Phil Norman
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mrphilnorman.bsky.social
Phil Norman
@mrphilnorman.bsky.social
The Year of Listing Dangerously: https://historyoftv.substack.com
Several newspapers this morning name checking one of the worst, most irresponsible programmes Channel Four ever broadcast.

"It's a Club X Budget!"
November 27, 2025 at 8:45 AM
Jack Shepherd. Utterly magnificent in some of the best TV plays ever made. And, for that matter, pretty damn good in some of the very worst.
November 26, 2025 at 8:32 PM
Sudden memory of a Benny Hill Show where a lone audience member pissed themselves when Yaketty Sax got to the bit where it quotes Entrance of the Gladiators. Is that the lowbrow equivalent of slapping your thigh at a gag in As You Like It?
November 26, 2025 at 2:44 PM
If we're to have more of these dramatisations of Great Moments in Rock, there should be one of the weekend when Captain Sensible was radicalised in the Crass commune.
November 24, 2025 at 9:51 PM
The Galloping Gourmet - Graham Kerr triangulates a path between cosmopolitan sophisticate, down to earth bloke and "muggins here" culinary bluffer as he whips up full-fat continental treats and leaps over random bits of G-Plan.
open.substack.com/pub/historyo...
November 24, 2025 at 7:36 PM
Separated at birth: Peter Sellers' I Haven't Told Her, She Hasn't Told Me (But We Know it Just the Same) and Bankrobber by The Clash.
November 23, 2025 at 11:44 PM
I'm mildly obsessed with Venus Observed by Christopher Fry. Fry was the biggest name in British drama just after WWII, until John Osborne & the Royal Court tore theatre a new arsehole. So this is the Tales from Topographic Oceans to Osborne's Anarchy in the UK, to make a totally spurious comparison.
November 23, 2025 at 10:52 AM
It's farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish Blakeys for Week 55 of Listing Dangerously. Also, Bill Maynard's on a bus, Pete Postlethwaite's in a caravan, Anthony Valentine's in Sydney, Orson Welles is in Norwich, and Simon Callow's in the pub, beating up squaddies.
open.substack.com/pub/historyo...
Week 55: 22nd – 28th November, 1975
“Another fast-moving, action-packed programme, including yoga and prize leeks.”
open.substack.com
November 22, 2025 at 11:15 AM
I was reminded today of Varoomshka, the Guardian's 1970s satirical newspaper comic strip in monumentally dubious taste.
November 20, 2025 at 7:25 PM
The most sublime and awe-inspiring dish on the Chinese takeaway menu is Caspar David Friedrice.
November 19, 2025 at 10:11 PM
Jon Pertwee could have seen Man O Man.
November 19, 2025 at 10:02 AM
Seems like the appropriate time for this - a compendium of arcane Glaswegian slang from Roddy McMillan's 1974 Play for Today, The Bevellers.
November 18, 2025 at 10:11 PM
I remember when one Sugarcube was enough to kill, cook and eat a puffin.
November 17, 2025 at 9:51 PM
Pompidou Centre, Hackney branch.
November 17, 2025 at 11:50 AM
I grow old... I grow old...
I shall tape Colin's Sandwich off UK Gold.
November 16, 2025 at 6:57 PM
Steven Moffat's Jekyll (2007)
Lennie Bennett is now my style guru
November 15, 2025 at 11:12 PM
November 15, 2025 at 12:29 PM
The Play for Today discourse is here again, so here's my selection of a few off-trail nuggets - good, bad and bizarre - from the original series.
I see the press have begun turning out their lists of Play for Today episodes, which inevitably skew towards the predictable. So here are some alternative choices. NB: inclusion doesn't necessarily imply wholehearted endorsement, though they're guaranteed to be at the very least interesting.
November 14, 2025 at 5:06 PM
Yoffy lifts a finger,
And a Rowse is there.
Puts his hands together,
And a Leavis takes the air.
Yoffy lifts a finger,
And a Kermode darts about.
Yoffy bends another,
And an Eagleton peeps out.
November 14, 2025 at 3:59 PM
Last night's Play for Today was better than The Rainbirds.
November 14, 2025 at 8:57 AM
I hear a Christian millenarian cult are trying to kickstart a release of an old Tom Baker spoken word LP. They want to immanentise the Pescaton.
November 13, 2025 at 5:16 PM
"Hey Vic, I understand brie was heavily implicated in that Waco cult business."
"Yes, and also Keith Barron's new sitcom."
November 13, 2025 at 12:14 PM
Not sure about the new use of "unironically" to mean "ironically, but I don't want you to think I'm a wanker". As in, "I unironically think the Waitrose ad is a work of genius".
November 13, 2025 at 8:32 AM
Serge Gainsbourg's Initials BB is just a melodramatic orchestration of Ronnie Hazlehurst's Requiem.
November 12, 2025 at 6:52 PM
Sales of Look-In could vary dramatically from week to week, depending on a number of factors.
November 11, 2025 at 10:05 PM