No talent to deceive

If you're one of those who thinks it's time for Neighbours to vanish from BBC1's afternoon schedule, allow me to remind you of the alternative. Back in the Sixties and Seventies, the 5.30pm Thursday slot was dominated by cheap Eastern European imported films (bought in at 10 zlotys a kilometre), with "stars" whose names would not have looked out of place on an optician's eye chart.

Remember Janacek Grosczinzky in The King of Miroslavia's Magic Turnip? Jirka and his Giant Pike? Placek and the Terrible Twins? Or the classic Pietr the Goatherd involving androgynous peasant boys, gaggles of milkmaids and a bearded grandfather with wooden teeth and a penchant for wild and untamed histrionics, whose speech was sloppily lip-synched by passe, Rada-trained, Alvar Lidell-style actors saying: "Do not be naughty Pietr, eat up your raw beet. We are fortunate to have such an abundance of root vegetables. Eat, eat, and forget your foolish goat which has strayed onto the hillside."? So, do you still want Neighbours to go?

A distinctive feature of those Eastern European imports was the wobbly, wowing musical accompaniment, sounding like a Bartok LP that had been left out in the sun, and performed by the Szczecinek District Comrades' Parkinson's Disease Orchestra.

Those musicians had a vibrato so wide you could drive a Trabant through it, yet they still sounded like the LSO when compared to the Bob Sharples Orchestra, the resident ensemble on Opportunity Knocks (another hardy perennial in the TV schedules during the Sixties and Seventies).

Surviving tapes of what was once Britain's premier lack-of-talent contest have been quietly maturing in the can for several decades, and the 1978 vintage is now ideal for viewing, which is presumably why the final edition was shown around midnight on Monday, as part of the "cult selection" on Challenge TV. It's a channel name which I've always considered to be deeply ironic, because (although it screened some fascinating archive shows over Easter) most of its output is surely the least challenging television transmitted anywhere in Britain.

This being the last-ever programme with Hughie Green at the helm, the occasion was an avowedly valedictory one, justifying its own 22-year existence on ITV with a parade of the very finest stars it had discovered. So it was that I thrilled again to the sight of Tony Holland, the musical muscle man, gyrating his shoulder blades to the strains of Wheels Cha-Cha, and reminding us of an era when peristaltic convulsion was regarded as a branch of light entertainment.

There, too, were the prematurely ginger Millican and Nesbitt, Freddie "Parrot Face" Davies, Little and Large (to tell them apart, just remember that Sid Little was the thin unfunny one, while Eddie Large was the fat unfunny one), and Peters and Lee, performing both of my least favourite types of music: country and Western. And as sure as Stevie Wonder's favourite colour is corduroy, so I'm certain that Lennie Peters must have been genuinely blind, because no sighted man would have allowed himself to be dressed in such a ridiculous outfit.

But it wasn't all lowbrow entertainment, dear me no. "Opportunity Knocks has presented opera, ballet and classical music," Hughie reminded us, before introducing "Britain's highest-paid poetess, Pam Ayres," the woman responsible for the poem I Wish I'd Looked After Me Teeth (how I wish someone had knocked them down her throat years ago, so far that she had to clean them via her tradesman's entrance).

"So many great names made by this show," continued Mr Green, reminding us of "people you and I will never forget", such as Clara Evelyn, Tammy Jones and Berni Flint, not to mention Bobby Crush and the Grumbleweeds (and please, let's not mention them).

Indeed, judging from the performances we saw, Lena Zavaroni was the only genuine talent that the programme ever threw up (if you'll pardon the expression). Sadly, 1978 was just before her anorexia set in, a wretched and ultimately fatal disorder that meant she ended up as the only British artiste whose photo could fit on the spine of her records.