Biddy Baxter loved her actresses, didn't she? Fielding made it to BLUE PETER in much the same way as Tina Heath and Sarah Greene, ie by starring in a Wednesday 5.10pm drama. At the time, she was BP's youngest ever presenter, and also the last one Biddy chose herself, we think. When she arrived in 1987 to replace Janet Ellis (no, it wasn't Sophie Ellis-Bextor), she didn't look like she'd stick around for long - she was an unexciting 18-year-old with a curly perm and an inability to remember her lines (most notably in the clip shown on the Blue Peter Out-Takes Special, where she attempted to describe the plot of Gruey and got very, very confused). However a haircut and the introduction of autocue, and she started to gel and, along with Curry and Keating, they made a fairly lively team - albeit slightly second division. Our abiding Fielding memory is in the "controversial" Hallowe'en Special in 1989 when she took part in a dance routine to Batdance by Prince. For some reason.

In 1992 she defected to ITV to front WHAT'S UP DOC with the gruesome twosome of Pat Sharp and Andy Crane. TV Cream hardly ever watched this show, so can't tell you much about it, other than the fact she missed most of the second series through maternity leave. However one morning during the third series she showed up on LIVE AND KICKING instead, and didn't appear on What's Up Doc again for reasons we never quite worked out. After that, she never quite made it into grown-up telly, and now mostly presents daytime lifestyle bollocks on Meridian, including house price quiz UNDER OFFER, as dug out by Challenge? the other week. Still, at least it had Fred Dinenage as a captain.

Bernard Manning may have called him "the poor man's Fred Astaire", but did Fred ever operate a potter's wheel, dress up as Sherlock Holmes and give away a fondue set, all in an hour? Brucie did, every Saturday night. He was born in 1928 and was treading the boards at the age of 14 where he'd tap dance and play the ukelele. This over-acheivement continued when he appeared in a pilot for a comedy show in 1958, along with Roy Castle (qv) and was immediately plucked to compere SUNDAY NIGHT AT THE LONDON PALLADIUM. Fronting BEAT THE CLOCK and taking part in slapstick routines with Norman Wisdom turned out to be the perfect grounding for the rest of his career. Sketch and variety shows followed, but by the late '60s his career wasn't quite what it was. Luckily, the Beeb grabbed the rights to THE GENERATION GAME and invited Brucie to present it, and this was undoubtedly his finest hour ("I'll just make a note of that... alcoholic!") In 1978, though, he legged it to LWT and to BRUCE FORSYTH'S BIG NIGHT, which got 15 million viewers, y'know, but nobody liked it. Mind you, we'd love to see the episode where he slagged off the papers for criticising it. We'd also like to see Sammy and Bruce (never Bruce and Sammy, oh no).

Then he went off to Broadway where, according to who you believe, he either knocked 'em dead or died on his arse. But while he was there he watched CARD SHARKS on American TV and arranged to buy the format and remake it for ITV. However after doing so he saw FAMILY FEUD and decided he liked that better, but Lord Bob Monkhouse refused to swap. Still, after changing the format a bit (notably adding the survey questions because the IBA ruled there must be an element of skill rather than just luck), PLAY YOUR CARDS RIGHT was a huge success. Oddly, though, the first series included single contestants rather than couples, and Brucie fronted most of them with a bandaged wrist after falling over on stage ("It looks like an Irish oven glove!"), which he gave regular updates on throughout the series. This carried on for most of the '80s, and was the accompaniment of choice to a big bag of crisps and a bottle of Coke on a Friday night with your grandparents. Throughout the decade he also fronted HOLLYWOOD OR BUST, which was a bit shit, to be honest. In 1987 PYCR came to an end (for now) and instead he launched YOU BET! This was most famous for, of course, Brucie's fantastic You Bet! rap, but he came to tire of the format quite quickly because he couldn't do his usual patter and prancing about.

Then it was off to the Beeb again for a new run of The Generation Game. It was as ace as before, and Brucie continued being a musical pioneer by popularising the Lambada, which we still can't hear without going "Stick out you bum! Stick out your bum!". His handling of the game proves exactly why Davidson was so shit at it - because he didn't realise that during the conveyor belt, you're supposed to tell them all the answers. Plus there were the Brucie Bonuses of course ("I'm so glad you got the slice of pizza - it's a holiday to Rome!") But there was some new stuff devised for the man - like TAKEOVER BID, the yuppie quiz, which wasn't much good apart from the glorious bit at the start of the show where he failed to throw an umbrella at a hatstand, and BRUCES'S GUEST NIGHT, a self-indulgent chat show with his mates, which flopped. Then it was back to ITV again ("I've crossed more channels than P&O!") for a new run of Play Your Cards Right and also THE PRICE IS RIGHT. Brucie purists - of whom we count ourselves - would argue that this move was less successful because they kept on giving him quizzes instead of big massive LE. Not that he didn't try, mind - he pitched a show with Liza Minelli live to Marcus Plantin at the British Comedy Awards, but they never got round to doing it. Then by the end of the decade he was off the air for a bit after falling out with David Liddiment, and we could only hear him on repeats of FIDDLEY FOODLE BIRD, which he narrated with his usual aplomb. But then they settled their differences over a drink in the bar afterwards, and now he's back! Albeit with a dumbed-down Play Your Cards Right, alas. But he's still the best we've got at consoling unsuccessful contestants - "I can't believe those cards, you've been so unlucky!" The man is a legend.

Stu Francis did more for Britain's tracksuit industry in the 1980s than anybody else. He started off as a vaguely camp comedian working the clubs in the 1970s, and hence made a number of appearances on THE COMEDIANS. But (and we're referring to the CRACKERJACK Annual 1982 here) he made his big break in 1978 when he got a starring series on, er, BBC North West. He began to do a lot of work with Berni Flint, and the usual variety guest spot stuff, until 1980 when he got the big gig - fronting Crackerjack. Thanks to Challenge? we've recently been able to relive some of his tenure, and we were a bit disappointed, to be honest. What would happen was that Stu would do a badly-written stand-up routine at the start, full of jokes that no child could ever understand (Charles Aznavour in 1983?!), and then it was onto compering the quiz, changing from nasty shirt to nasty tracksuit to do so. Here Stu would constantly forget what he was supposed to be doing, and blatantly give away the answers to female contestants. Buit you basically watched his era of the 'Jack for the finale when he and the guests would sit under the gunge tubes and get covered in seven shades of shit. But all the contestants went away with "a copy of my new single, Oooh I Could Crush A Grape by Stu Francis, and tickets to see me in pantomime in Bolton!"

When the show was axed in 1984, Stu legged it over to Border Television when he fronted Sunday morning filler KRAZY KITCHEN along with Charlie Carioli, and then in 1988 graduated onto CRUSH A GRAPE, which was more or less Crackerjack under an assumed name and with the games slightly changed to avoid any sort of copyright infringement. It was all recorded in a theatre in Carlisle with a live orchestra who drowned out most of the action, and the credits didn't refer to it as a Border Television Production but, excitingly, a Border Television Outside Broadcast. It was dropped after one series, though, and apart from one appearance on THE BIG BREAKFAST (when it was staffed entirely by recent graduates and hence constantly booking "ironic" guests) in 1996, we haven't seen him since. He's still about somewhere, wrestling with Action Men and jumping over dolls' houses.

It was Malcolm Muggeridge's wife, that well-known TV authority, who opined that Frost had "risen without trace" in the 1960s to become more or less the most famous person on television. He only got the job on TW3 after Brian Redhead decided after the pilot that he wanted to concentrate on current affairs, but he certainly made a huge success of it. After the show's forced ending, he went on to THE FROST REPORT, and then legged it to Rediffusion, where he produced shows for all of his proteges (Cleese, Barker, Corbett) and started to make his name as a serious interviewer - mostly thanks to his interrogation of Dr Emil Savundra ("Well done, Frosty!"). After success in front of and behind the camera, the next step was the boardroom, and he was one of the brains behind LWT. When the new contractor began, Dave was on three nights a week with shows specialising in news, comedy and showbiz, which, as with much of LWT's early output, were a bit of a flop. But they did have to decamp to the WORLD OF SPORT studio one week because of a strike, and there was the encounter with the Yippies, of course - "It's so pathetic, and so childish, and we'll be right back!"

About this time he was also massive in America, and at one point was also fronting a daily show in the USA as well as his British stuff. He'd realised that the only way to achieve and maintain fame on both sides of the Atlantic was to spend your entire life either in a TV studio, or travelling to a TV studio. He calmed down a bit in the 1970s, though, and concentrated on yodelling through the odd global extravaganza like THE NIXON INTERVIEWS. Then Peter Jay got in touch about a new breakfast TV service, and his magic touch saw TVam the clear winner in the franchise battle. When it started in 1983, Dave was main presenter for the first month, conducting hugely self-indulgent interviews with his mates (John Cleese: "It's a pleasure to be here on this mildly historic occasion!" Dave: "Bwaaaahaaahaaaahaaahaaa!"). However this proved to be unpalatable over the Corn Flakes and he was replaced by Nick Owen, though we sometimes wonder how long he'd have bothered presenting the show if he'd been a success - getting up at 4am with his money?

Instead Dave moved to Sunday mornings, where he stayed forever, and famously grilled Thatcher over the sinking of the Belgrano using complicated hand movements to explain the ship's direction. He also fronted the second series of the ludicrous ULTRA QUIZ (later replaced by Stu Francis, which is some shift), Bank Holiday filler THE SPECTACULAR WORLD OF GUINESS RECORDS, and THROUGH THE KEYHOLE, which he still does now using exactly the same dog-eared script. The 1991 franchise battle wasn't great, as both TVam and his new venture CPV-TV were unsuccessful, but without missing a beat he moved his Sunday morning show lock, stock and barrell over to the Beeb. There he remains, failing to be thrown by nose bleeds or his glasses falling apart, although it's actually pretty hard to understand what the hell he's saying these days. It's still worth watching for his theatrical links into the news, though ("At the newsdesk, who better, who better, than Mister William Turnbull Esquire!") The 1990s were also spent fronting paranormal bollocks BEYOND BELIEF WITH URI GELLAR, and the pilot of GOOD FORTUNE, the show attempting to reunite viewers with windfalls, which was only memorable for him telling a punter he was a millionaire, before revealing it was in lira. Still, just to prove Dave was always at the cutting edge, he also presented the first ever programme on BSB. Er...