky little last minute effort after previously deciding we would sit this year out, but then leafing through the programme and thinking "oh go on then". As a late decision we went for the first time over a proper weekend…
It's that time of year again! After months of anticipation, much rehearsal and considerable coverage in the national press, I'm writing a blog. Ahahahaha. This was mine and Kate's fourth trip to the fringe. You can read about the last two here and here . Our last in particular was a bit of a washout which is why we've broken our unofficial rule of going every other summer. We don't go for the…
On 2nd March 2013, for reasons I can't quite remember - might have been around the time of the death of Terry Nutkins, or maybe I was trying to avoid doing some wedmin - I knocked together a homemade extended mix of the theme tune to The Really Wild Show. 28-year-olds up and down the land were spending their Saturday afternoons doing similarly cool things, I'm sure. I just remember suddenly…
It's that time again! Yes - me actually writing a blog! I remember the good old days when I'd churn these out all the time. Then I changed jobs and bought a flat and found I'd rather spend time off sobbing in a darkened room. But now, it's that time again - we've been back to the Fringe for our third visit, which means another blog chewing over who we saw. In our four days in Edinburgh we saw…
So it seems I haven't posted here for over three months. Hello! Hope you enjoyed the summer. Thanks to a new role at work and the small matter of buying a flat (more on that story later) I seem to have forgotten to write anything. Or not had any time to do so. So, until I get round to it, here's a blog I wrote two years ago but never published - partly because I wasn't confident enough at the time…
We've just got back from the Latitude Festival in Southwold, Suffolk (yes, I had to look it up too). Latitude was the first proper festival that either Kate or myself have been to, having previously only been to one-day affairs such as Radio 1's Hackney Weekend . We figured that with the big 3-0 fast approaching it was high time we crossed this off from the life "to do" list and spent some time…
I'm starting to type this as we fly to St Lucia on the final leg of our epic honeymoon. With a mere 8 hours 15 minutes to kill (not including the delay caused by late boarding passenger Alex Fruger, who they had the courtesy to name and shame) it's probably a good time to address mine and Kate's wedding, which took place on 27th April. I'm now in the position where I feel we've banged on about…
That title got your attention didn't it! So...here we are. Less than three weeks to go until the big day and Kate and I tie the knot. We're both very very excited - the sort of excited that makes you need the toilet if you think about it too much - but we are currently knee-deep in wedding admin, the equivalent of coming home to do homework every night for three weeks. Forms for this, forms for…
I can't claim to have any great association with BBC Television Centre other than, like most, a long-term viewer of output from within its walls. But in a way that's the best association of all - you feel like you know the place inside out despite having only visited on a handful of occasions. So, like any self-respecting telegeek, I'm more than a little sad that this month sees Auntie bidding…
Happy 30th birthday, Children's ITV. And what a celebration. If you've been anywhere on Twitter or Facebook this weekend, and were a child in the 1980s or 1990s - or know someone who was - it won't have been able to escape your attention that we've just been treated to the televisual equivalent of stuffing ourselves with birthday cake for two eight-and-a-half-hour periods over a weekend. In a…