Jack's Throwback Attack Podcast - S2 E5 - A Chat With Dave Benson Phillips

I'm hugely proud to present this new podcast interview and seeing as it's almost Christmas it's a bit of a special one as it's a chat with a true legend of children's television, it has to be none other than the godfather of gunge himself, Dave Benson Phillips!

You can also listen to the chat on Youtube, Spotify and iTunes

Dave is someone who had been top of my list to talk to the entire time I've done this project so I was very pleased when he agreed to have a chat with me and what a lovely chat it was and very funny too!

I have to say I admire Dave as someone who is a bit of an all rounder and a genuinely nice guy. He loves entertaining children, he gives up a lot of his free time to charity and to meet his fans young and old. He does the telly work but still happily entertains at kids parties and DJ's various retro events. I think that's lovely and very admirable.

Dave presenting Get Your Own Back in the 1990's

In this chat we discuss Playdays, Get Your Own Back, Wake Up in the Wildroom, Playhouse Disney, Petswap and all many of other things. We do also chat about the unfortunate internet hoaxes about Dave that spread in the late 2000's which caused a bit of a dip in his career which the then lead to Dave using the internet to his advantage and picking himself back up and is now very busy with all kinds of work. Including his Get Your Own Back live shows and the mockumentary series Getting Back With Dave Benson Phillips. 

Dave is available to hire for events and his website can be found at http://www.davebensonphillips.com/ and his Twitter is @DaveBensonPhill

How 2 - Now on Amazon Prime!

To the surprise of anyone who remembers it and even to those who worked on it. Classic CITV show How 2 is now available to stream on Amazon Prime.

To refresh your memory How 2 was the revival of How which was popular in the 60's and 70's. It combined interesting facts to do with history, science, technology, art and geography. Packaged in to a fun show for children with demonstrations and experiments. It ran for 16 successful years on CITV between 1990 and 2006. I've previously interviewed both Gareth Jones and Fred Dineage about the show on my podcast.

Well for some reason, Series 2 and 3 have been picked to be available to stream. It's very random and out of the blue but I'm not complaining. Nice to see the show in high quality, the only slight niggle is the awesome theme tune (With the deep voice going "How 2!" throughout) has been replaced with something that sounds like it was knocked up in 5 minutes on a cheap keyboard by pressing the "demo" button. Are there rights issues with the theme tune? Who knows.

Maybe this means more hard to find 90's CITV shows will be available to stream in the not too distant future. We can only dream...

and that's How for Now!

Jack's Throwback Attack Podcast - S2 E4 - A Chat With Francis Wright

Next up on my podcast it's a chat with puppeteer Francis Wright



You can also listen to the chat on Youtube, iTunes and Spotify.

In the 90 minute discussion we talk about Francis's long and varied career in the world of puppetry. From shows such as You and Me, followed by the likes of Grotbags, Wizadora and the fantastic series Bug Alert! which Francis co-wrote.

We also discuss Francis's time as 'The Head' on the original version of Art Attack for 12 years.

Francis with The Head. Alongside producer Nic Ayling.

This is my first chat with a puppeteer (but by no means the last) and it's very interesting to hear how so many wonderful characters were brought to life and what it was like being involved in so many fondly remembered TV series but at the same time remaining pretty much incognito.

Francis runs a blog himself at https://franciswright.wordpress.com/ which is largely about family history but does have some pages relating to his TV work. I have to say Francis is one of the nicest people I've spoken to and is always more than happy to answer questions.

A few weeks after recording the interview we did cross paths at an event about 90's kids TV at the BFI in London.