The Bakertollah's first steps into broadcasting came in the early 1980s when he joined the team of LWT's SIX O'CLOCK SHOW, a role that seemed to involve sitting on the sofa with that week's guest and doing some reports on Spandau Ballet. Then he was hired to do, well, more or less the same thing on TVam, appearing alongside Henry Kelly for a few Saturday mornings ("I was TV Turn-On in Oh Boy magazine!") Alas, he wasn't kept at Eggcup Towers on a regular basis, and he spent much of the decade at LWT fronting documentaries, a la 20TH CENTURY BOX and Sunday football series THE GAME ("I have sent off number nine, Sykes, as he called me a c*nt and he called my linesman a c*nt three times"), as well as shouting at a BR guard and falling off a wall. His next network exposure came in 1988 when he fronted awful Thames consumer series THE BOTTOM LINE, which he later admitted was a waste of time as he really didn't give a toss about any of the subjects.

By this point he'd started broadcasting on GLR and proved that he was one of the greatest radio presenters of his generation. Eager to cash in on this success, Scottish Television hired him to come up with programme ideas for them, and he devised a quiz show where a team of humans would take on a team of monkeys. STV decided to offer him the job of presenting WIN, LOSE OR DRAW instead, which he was fantastic at. A national audience got to hear his radio show from 1992 when he pitched up on the Radio Five breakfast show (alarmingly quickly, it seems, as it was only announced two days before it started) and then in October 1993 made the ill-fated move to Radio One. Indeed the 12 months after this were perhaps the busiest in Dan's career - chat show DANNY BAKER AFTER ALL ("We won't be pandering to people who may not understand jokes and references - that's tough, they should") was followed by a stint fronting THE BIG BREAKFAST, although this was curtailed after two months, as apparently he'd breached his BBC contract. Then there was proto-Cream quiz BYGONES, shifted from 7pm to 10pm midrun, and with one episode never shown, followed just one week later by PETS WIN PRIZES, undoubtedly the silliest (and thus best) series ever to appear on Saturday night BBC1 - "It's your licence fee at work!"

After another post-MOTD chat show, the Bake seemed to scale down his telly work, most of which got taken over by Shane Richie. But he still wrote TFI FRIDAY, and put in a memorable turn as Father Christmas ("I just have a little sip of brandy, and next thing I know I'm on the sofa going 'What did I do last night?'") . Sacked from the Beeb in 1997 for suggesting fans go round to a referee's house, he then fronted MATCH OF THE NINTIES and continues to write BEFORE THEY WERE FAMOUS. And he's now the breakfast jock on BBC London, and is the best thing on that station (not hard, admittedly).

TV CREAM saw Johnny do his THINK OF A NUMBER show live at their local theatre in 1985, and it was sort of like seeing The Beatles at Shea Stadium, such was the excitement of witnessing an icon at the peak of his powers. And indeed when Johnny was working the clubs back in the 1960s as a comedian, he often amused the crowds at the Cavern. After a stint as a Redcoat, Johnny got into telly via, of course, PLAY SCHOOL and then moved onto PLAYAWAY. At the same time, he started to write sketches for programmes like STAR TURN and CABBAGES AND KINGS, and these scripts were collated into the book "Plays For Laughs" in the early 1980s, which TV Cream still owns, and when we were seven, it was our favourite book ever.

Obviously, he really entered the public's conscience after fronting Think of a Number et al. With Johnny's constant corpsing, the VIC REEVES BIG NIGHT OUT-style set, and, of course, the tricks ("If you'd like to know how I did that, write to me, Johnny Ball, at BBC Television, London"), there's never been a better way of teaching kids about science. Follow-up THINK AGAIN was a little more low-key, eschewing a studio audience for a thoughtful look at how stuff worked. He also spent time as the voice of Salters Chemistry Sets. In the late 1980s, he legged it to ITV for JOHNNY BALL REVEALS ALL, which was more or less the same thing. After retiring from telly, he continued to tour shows around the nation's theatres ("That's one of the tales... of maths and legends!"), and he was last spotted on Gaby Roslin's TV REVEALED a few years back, singing a song about Pythagoras. Which was, as you'd expect, brilliant. What a handsome chap!

Loughborough's finest son (apart from the Digi-TV Cream Ed, of course), Mike was the face of a nation's teatimes for a decade, "co-ordinating" (never presenting) NATIONWIDE, and never was there a man more able to segue seemlessly from an interview with the Home Secretary to an item about a man who could jump on (or to be more precise, faintly stroke with his toe) eggs without breaking them. When the programme began in 1969, it was his responsibility for filling in when the tincans and string holding the show together collapsed. Sure, there were other presenters - especially when it expanded from three to five nights a week in 1972 - but Mike was always the main presenter; so, as Frank Bough pointed out, this meant he said "Hello" at the start of the programme, and "Goodbye" at the end. In 1977 he left the show and, as has gone down in folklore, his last week was marked with a stately traipse around towns of "particular significance" to Mike via a specially kitted-out train, which caused many a letter to the Radio Times about the huge expense and self-indulgence of the whole thing. After marrying 'wide co-host Dilys Morgan, he was then one of the new editions to a radically revamped SONGS OF PRAISE, along with, to quote the producer, "a signature tune with an extremely prominent drum kick". However he did not, as you may have thought, go on to be Shakin' Stevens - that was, in fact, another Michael Barratt. Ooh, you live and learn, don't you?

It may sound stupid, but it's true - when we were young we thought Flo was the most glamorous person we'd ever seen. Growing up in the suburbs, we tended not to see many people who looked like she did, especially at a time when most chilldren's TV presenters seemed to take fashion tips from our school teachers. Flo brought her own special brand of "black joy" to PLAY SCHOOL in the early 1980s, and proved to be a dab hand at dealing with Humpty and Jemima, and singing songs about wibbly wobbly worms. As we're seeing, for a time every Play School presenter had to then front their own series, and in Flo's case this was kids sketch show FAST FORWARD ("And now... Jo-kahs!"), alongside Andrew "Five Alive" Secombe, Joanna "gorgeous brunette" Munro, the great Nick "George Costanza" Wilton and later, Robert "Satellite Show" Harley. A recent viewing of an episode of this series proves that it wasn't actually that bad, although it did have about a thousand writers and the end credits went on for hours. Later too Flo presented LAY ON FIVE, which we can't remember much about other than the fact Stanley Unwin always seemed to be on it, and that theme tune. Adult TV followed - well, a couple of months on DAYTIME LIVE, at least - before defecting from the Beeb, opening up the TREEHOUSE on Channel Four and penning the 'Go With Flo!' column in the TV Times for a while. She's now chairperson of the BAFTA jury, bizarrely, so she's responsible for giving THE OFFICE a million undeserved awards each year. Grr. Most memorably, of course, she used to get her son Aston on whatever show she was doing, and we kind of feel we've grown up with him. Oh, and she wrote a book, "Floella's Fabulous Bright Ideas", which we've got a copy of ("For Aston").