Invers, as he must be referred to by law, has been The New Des for many years now, yet still hasn't managed to dislodge Steve Rider from the BBC Sport hotseat, instead always being the one sent off to the secondary game to stand on the touchline and get drowned out by the loudspeakers. He's most famously a radio man, of course, starting off at Radio Lincolnshire before arriving at network sports department during the last few years of sport going out on Radio 2. When it all transferred to the new Radio 5 in 1990, he was the number one sports guy, fronting the Saturday afternoon marathon, and then when Five Live began in 1994, he got his own afternoon slot as well as fronting all the big sporting events - including a Wednesday night slot until just a few years ago. But of course it's his telly work we're interested in, which started in the early 1990s when he did some part-time work for Sky Sports. But his first Beeb gig was on RUGBY SPECIAL, and indeed union is his specialist subject, leading to hundreds of boring letters from league evangelists when he dares to present a Challenge Cup match and doesn't give it the gravitas or enthusiasm that they feel it deserves.

Invers' smooth, laid-back image means that when he started on the GRANDSTAND rota, he was always on Sundays and didn't get a Saturday gig until 2000. Perhaps the high point of his Beeb career has been during that year's Olympics, where he fronted the coverage of handball, sailing and the like that went out in the afternoon here in the UK, and thus involved him working overnight in Sydney. For the first few days he was paired with Steve Cram, and they worked really well together ("Why are there so many swimming records being broken? It's not because the pool goes downhill"), and it was still fun when he bantered with Claire Balding for the rest. He came over as a sort of buffoonish version of Des, always happy to do a crap pun or wear a daft hat. Hence why he was the ideal man to front THE WORLD'S STRONGEST MAN, and it's low-rent spin-off BRITAIN'S SPIN-OFF, which he's done for the last few years and where every episode ends up with him getting pushed in a swimming pool. Every single time. And speaking of unimportant, faux-sporting events, he's also linkman for the coverage of Audley Harrison's fights, ho ho. What next for Invers? Well, we'd quite like to see John Inverdale's Generation Game, but they'd have to have a sofa on the set for him to lean back on and be smooth. And a swimming pool for him to be pushed into, of course.

Clive is TV Cream's all-time hero for his sterling work as TV critic for the Observer for ten years between 1972 and 1982. CLIVE JAMES ON TELEVISION, a book of his finest columns, is forever taken off the shelves at TVC Towers, mostly because we tend to rip bits out of it every five minutes for the Creamguide and Creamup mail-outs ("Really *driving* those trucks!"). He started off on telly in the 60s with his pals from the Cambridge Footlights on various satirical revues, and then in the 70s he appeared alongside Peter Cook to provide comedic interludes for, amazingly, Tony Wilson's regional rock show SO IT GOES. He also did a load of work for LWT, most notably on 'TV gossip column' SATURDAY NIGHT PEOPLE, sitting at a hexagonal desk alongside Janet Street-Porter and Rissole Harty. Eventually in 1982 he gave up his column, claiming "It is time I quit my chair, before I start reviewing my own programmes". His own programmes included the show that a generation of children were allowed to stay up late on Saturday night to see, CLIVE JAMES ON TELEVISION. Here he linked clips from foreign TV shows - including, of course, ENDURANCE - and was a hundred times better than his successors in that slot, Keith Floyd (who hated doing it anyway) and Chris Tarrant. He also did a number of travelogues, normally always at the Monaco Grand Prix or Miss World.

Then in the late 80s he legged it to the Beeb, fronting SATURDAY (and later SUNDAY) NIGHT CLIVE, first on BBC2, then on BBC1. Indeed, TV Cream vividly remembers the first show on BBC1 in 1991 was preceded throughout the evening by Clive and guest Mel Brooks appearing between every programme, with Mel asking if it was time for the show yet. At the time, the mix of telly clips, guest interviews and a comedian getting fed cues for topical gags was a fairly entertaining format, and he did the same sort of thing on New Years Eve for many years. Then in 1995 he set up Watchmaker Productions and legged it to ITV to do exactly the same thing only this time called THE CLIVE JAMES SHOW, with added Margerita Pracatan ("Please welcome.... Mr Clibe Javes!"). He also did CLIVE JAMES ON TV, which was basically clips from old TV programmes with Clive making quips between them, which was notable only for screening the best clip of Peter Powell we've ever seen. His last series in 1999 went under the original name of MONDAY NIGHT CLIVE, but by that time it had all got a bit stale., despite the presence of one Andrew Collins on writing duties. After a two-hour millennium special, Clive announced he was giving up telly, and instead started interviewing people in his front room for his website, which were later reshown on Artsworld. In any case, despite the later years, we love Clive for telling the world exactly why Dickie Davies and David Vine were so great. We'll even forgive him for being partly responsible for Gareth McLean.

Sal's first TV break came in the early 1970s when she was plucked by LWT to link episodes of THUNDERBIRS and THE GROOVIE GHOULIES on SATURDAY SCENE, an embryonic magazine show which was more like the Broom Cupboard than SM:TV. Eventually the links started to get longer and the budget got a bit bigger, and Saturday Scene became a fully-fledged show. Watching one week was Chris Tarrant, who decided to poach her as the new presenter of TISWAS, so she moved from swinging London to dowdy Birmingham, and one of the finest double acts on TV was born. Sal's role in the whole programme was basically to sit next to Chris smouldering, and try and hold the show together while he went off to the gallery with a custard pie. She also got to do all the big interviews and had her own Pop News slot (introduced by a bit of cardboard with 'Pop News' written on it) where she would read a load of tour dates off a piece of paper, whether they be for Frank Sinatra or Motorhead. Of course, she wasn't always the straightman - she could do magic tricks as well, such as walking through a postcard ("Walk through a postcard!!!! It can't be done!!!!!"), but as the regular appearances in readers' polls in Sounds and the NME illustrated, most viewers weren't that bothered what she did. Alas, contractual reasons meant she wasn't able to join Chris, Len, Bob and the rest when they quit to join OTT, and instead she had to rescue the final series of the 'was while Gordon Astley and Fogwell Flax tried to ruin the whole thing. Inevitably this turned her off telly for good, and she went to run a school uniform shop. But she's always happy to appear on a clip show - "I would like to see Sally James with a whole bucket of semolina thrown over her from close range!"

As Clive James (see!) pointed out, Kid was the quintessential Radio 1 DJ, "right down to the American accent". The self-styled 'likeable Canadian' started off in his home country before moving to Europe and fronting the fantastically-named Jensen's Dimensions on Radio Luxembourg. Stints at a number of local radio stations followed, and his first telly work, including Granada's teatime rock show 45. Then in the late 70s it was onto Radio 1, and hence to TOP OF THE POPS - "Good to see Althia and Donna doing so well in this country, with their first single release in this country!" By 1980 he was on the teatime shift and progressing steadily, before one day a big cheese at CBS rang him up, having seen a schools programme he'd done about Martin Luther King, and invited him to present a nightly current affairs show, which he did for a year. However he decided his missed the UK and moved back, returning to Radio 1 and Pops. This second stint saw him move to the proto-indie evening slot, where he was on before John Peel, and he was, for a time, the only Radio 1 DJ who would volunteer to present live episodes of Top of the Pops, as everyone else was shit-scared. But his finest hour came thanks to Michael Hurll's new policy of having two presenters each week instead of one. In early 1983, he was paired with John Peel, and for the next eighteen months The Rhythm Pals would raid the costume department and take the piss out of the whole show, making it absolutely essential viewing - "Next up are a duo who I think have modelled themselves on us!" "Yes, still at number one, it's Wham!"

Kid left Radio 1 for the second time in 1984 when he joined Capital - John was upset, but couldn't blame him as he was now earning three times as much as him. He was the first presenter of the Network Chart, back when it was sponsored by Nescafe and was actually listenable, and also presented CHILDREN'S ITV quiz WORLDWISE, which he presented from a floating armchair, which was more exciting than anything else in the programme. When he left he was replaced by Emma Freud, and she was rubbish - probably because they lost the armchair. He also took over from the scary Alastair Pirrie on RAZZMATAZZ, and when Tyne Tees were given the contract for ITV's new pop show, Kid was the obvious choice to front THE ROXY. He did so in his slick, ultra-professional manner, but alas the show was pretty poor and it was axed within a year, after Kid had moved behind the scenes. Since then he's gone back to the wireless, on Capital for many years, then Heart FM for a bit (as well as fronting the radio show that was piped in every branch of WH Smith), and now back on Capital. And he's even forgiven John Peel for the time his wife fell through the hole in his floor.