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I don't think this is worse than "See You When You Get There" which was more awkward in tone shift and with the weird ye olde video clips. That and as I recall for a time, half the UK presenters of the time would have the odd song and dance number in their shows. Brian Connolly, Brucie and some others def would break into little vaudeville numbers during the 90's. Mostly only really survives as part of End of the Show Show on SNT at this point.

I realise it's easy to dump on him but Barrymore was rather well liked and regarded prior to the point it all fell apart and he was one of the first real big popular figures in UK TV to come out as openly gay. Not that it excuses his display of ego, that party or his drink and drug issues of course. He didn't mentally cope well with juggling that and figuring out himself and in addition to self-destruction, he has to live knowing his excesses caused fatal harm to someone else.

Not saying people have to like the guy, just understand that in 1997 people generally thought well of him despite his substance abuse issues (Personally I was a little too young to know he was possibly using some "magic dust" to pep his performance...)

That said I think I'm personally glad Barrymore didn't go all out on the "Am I sexual" line there [ahem]

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I think it's the lack of context the Barrymore clips are presented with that make them seem so jolting and weird. And that they just seem a bit tone deaf, especially the Coolio one. Brucie was much more of a song and dance man than Barrymore, who was much better known for his comedy and banter with Joe public than his song and dance abilities, and I don't think Brucie ever broke into a number during a gameshow, which My Kind of Music prominently was. As for Brian Connolly, ahem... Conley, here's one of his closing numbers from his show that wasn't a game show. Arguably a bit naff but nowhere near as "cringe" if I can use such a word.

I don't think it was ever broadcast on TV, but Murray Walker's full "Magic Moments" video has made it up

Not spontaneously, but if a contestant turned up on Play Your Cards Right and just happened to mention they tap dance or whatever, it would almost always be followed by an Brucie-led ad-hoc short dance session. He wouldn't jump into it just because he fancied it or something, there was almost always a trigger.

The back end of the Generation Game usually saw a spot of spontaneous dancing from Bruce and some other people who happened to wander on, so it probably looked relatively choreographed:

(from 58:12)

Of course the other Brucie dance joke primarily used on PYCR was "When I was a Chippendale..."

I'm sure I remember a few editions of the 1990's generation game where at the end they would make time for Bruce to do a song (like Christmas episodes). But yes it was never like "I'm completely pausing proceedings of the game so I can have my moment" like in the Barrymore clips.

As a side note, gosh there's a lot more episodes of The Generation Game on YT now than there was a few years ago, finally I can show husband more than the one edition posted here.

Anyway here's the muppets doing a skit and song and dance at the 1997 Royal Variety

That's been Barrymore's style, more so in the Strike It Rich days (and the later years of Strike It Lucky), although that game format needed a alternative supplement to make up for the fact it was, well, crap basically. I always thought he was a very good ad-hoc comedian on that, especially when you came across some "unique" people.

Oh, gosh! There is a compilation of funniest moments from Strike It Rich on YouTube I watched, and it had some really strange prizes for the elderly participants... and Michael's reactions to them are priceless - particularly when someone won ROLLER BLADES! 😂

And then, another funny moment was him laughing about someone thinking the name of a book was "The Prince and the Turnip", and the audience laughed raucously...
Oh, how there will never be another person like Barrymore on our screens...

I saw a Children’s (I think it was a Christmas special) edition of Strike It Lucky on Challenge about a year ago and I hadn’t laughed so hard in ages, it was brilliant. The game itself means nothing, it was all about the people and their reactions with Barrymore. If you gave that show/format to anyone else, it would have been a one series show, as it is a weak format, but Barrymore really made it his own.

I watched that compilation this afternoon with my Dad, it's brilliant. My soppy sensitive silly self got a lump in my throat at the end with the excellent Len playing for charity and Michael throwing away the rules to ensure the charity won the jackpot. There were a handful of moments where he did that, one that sticks in my head was when he offered to fund a major operation for a contestant whose father was ill. I've no idea how much of this was Michael and how much was the production team, but the "don't make a face at me" comment suggests it was the former.

Say what you want about him, but you can't deny he had an incredible chemistry with his contestants that hasn't come close to being emulated nowadays.

A TV-am startup, right from the beginning, even including black screen and tone:



Always been interested in knowing exactly what happened at TV-am startup, i.e. what times they switched away from the test card to Camden (especially as TV-am was meant to start at 6, but actually started later for much of the 80s, as can be seen here- did they throw the switch over as if it was a 6AM startup anyway?), what they were putting out before the startup sequence etc, especially if the switch was thrown over before 6AM but they didn't start until 6:15 or 6:25... I think sometimes at weekends they didn't start until 7.

If I'd been a few years older I'd probably have regularly watched all this early morning pre-startup stuff, as it fascinates me.

I remember getting up to record the first TV-am start-up with my tape recorder stuck by my new portable TV - and on a number of other occasions. My dad must have thought I was eager getting up at 5.55am - thank goodness my parents tolerated my fascination with TV. I've still got cassettes going back to when I was 7/8 when I started recorded bits off the telly. Getting that microphone to start at the exact time the themes for ATV Today or ITN News started could be a pain!