People who were all over TV but then disappeared

[pebblethefish]

I always felt like that about Barry Cryer. When I was a kid he was everywhere on panel shows (well, Call my Bluff and Give us a Clue, but probably others that I can't remember) but I'd never seen him do whatever it was that he did.

[Felicity, I guess so]

Wasn’t he always more of an ideas/scripts man..?

[Capybara]

I always felt like that about Barry Cryer. When I was a kid he was everywhere on panel shows (well, Call my Bluff and Give us a Clue, but probably others that I can't remember) but I'd never seen him do whatever it was that he did.

Jokers Wild..

[Snake Plissken]

Yes. Aside from ISIHAC, he was always writing / polishing scripts for pretty much every BBC comedy.

[Stumpy Pepys]

I always felt like that about Barry Cryer. When I was a kid he was everywhere on panel shows (well, Call my Bluff and Give us a Clue, but probably others that I can't remember) but I'd never seen him do whatever it was that he did.

There were a few of those [writers] who always popped up on game shows--John Junkin, Denis Norden, Frank Muir …

[longeared]

I sat next to Barry Cryer on the Tube once, he got off at the next stop.

Syd Little got mentioned up thread - he currently runs a pub somewhere on the Fylde peninsula.

[Jah Womble]

Lorraine Chase pretty quickly became game show fodder didn't she?

Poor girl didn't even receive any royalties from the Cats UK hit. (Given that she had no involvement in it, like.)

And a duet on a song called “Robot Man” by... Kenny Lynch and Chaka Khan. I haven’t listened to it, because it will be awful, but it gladdens my heart that such a thing exists.

I'm struggling to imagine any kind of conversation between the two of them - but I'm with you that this being a genuine conceit is a very fine thing indeed.

[Sits]

Dani Behr
Denise van Outen

But bearing in mind I’ve been overseas since 1998, they could still be all over the TV.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

Kenny Lynch was always "Tarby's golfing buddy" to me.

Speaking of which, Tarbuck disappeared pretty much overnight as well - rising only for the funeral of famous Liverpudlians. His fall was as swift as that of Cannon and Ball and Little and Large. Possibly could have become a game show host but Monkhouse took that slot (superbly, I might add).

Are you forgetting "Winner Takes All"?

I remember the adverts he used to do for some brand of microwave ovens, which seemed to suggest you could cook a whole Sunday roast dinner in one, in one go, thereby freeing up more time to get tanked up in the pub beforehand.

[Sits]

Lynch didn’t only play golf and pro celeb football. Back in my days reading The Maidenhead Advertiser there was an annual celebrity cricket match in Bray and Lynchy would always be there with Parky et al.

[Lucy Waterman]

I'm struggling to imagine any kind of conversation between the two of them - but I'm with you that this being a genuine conceit is a very fine thing indeed.

I feel like it needs a promo with a Tommy Vance or Peter Dickson v/o. KHAN! LYNCH! WAKEMAN! RICE! ORWELL!!

[Snake Plissken]

I feel like it needs a promo with a Tommy Vance or Peter Dickson v/o. KHAN! LYNCH! WAKEMAN! RICE! ORWELL!!

Can you imagine the arguments about the order? Only thing that all of them could agree on was that ORWELL! came last.

[Jah Womble]

Are you forgetting "Winner Takes All"?

...and Tarby's Frame Game. I used to watch that with my cousin, purely for the comedic value of Tarbuck's complete lack of effort in presenting and/or interest in the show per se. Somehow, it ran to three series.

[Nocturnal Submission]

If true, Kenny's songwriting creativity seems to have peaked in the '70s:

The same year (1978) he wrote '"Love Crazy", the theme used for Carry On Emmannuelle, and "You Can't Fight It", the vocal version of the theme to the John Carpenter film Assault on Precinct 13. He also oversaw the production for Hylda Baker and Arthur Mullard's comedy version of You're the One That I Want which reached 22 in the UK charts in September 1978.

[Jah Womble]

One kind of wonders just how much 'overseeing of its production' that particular record would've required...

[Satchmo Distel]

By the early 80s Kenny Lynch's career seemed to consist of being on programmes and, er. that's it. I vividly remember a page of the Not 1983 calendar (as in Not the Nine O'clock News) that read "Thought for the Day: what does Kenny Lynch do exactly?" Apparently his chief occupation thereafter was playing in charity football matches.

A well-known online reference source states that Lynch formed a songwriting partnership with Buster Mottram, which is either a delicious piece of Iannucci-couldn't-make-it-uppery or some nifty Wiki-sabotage.

It is a true story. Click the image [sourced from http://www.45cat.com/record/sat508]:



In 1964, Lynch collaborated with modern jazz musician Tubby Hayes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AS5Kdy0XxQ

Lynch was the first person apart from The Beatles to release a Lennon-McCartney song. They were touring with him in early 63.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HyjUZ60AdI

[wittoner]

One kind of wonders just how much 'overseeing of its production' that particular record would've required...

Judging by Baker & Mullard's legendarily shambolic TOTP appearance to promote the record (after which sales plummeted) I would guess it required one
hell of a lot of overseeing and then some.

[Nocturnal Submission]

Judging by Baker & Mullard's legendarily shambolic TOTP appearance to promote the record (after which sales plummeted) I would guess it required one
hell of a lot of overseeing and then some.

Shambolic! It was glorious!

[Stumpy Pepys]

Denise van Outen

I'm also not up-to-speed with British TV, but she was memorably in Run for Your Wife with Danny Dyer. (UK box office, £747.)

[Jah Womble]

Judging by Baker & Mullard's legendarily shambolic TOTP appearance to promote the record (after which sales plummeted) I would guess it required one
hell of a lot of overseeing and then some.

Well - that was kind of my point. Baker and Mullard's fees notwithstanding, the entire sorry project looked as though it had been put together on a budget of next-to-sod-all.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

I'm also not up-to-speed with British TV, but she was memorably in Run for Your Wife with Danny Dyer. (UK box office, £747.)

She's around a fair bit - she had a part in Eastenders not so long ago (maybe still does), does West End, and is the voice over for what I believe is known as TOWIE. She had a bit more to her than a lot of those 90s presenters, and probably finds it a lot easier to get work than most.

[Patrick Thistle]

Although now someone has mentioned Danny Dyer... is he still in Eastenders?

[Patrick Thistle]

Ross Kemp seems to have disappeared.

[Nocturnal Submission]

She's around a fair bit - she had a part in Eastenders not so long ago (maybe still does), does West End, and is the voice over for what I believe is known as TOWIE. She had a bit more to her than a lot of those 90s presenters, and probably finds it a lot easier to get work than most.

She was on Celebrity Gogglebox with her bloke a month or two ago, albeit mainly chugging large glasses of wine and making simple comments.

[steveeeeeeeee]

With Philip Scholfield probably being the most ubiquitous TV presenter in the UK (Winkleman seems to be in decline) it's interesting to think of the big names who followed his career path but fell by the wayside, such as Sarah Greene and Andy Crane.

Other than that, Michael Aspel presented everything on ITV in the 80s, but I imagine he just retired. Aneka Rice was another one, before her brief stint on Strictly.