VISION ON SOUND EPISODE 114 - TX DECEMBER 11 2022 - HOAXES AND GHOSTWATCHES

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on December 11th 2022

A few weeks ago, around about HALLOWEEN, WARREN CUMMINGS and I gathered for one of our little chats about our recent television highs and lows, and, as is often the case with us, we started out with little in the way of a plan, but just thought it might be nice to see where the conversation took us.

With thoughts of GHOSTIES and GHOULIES being much on WARREN’S mind, he felt like talking about BBC’s GHOSTWATCH, the controversial pseudo-documentary drama first broadcast on HALLOWEEN night in 1992 which featured MICHAEL PARKINSON, SARAH GREENE, MIKE SMITH and CRAIG CHARLES (amongst others) trying – and in a large part succeeding – to terrify the nation in a faked live broadcast that attempted to produce proof of certain psychic phenomena from a supposedly haunted house in Northolt, Greater London.

The programme’s now legendary status as a television phenomenon seems to be mostly down to the estimated one million telephone calls that the BBC received in reaction to this much misunderstood drama, when a large proportion of its audience were convinced that it was genuine, and, despite several home media releases over the years, perhaps because of this hullaballoo, the programme itself was never repeated.

Regular listeners to VISION ON SOUND might well be wondering just why this wasn’t a show we put out at the end of October, during the season of the witch, but, as you know, I’m generally not all that great at tying the show to specific moments in the calendar, and we recorded a little too near to that date to get the show out in time.

However the conversation does also touch upon the notion of the Christmas Ghost Story, which makes it slightly appropriate to THIS time of the year. We also talk about several other television spoofs, and, fortunately we even natter briefly about MORTIMER AND WHITEHOUSE: GONE FISHING which takes us off into far friendlier waters, and means that I, for one, might manage to get to sleep tonight.

PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.