Despite everyone's rather tedious studied disdain for the man these days, we are happy to admit that a while back he was our favourite person on telly, and we're pretty sure that in the early days of HOUSE PARTY, those who disregard his entire output as "crap" were glued to their sets every Saturday night. Of course Mr Tidybeard was a radio man at the start, but such was his ambition it was but a short while before he made the leap to television, fronting TOP OF THE POPS on a regular basis. He was so desperate for the exposure that he also compered COME DANCING at the same time, and is proud that he was the only person ever to do both. He was also plucked to front children's show Z SHED, an embryonic phone-in show, and it was this experience on live telly that got him the job of front man on the six-week experiment that was the MULTI-COLOURED SWAP SHOP. Such was his impact that we're pretty sure he's the only person to appear on the cover of Radio Times two weeks running (in 1977, plugging the tenth anniversary of Radio One then the new run of Swap Shop). Then for a time he did virtually every programme going - he appeared on CALL MY BLUFF, presented a documentary about stress (with songs from Instant Sunshine) and donned a dinner jacket for the TV translation of Captain Beaky. Meanwhile his first outing on Saturday night came in 1979 with 'Shop spin-off LUCKY NUMBERS.

In 1982 he left Saturday mornings to do, well, more or less the same thing on a Saturday night. The first series of THE LATE LATE BREAKFAST SHOW was a bit of a flop, though, with neither Leni Harper nor John Peel lasting the course (Peel leaving soon after he was almost flattened by a speeding car) and the show not becoming a hit until a large amount of tinkering and the arrival of Mike Smith. And the toning down of the tedious interviews with "international recording artists" that filled most of the early shows. Still, it worked out OK in the end, and in the mid '80s he was also fronting TIME OF MY LIFE on BBC2, re-enacting notable years in a celebrity's life, and TELLY ADDICTS, as well as spending his Christmas mornings up the Post Office Tower. Sadly in 1986 Michael Lush died, and everything changed.

Noel's first new series after the accident was quiz show WHATEVER NEXT in 1987, of which the only thing TV Cream can remember was the "matching pairs"-style final round. Then the next year it was a return to the weekends with THE NOEL EDMONDS SATURDAY ROADSHOW, which was basically Late Late again. This mutated into NOEL'S HOUSE PARTY in 1991, and with Telly Addicts at the same time, he was now the Beeb's king of light entertainment. There was the occasional misfire, though - NOEL'S ADDICTS in 1992 was a dull hobbies-based show which is only remembered now for it's Reeves and Mortimer parody ("Let's meet Ken Taylor, who's got a collection of items suspended in bottles of cider!"), and NOEL'S TELLY YEARS lasted two series in 1996 and 1997 but was basically just Telly Addicts with celebrities. Sadly, rubbish revamps ruined both the House Party and Telly Addicts in the late '90s, leading to the moment in January 1998 when Noel refused to do the House Party because he thought it was shit. Which it was, but it just felt like the show was spiralling completely out of control. Some more revamps followed, but in March 1999 the show ended and Noel's concentrated on his media empire ever since. But we reckon he'd be pretty good on Radio 2 on Sunday mornings, y'know, as he might remind us why we used to like him.

He's a comedian by trade, yes, but Ben Elton's done his fair share of presenting in the past. Indeed before the Sellafield suit years he fronted LWT miscellaney SOUTH OF WATFORD for a bit, a clip of which is available on TV CREAM, and is absolutely hideous. Thankfully he decided to focus on the writing and performing for a bit after that, and was hired for SATURDAY LIVE in 1986 originally as a writer. The first series saw revolving hosts each week, including Michael Barrymore of all people, and Elton took his turn fronting one episode as well as performing most weeks. In the second series he fronted every show and it's this, and FRIDAY NIGHT LIVE the following year, that established him as a top-drawer comedian and writer. Hence in 1989 he did a stint filling in on WOGAN, which seemed to go well enough for him to be invited back on a couple of occasions. After that he continued fronting bits of COMIC RELIEF, but unfortunately seemed to develop a hugely patronising style somewhere along the line, where everything was "fantastic" or "brilliant". His last starring series on the Beeb, in 1998, was a bit hit-and-miss, normally because he had to keep stopping every five minutes during the routines to introduce inserts from Ronnie Corbett and Roy and HG, and there were bands in each episode which he'd link into in a hugley embarrassing dad-style fashion as well. And he sang in the first episode too. His last presenting gig was at the PARTY IN THE PALACE last summer, where he did the worst stand-up routine TV Cream had ever seen and died on his arse. You'd swear Devil Woman had never been written!

Another radio man, Christopher Pressure Evans (that was his middle name) got started when he followed Timmy Mallett home from Piccadilly Radio and got a job as his assistant. He was later promoted to his own show but got sacked for talking about cooking cats. He became a producer instead, and got a job at GLR where again he later graduated to a presenter with his Saturday morning shows becoming legendary listening. His first steps into telly came on The Power Station, BSB's pop channel, in 1990, where he presented a breakfast show every morning to an audience of about 12 people, hence nobody batted an eyelid when he got his nob out on at least one occasion. After the channel closed, his next venture was TV MAYHEM, a Saturday morning show on TVam (hence the name) in 1991. Evans wore the same clothes each week (red shirt, jeans, baseball cap) apparently to appear more like a cartoon character, and his hapless assistant was later BIG BREAKFAST researcher and Banzai producer Gary Monaghan, whose role was more or less to get buckets of water thrown over him in the Wacky Weekend Weather sketch that concluded each edition. The show was commissioned for 40 weeks, but after six TVam lost their franchise and the programme was immediately axed.

In the summer of 1992 Evans supplemented his GLR work with TOO MUCH GRAVY, a Sunday afternoon show on Radio One. This didn't really work out, but he did get to do a proper Radio 1 Roadshow one week, which he later claimed he was awful at. After six months, though, he gave it up because he had a new job - fronting The Big Breakfast. It was third time lucky for Evans on the early shift, and never has he been more creative and amusing as he was during his two years at the Lock Keepers Cottages. When he left in 1994, he was undoubtedly one of the most famous people in the country. While on the show he developed DON'T FORGET YOUR TOOTHBRUSH, which was a brilliant show and every light entertainment producer seems to be trying to remake it to this day. After two series, though, he gave it up, and instead moved back to Radio 1 (he'd returned once before, for a one-off show at Christmas 1992, where at the end he said "They've told me I've got a job here for life if I want it") to do the breakfast show. For a while, this was required listening, much as TFI FRIDAY was required viewing - the latter mostly thanks to Danny Baker on scripting duties. However both went seriously off the boil as Evans became increasingly lazy. Complaints, slaggings and abrupt departures followed, and things hardly improved with the self-indulgent golf travelogue TEE TIME in 1998. By 2000 TFI was dying on its arse, and the show was axed, but Evans resigned before the final show, presumably so as not to be associated with a dying format. Since then he's not done any proper presenting, and is now responsible for LIVE WITH CHRIS MOYLES. That's progress for you.

It's surprisingly difficult to find presenters whose names begin with "E", y'know, but any excuse to mention Cuddly Ken is alright by us. We all know that Ken was fantastic on the radio, and it wasn't long before TV companies tried to get a piece of him. He first came to the public's attention of Granada's John Birt-produced clip show NICE TIME, and also contributed to the very BBC2 late night satirical review UP SUNDAY. But his biggest exposure in these early days came in 1970 when LWT booked him for three shows running consecutively in exactly the same slot - THE KENNY EVERETT EXPLOSION saw him arsing around with chimps and the like, a show Ken later reckoned was a bit rubbish, followed by MAKING WHOOPEE, where he introduced performances from Bob Kerr's Whoopee Band, and Ev, where Ken linked pop videos. After this, though, it was back to the wireless, and it wasn't until 1978 when he made a proper return to television with THE KENNY EVERETT TELEVISION SHOW on Thames. Channel 4 screened an episode of this in 1995 and it was fantastic - "Now it's time to turn the cameras off, and kiss the crew goodnight/We've had a laugh, a song and dance, we've even had a fight/But now the show is over and we'd like you all to send/Your cheques and all your credit cards to Thames TV, The End!" Best bit, of course, was the interview with Rod Stewart conducted on swivel chairs nicked from an office, with Ken wearing a freebie Thames T-shirt and Rod drinking a cup of coffee - which ends up in Ken's face. And there were the regular trips round the back of the set, to reveal dirty tea-towels and plastic cups ("Hollywoodsville!").

After four years Ken legged it to the BBC where his shows were still great, although they got a studio audience in as opposed to the Thames shows which just had the crew's laughter. Mind you, you can still hear the technicians pissing themselves during the Cupid Stunt sketches. As children, TV Cream were unable to watch it because Reg Prescott scared us so much, and even watching repeats in recent years we've still been sitting there squirming with embarrassment. Much more our scene was the pop-science quiz BRAINSTORM, which was actually produced by the TOMORROW'S WORLD team. Losing contestants were evaporated and Ken had a plasma ball on his desk that he got a great deal of pleasure from. After this, though, Ken decided to give up telly and concentrate on radio, with his final appearances coming as a team captain on THAT'S SHOWBUSINESS, where he was the best thing on it. Of course, Ken's BLANKETY BLANK appearances are rightly the stuff of legend ("Athlete's... Phut?") but more or less everything he did on the telly - and the radio - was fan-bloody-tastic.