HERE FOUR YOU
Can I have a vowel, please? MARION MCMULLEN looks back at the launch of Channel 4 forty years ago
BRITAIN’S newest television channel did not begin with a star-studded night or a big Hollywood blockbuster movie premiere ... it began with a brainteaser.
Richard Whiteley was the first face to be seen on Channel 4 when it broadcast for the first time 40 years ago at 4.45pm on November 2, 1982.
“As the countdown to a brand new channel ends, a brand new countdown begins,” he informed viewers. “This Countdown is a quiz game that all of you can play at home. If you are good with figures, or figure you are good with letters, well, we think this is the game for you.”
Farmer and TV personality Ted was kept busy checking words in Dictionary Corner and the show’s number-cruncher Carol Vorderman was introduced by Richard as a “Cambridge graduate and she works in computers”.
Carol wore a pair of beige suedette trousers bought from Miss Selfridge for her TV debut.
She later said: “I did wear these trousers for a couple of years. Every time I move house they are always at the back of the wardrobe and they always seem to move with me.”
London solicitor Michael Goldman was Countdown’s first winner with 50 points and he was invited back to appear on the quiz the following day. The runner-up was sent home with a Countdown box game as a consolation prize. Winners receive a teapot styled to resemble the famous Countdown clock.
The quiz is the only programme, apart from the news, that is still running since the start of the channel, and in 2014 it celebrated its 6,000 episode by receiving an award from Guinness World Records for the most series broadcast for a TV game show.
Countdown quickly became a firm favourite with millions of regular viewers and Richard never missed a single recording in 23 years of hosting the show.
Scottish-born Jeremy Isaacs was the first chief executive of Britain’s newest channel and was keen for it to start with a packed night of programmes. It launched with an announcer saying Channel 4 would be “offering a variety of new and interesting programmes seven days a week”.
One of those new programmes was TV soap Brookside by Grange Hill creator Sir Phil Redmond.
It was shown on Tuesdays and Wednesday at 8pm and notched up almost 3,000 episodes before ending in 2003.
It also made stars of cast members like Sue Johnston and Ricky Tomlinson, who played married couple Sheila and Bobby Grant, and who later appeared as another married couple Barbara and Jim Royle, in BBC sitcom The Royle Family.
Dean Sullivan, as Jimmy Corkill, was the last resident to be seen in the final episode of the soap as he added a “d” to the Brookside Close street sign to mark the end of an era.
The Channel 4 launch night also offered comedy from Down Under with future Crocodile Dundee star Paul Hogan in The Paul Hogan Show featuring a variety of characters with names like George Fungus, Donger and Perce The Wino.
Paul had been working as a rigger on Sydney Harbour Bridge before he was discovered on Australia’s New Faces talent show and he also became known in the UK in the 1980s for his TV adverts for Fosters Lager. “The secret to my success is that I bit off more than I could chew and chewed as fast as I could,” said Paul.
The Comedy Strip Presents offered more humour with the Enid Blyton spoof Five Go Mad In Dorset set in the 1950s and featuring Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders as George and Anne, Adrian Edmondson as Dick and Peter Richardson as Julian. They came up with the phrase “lashings of ginger beer” for their summer picnics, which many people later wrongly believed had come from Enid Blyton herself.
Sir Ian Mckellen also appeared in Channel 4’s opening night in emotional drama Walter about a man with learning difficulties who faces abuse and hardship following the death of his parents. The cast also included Jim Broadbent and Keith Allen.
The strong-hitting TV movie attracted criticism from some viewers who felt it was heavy going for the launch night but the drama, directed by Stephen Frears, went on to be nominated for two Baftas and Sir Ian won the Royal Television Society award for best performance.
Viewers could also turn on that opening night to watch Peter Sissons present the channel’s first news bulletin, dancers revealing their fitness secrets in The Body Shop or see feminist cabaret group the Raving Beauties appear on In The Pink before the station closed down for the night at 11.50pm.
But Channel 4 all began with Coundown. Richard Whiteley, who sadly passed away in 2005 at the age of 61, once said: “I’d like to be remembered for being the first face on Channel 4 – that’s what I’m really most proud of.”