Past Times
THE five Spice Girls were the most successful allgirl pop group on the planet in 1997, and the first faces to be seen on the new Channel 5.
They popped up on
TV screens at 6pm on
Easter Sunday, March
30, with an exclusive performance of 1-23-4-5 – The Power of
Five which boasted the lyrics “Welcome to a brand new station. Tune in now for a new generation”.
An advert for
Chanel No 5 was fittingly the station’s first commercial and British soap opera Family Affairs was the first programme to be broadcast. It followed the lives of the Hart family, spanning three generations led by Newcastleborn Chris (Ian Ashpitel) who married southerner
Anna (Liz Crowther) 24 years ago while working in Watford.
Family Affairs ran until 2005 notching up 746 episodes along the way and was the first UK soap to run five days a week. The channel also featured two US soap offerings – The Bold And The Beautiful and Sunset Beach - and there was also arresting drama from Australia in the form of Prisoner: Cell Block H.
Channel 5’s launch night featured an hour-long comedy drama called Hospital! starring the cream of British comedy talent. This was a hospital were doctors prescribed classical music instead of drugs and patients were delivered into the waiting arms of staff via the windscreens of speeding ambulances.
Greg Wise starred as sexy neurosurgeon Dr Jim Nightingale and the cast included Martin Clunes, Julian Clary, Clive Anderson, Celia Imrie and Alexei Sayle.
The launch night also included Two Little Boys, looking at the early lives of politicians John Major and Tony Blair, while true-life drama Beyond Fear featured Gina McKee as kidnapped estate agent Stephanie Slater.
Channel 5 was the first terrestrial station to offer a 24 hour schedule and broadcast a 9pm movie every weeknight.
They also broke the mould with their news coverage with bulletins on the hour, every hour. A then 24-year-old Kirsty Young made herself at home as the station’s main news anchor and ditched the oldstyle news desks to famously perch
FROM TOP: Sunset Beach, Nancy Lam, and Hospital! on the edge of one instead. She said: “We’ve addressed a lot of the problems that many news programmes have not been facing up to for years, which is principally there are a lot of people under 50 who are just not watching the news and that’s not because they are not interested in life... but they obviously feel news is not catering to them and we are hoping to address that very much by making the news something that lives every night. That is not simply a man in a suit sitting behind a desk.”
Food-loving Nancy Lam had her own cookery show and was billed as the Far East’s answer to Fanny Craddock. Meanwhile, Graham Norton hosted irreverent improv quiz Bring
Me The Head Of Light Entertainment with Lee Hurst and Fred MacaAulay as the resident team captains.
Meanwhile, Richard Blackwood offered late night comedy and sketches in Club Class on Friday nights and there were late night debates in Live And Dangerous.
Over the years the station has offered everything from Aussie soaps Home And Away and Neighbours to game show challenge series like Fort
Boyard and entertainment shows like Saturday-night celebrity karaoke contest Night Fever hosted by Madness frontman Suggs.
Tim Vine hosted his own quiz show called Whittle during the opening week of the new TV station. It saw the 100-strong studio audience tested to answer Tim’s questions correctly until they were whittled down to one winner.
But there were teething problems for Channel 5. It launched three months later than planned and it was estimated up to five million households might have needed to invest in new aerials so they could get a good signal to see the new shows. However, Channel 5 TV bosses were pleased, and happily described Britain’s newest station as “modern mainstream”. 5 STARS: Graham Norton and Kirsty Young