Marti's real name was Lynne Shepherd but she'd changed it by the time she appeared on NEW FACES back in 1975, with an act involving jokes about being a housewife and a number of ballads. She won the series, and her first proper telly gig was on THE SUMMER SHOW, a Saturday teatime sketch series with other performers who had faced the wrath of Tony Hatch and the gang, including Lenny Henry, Victoria Wood and, best of all, Aiden J Harvey. A year later, in the same teatime slot, she got her first starring role in the grandly-titled NOBODY DOES IT LIKE MARTI. But most of her best work came after a nose job, a rather dramatic change of image (from northern housewife to Judy Garland-in-waiting) and a move to BBC2 where she presented umpteen editions of THE MARTI CAINE SHOW, with your usual opposite-PANORAMA mix of monologues, guest comedians and power ballads. However for the purpose of this A-Z we're most interested in a move back to ITV and the host's job on New Faces of 86/87/88, from the Birmingham Hippodrome and with Nina Myskow slagging off all the hapless contestants. Sadly New Faces was rather overshadowed by the BBC's revival of OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS, which included the exciting twist of phone voting while New Faces stuck doggedly with old-fashioned TV Times coupons. But there were some good bits - the orchestra playing the Central jingle live, for a start, and the glorious closing routine with Marti shouting "Press your buttons now!" and the audience results being recorded on the ludicrously complex scoreboard - called Spaghetti Junction, cos they were in the Midlands, see? Unfortunately Marti's later years saw her suffer from ill-health, and she had the bad luck to end her career with two of the worst entertainment programmes in the history of the BBC. 1992's JOKER IN THE PACK saw members of the public doing mother-in-law jokes, which would have been unappealing even if ITV weren't doing the almost exact same thing on Bradley Walsh's ONLY JOKING. 1993's YOUR BEST SHOT was even worse, though, a low-budget, low on ideas Friday night variety show which was very much like NOEL'S HOUSE PARTY would have been were it on Moldovan television. And TV Cream had to sit through it every week because it was on before POINTS OF VIEW.

TV's Mr Versatile had an incredibly lengthy entertainment career, where after an apprenticeship playing the trumpet and cracking gags in nightclubs, he made his TV debut in 1950s sketch show NEW LOOK. This was meant to break new talent, and it certainly did that, with co-star Bruce Forsyth being poached even before it began to appear on SUNDAY NIGHT AT THE LONDON PALLADIUM, and Roy getting added to the bill of the Royal Variety Performance. A decade of acting in more or less every British film produced included an appearance alongside Peter Cushing in one of the children's films based on children's programme DOCTOR WHO. He also appeared as Stan Laurel in a one-off comedy alongside Ronnie Barker as Oliver Hardy. But of course we're most interested in 1972, as that's the year RECORD BREAKERS began. Roy didn't just present the show, he also wrote and performed both theme tunes - be-boppin' and scattin' in the opening theme ("The McWhirters, mmmm, they will record it!") and freeforming in the closing music that was later murdered by 911 - as well as breaking a number of records; in the first show he played the most musical instruments ever in sixty seconds, and famously we had a number of tap-dancing records, both the largest number of dancers and the longest time spent dancing (attempted in the Trocadero, we recall).

The other skill Roy had was making the creepy McWhirter twins appear vaguely human and interesting, although we're still not sure exactly why two middle-aged, bookish individuals were actually considered to appear in front of the camera in the first place. In any case, co-presenters came and went (Kennedy, Farino, Baker, Reagan) but it was always Roy's show. Every Christmas he was also in charge of the ALL-STAR RECORD BREAKERS, the annual beano for everyone from the children's department to show off their vaudeville "talents", an idea revived by the hugely self-indulgent BLUE PETER Christmas show. In the 1970s Roy also stood in for an indisposed Brucie on one episode of THE GENERATION GAME, and he was really good, it seems ("Do not adjust your set!"). Later he also fronted PRIMETIME, the Wednesday afternoon magazine for older people - mostly news on cold weather benefits and brass bands - plus sundry religious shows and Radio 2 comedy shows. But it was always Record Breakers we'll remember him for. He died in 1994, one day after his final episode was repeated, and he's sadly missed. Especially given he was replaced by Kris Akabusi.

TV CREAM would like to guarantee that in the next paragraphs we will make no mention of this man's penis. Instead we'll mention his career which began in the early 1970s as a child actor, appearing in the piss-poor Scouse comedy series THE WACKERS and the pilot of a slightly better comedy series, OPEN ALL HOURS ("Can I have a frozen Zoom, please!"), as well as the CFF classic ROBIN HOOD JUNIOR which was repeated on Children's BBC as recently as 1989. Then in 1976 he wrote to Rosemary Gill and offered his services to the children's department of the BBC, and manged to bullshit his way onto MULTI-COLOURED SWAP SHOP. Little were we to know that he would then spend the next eleven years losing the contents of his pockets in various windswept recreation grounds. Such was his enthusiasm he then got his own show, skipping onto the set of CHEGGERS PLAYS POP ("It is the most vulgar programme I have ever seen!"). Keith was then an absolute ever-present on our screens, and when he married 'Shop co-presenter Maggie Philbin in 1982, it was the biggest event of the season, with highlights being shown on the first SATURDAY SUPERSTORE, However later in the Superstore run he was paired with Peter Simon and was clearly being edged out of the door, and when CHEGGERS PLAYS POP was axed, he was reduced to various presenter-for-hire stuff like the Olympia Christmas show-jumping and kids' consumer series CHEGWIN CHECKS IT OUT, which we only remember as he appeared in a comic strip in The Dandy one week to tie-in with an episode on comics.

After leaving the Beeb, Cheggers earned his beer money by recording several thousand episodes of Sky STAR SEARCH, linking the shit singers and piss-poor magicians, and soliticing comments from such experts as Rustie Lee and Jim Bowen, all of whom wore headphones to allow them to hear the acts in crystal-clear sound, as if that helped. He also wrote all the music for piss-poor daytime quiz KEYNOTES, which is enough to drive anyone to drink. At that point his career reached a real low point, with various weekends fronting cabarets at Haven holiday camps about the nearest he got to the bright lights of showbiz. But then there was the appearance on THIS MORNING, then THE WORD, and then THE BIG BREAKFAST in 1993. Cheggers - with patented catchphrase 'Please don't swear!' - was actually pretty good at the outside broadcasts, and he also came into the house whenever the latest presenter had just been fired, which was more or less all the time. Unfortunately since then he's sort of lapsed into self-parody, presenting shows in his bedroom via his website, and that other thing that everyone keeps on going on about. Which is a shame.

Coleman was the face and voice of sport on the Beeb for nearly 50 years, and had perhaps the pithiest catchphrase of all time - "Errrr". He began in telly back in the early days of GRANDSTAND, fronting the show for many years from the late 1950s. Those were the days when a Grandstand presenter really earnt their money, having to introduce not just the sport, but also anything else that might be happening that afternoon ("Let's now see some pictures, and hear the theme music, of our film High Noon!"). In the sixties he cut down his hours a bit, making way for Frank Bough most weeks, but keeping the "very best ones" for himself, which he did for the next two decades or so. He then concentrated on football commentary, introducing MATCH OF THE DAY for a bit, and for a generation his voice down a crackly phone line has a wonderful nostalgic feeling. He even usurped Kenneth Wolstenholme as the Beeb's number one, much to Ken's chagrin. However it all went a bit wrong in the late 1970s when he reckoned he was getting pushed out a bit, and took legal action against the corporation, keeping him off air for about 18 months. When he returned they gave him QUESTION OF SPORT to shut him up, a job he kept until 1997. In the 1980s he stopped doing football commentary, mostly because Bough's departure to BREAKFAST TIME meant he was back on Grandstand duty most weeks. In the mid '80s he became full-time athletics commentator, as well as the only man who could make sense of an opening ceremony ("He looks around, curiously"). His last Olympic Games were in 2000, although by that point, sadly, he wasn't quite as sharp as he was, and the Beeb decided that it was about time for him to retire. Obviously, the world of knitwear went into mourning.