Howard Elston (OBE, DOA), our guest tv specialist, gives us the best on the box in the run up to The Great UK British Olympic Games held in London, England
Monday: BBC1: 19.00- The History of The Games narrated by Sir Brad Wiggins. How Britain and the BBC, host to this year’s Games, played a major role in creating the Games including live inserts from Much Wenlock where the modern games didn’t really begin and an interview with Lord Roger Penney Brookes who created the BBC Games in 1880 with two woolen sacks, a cricket ball and an old potato
Monday: BBC1-7/ all day- The History of Olympic Promotional teases on BBC: Lord Wiggins narrates a film fronted by Wayne Rooney and Princess Cheryl Cole on how promos throughout the BBC empire helped launch the BBC Olympic Games which are being held this year in London and broadcast on the BBC
Tuesday: 50 great Olympic promos. Live coverage of the BBC-HD Promo Olympic Awards known as The Sebs. David Dimbleby hosts this live event from Salford, England, where all the awards will be won by Sir Chris Hoy and Gaby Logan who is married to a a former rugby player
Wednesday: All BBC platforms: Where Did The Olympic Games Go Wrong: Two days before the Opening Ceremony, Newsnight’s Jeremy Paxman investigates how the Olympic Dream fell off the rails even before they began. Includes shocking footage of drug use, illegal payments, bad weather, security lapses, salmonella bugs in all fast foot outlets and transport nightmares. Plus clips of moaning overseas visitors who think crisps are chips
Thursday: The Countdown: The 50 Worst Olympic Promos: Laugh along with Rufus Hound as he illustrates the worst clips from the BBC promo archives peppered with scripted adlibs. Interviewees include clapped out comedians, forgotten athletes, half dead retired BBC producers on £50k pa pensions, entertainers with faces pinned back to their eyebrows and Rhys Griff Jones on a barge
Friday: Big Brother Specially Live Broadcast from inside the BBC office that produces the BBC promotional Olympic films. Five assistant 20-something producers, all with Oxbridge degrees, enter the live interpersonal fray when they lock horns live over submissions for the next run of promotional films about the totally live London Games (not shown outside London). Narrated deadpan by wry funny Scotsman with an Oxford degree Armando Iannucci
Friday Night midnight- 11 am Sat: Recap of this week’s promotional clips, teases, intros and graphic-heavy promos with full analysis of the opening GB v Senegal football match. Plus post match deconstructionalist comments by a bunch of aging guys in black shirts about why Britain lost 5-0 on penalties; how the financial scandal is killing football and why Roy Hodgson should be sacked even though he has nothing to do with the The Games
Saturday: ITV 10am for the next week: Every James Bond film ever produced to be re-shown forever and ever and ever until the end of the Games which are broadcast forever by the Salford-based BBC
