Ahh, now here's something that definitely has gone downhill, though you'd be forgiven for not noticing.

The presenters have always been cunts in one way or another. Raymond Baxter, the original, I was too young for him, but you can see from old clips that he was a sort of condescending vampire with a gadget obsession. Judith Hann, look, it's your mum on the telly and she wants to nod and explain something to you very slowly, you moron. Michael Rodd, now he was great, he was the one who did Screen Test (kid's film quiz) as well. He was actually just as patronising but somehow seemed "spooky" and had some authority. Good use of eyebrows. Howard Stapleford, round-faced failed musician and more like a chummy older brother.

Maggie Philbin was where the rot really set in. Too busy avoiding punches from Cheggers to make sure her experiments worked properly. "Oh, it worked fine in rehearsals..." That's not good enough, love. Get back to Swop Shop.

BUT... it has gone downhill even further. The aim has been to generate human interest at about the same level as "Bella" magazine by making every fucking story be about a new medical breakthrough that could potentially save thousands of lives/pounds. It's a special box they put in the hospital and it makes you all better. Doctors say it's about time they had a box like that, and are over the moon. Every fucking week.

At least in the old days, there would be something about space, or dinosaurs, or nuclear weapons, where they'd actually take a moment to explain something. Now the "science" is of the "press this button and the swelling in your leg should be significantly reduced" variety.

Need I add that Johnny Ball's programmes danced the dance of victory all over it like a proud science brave with much knowledge?

This theme tune makes me go mad with the desire to hear him explain something with his lunatic enthusiasm.

http://www.users.nascr.net/~rgwill/Think.ram

Johnny Ball, like Tony Hart and Brian Cant, was a genuine enthusiast and therefore the perfect children's presenter. Never ashamed of what he was doing, never itching to do yoof TV, never afraid of being accessible and intelligent at the same time.

Why isn't he on now? And I don't mean with his stupid daughter.

He's not clean enough, I guess. He looked like a bit of a nutcase, with his enthusiams bursting out all over. It doesn't do for a Theakston to be enthusiastic. Unles talking about himself or his hair.

>Why isn't he on now? And I don't mean with his stupid daughter.

He seems to be doing radio ads for priceline.com at the moment. It's a real shame that he's had to sink to that, but just hearing his voice again for the first time in years made the world seem a better place for a while.

I wonder how proud he is of his stupid daughter's career? Now that's never made sense to me.

He did make brief appearances on (I think) Channel 4 Racing a while back, explaining how probability worked. It was marvelous. He was exactly the same. But the slots lasted about thirty seconds and then that cock with the silly hat came on and made post-modernist comments.

Oooh, before I forget, Griff-Rhys from Super Furry Animals on the Today programme this morning. Rather funny.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/radio4/today/listen/audiosearch.pl?ProgID=996049293

There was also Peter McCann, who started to send the whole thing up, often rolling his eyes and visibly sneering at his own daft pseudo-scientific analogy. And Keiran Prendiville, who gave us Badger, of course.

The one genuine enthusiast they had on TW was Bob Symes, but they marginalised him towards the end in a sort of whimsical "potting shed inventors" ghetto.

Oh, and Kenneth Williams did it for a few weeks, God knows why.

The Great Johnny Ball is the subject of one of my favourite "the news, it's just like Chris Morris isn't it?" anecdotes. During a maths awareness week last year, Jeremy Vine interviewed JB on the subject of maths in schools, and the venerable one was captioned "Johnny Ball - maths enthuser".

>There was also Peter McCann, who started to send the whole thing up, often rolling his eyes and visibly sneering at his own daft pseudo-scientific analogy.

I wouldn't credit him with any sense of irony. I'm not sure he was even self-aware. He was essentially an amoeba with arms.

They spent a good six months providing free advertising for the C5 and he seemed mad keen on the thing. There were several shows where he was just pedaling round in circles and crashing into the other's experiments and demonstrations. When they said "Peter, you've got to do the bit about Sellafield," he'd just ignore them and pedal faster.

He'd just say "No, I'm doing this," and carry on pedalling. For weeks.

>The Great Johnny Ball is the subject of one of my favourite "the news, it's just like Chris Morris isn't it?" anecdotes. During a maths awareness week last year, Jeremy Vine interviewed JB on the subject of maths in schools, and the venerable one was captioned "Johnny Ball - maths enthuser".

Johnny Ball, of course, makes a fine living taking his 'Think Of A Number'-esque roadshow out to schools across the country. I bet you a pound he makes more money now than he ever did at the Beeb.

And... he was a stand-up comedian before his TV career. It all links!

Cheerio

However, don't call Johnny Ball "legendary". It's anti-SOTCAA.

(Still trying to set the record for taking the same debate to as many threads as possible!)

Cheerio

Johnny Ball was at Butlins in Skegness filming for a new educational programme. he was using thinks like 'Hook The Duck' and 'Knock The Cat Off The Shelf' to demonstrate mathsy type stuff.

Apparently he looks like a 'friendly tortoise' close up, according to my fairground worker brother, and he won an enormous Crash Bandicoot stuffed toy. The stuff of legend, surely?

That should have been "Johnny Ball was at Butlins in Skegness last week". I keep missing out massive chunks of text, either my keyboard is knackered or I'm becoming more mentally ill than I realised.

That 'Think Again' thread is extraordinary. I always used to think that they'd just used "Pulsar" by Vangelis, off his Albedo 0.39 album. Listening to it now I realise that someone went to the trouble of recreating it *almost* note for note to avoid paying him any royalties. Fantastic.

Francis Monkman (Sky, Curved Air and Manzanera's 801) did the Think Again theme, didn't he?

Johnny Ball was also recently on the morning God show trying to stop a scientist killing a priest, acting as a buffer between faith and reason. No honestly. It was brilliant and I could have watched it forever.

BTW, why in God's name was Tomorrow's world broadcast live? Every time an experiment or demonstration went tits up, I used to put my head in my hands and think of the poor inventor whose life's work had just carked it on screen, thus losing him any potential sales. I have a nasty feeling the subtext was "we're so up to date we have to record this show right at the last minute in case some greengrocer from Sidcup invents cold fusion on Thursday afternoon. Oh bugger that robot's on fire again."

The high point of Tommorow's World was Kraftwerk playing Autobahn

Or Howard demonstrating how to sing badly along to a sequencer in his pub band (true.)

God, I remember that! It was so like Pete Baikie's Absolutely Pub Level 42 song that it was uncomfortable.

"I'm a chartered accountant..."

>He's not clean enough, I guess. He looked like a bit of a nutcase, with his enthusiams bursting out all over. It doesn't do for a Theakston to be enthusiastic. Unles talking about himself or his hair.

My main memory of Mr Ball and Think of a Number was one show where his cock was terrifyingly visible under his groin-tight late 70s nylon slacks. Seriously. I don't know whether it was the pressure of said slacks or the fact that his maths-enthusiasm was getting the better of him, but he seemed to have a semi-on as well. Right down one leg it went. Jesus.

>At least in the old days, there would be something about space, or dinosaurs, or nuclear weapons, where they'd actually take a moment to explain something. Now the "science" is of the "press this button and the swelling in your leg should be significantly reduced" variety.

This is the bit that annoys me. When I started watching it in the eighties, most of the features were of the "could be realised within ten years" variety. Now a lot of the stuff seems to already be on the market. It's not science any more, it's product development.