Multi-Coloured Swap Shop at 50: John Craven celebrates the "interactive television" pioneer
A condensed version of this article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.
“There were sceptics who said it wouldn’t work – but it did!” Veteran presenter John Craven is talking to Radio Times about Multi-Coloured Swap Shop, BBC One’s Saturday-morning extravaganza that was ground-breaking in so many ways and celebrates its 50th birthday on 2 October.
“To me, it seemed an almost unbelievable proposition,” adds Craven, one of the Shop’s core team and at 86 still a regular presence on Countryfile. “Never before had the BBC broadcast a three-hour-long live show that wasn’t sport, was unrehearsed, didn’t have a script, just a running order, and relied on children phoning in from home. But it did have Noel Edmonds who, as a star DJ on Radio 1, was used to flying by the seat of his pants. This, I thought, is something really new. Today we call it interactive television.”
Edmonds was the calm captain who guided the show through the sometimes-choppy waters of live broadcasting. It featured music, guests, cartoons and competitions, but a key component was “Swaporama”, an outside broadcast segment with Keith Chegwin. A news element was provided by Craven, and Maggie Philbin joined the squad in 1978.
Something like a thousand calls per programme were taken each week by the Swap Shop switchboard – 20,000 over the course of the first series – but only around 30 could be included per show. Something like 800,000 postcards flooded the office at TV Centre, and more than 45,000 swaps were successfully concluded either by phone or live, on Swaporama.
“The bosses told me I was there, as the face of Newsround, to add ‘some grit’ to hours of fun-filled, light-hearted television. But after a couple of weeks, I started to join in the fun as well. I must admit it was good for my image – our young viewers knew I had to be serious with the news, but they saw me having a laugh on Swap Shop. I dressed up as Spock in our version of Star Trek, played an ugly sister in our panto and managed to put on more than 20 of my famous sweaters all at once in a bid for some kind of record. Happy days!”
The programme’s title came from the series’ producer then editor Rosemary Gill. “In a touch of brilliance, she had a batch of coloured cards – one colour for Noel, one for ‘Cheggers’, one for me, one for cartoons, one for guests – and she scattered them on a big board until she had a mix that she liked. Rose understood the challenges of live television [she worked on Blue Peter from 1962-1976] and we all loved and respected her.
"She reminded me of a strict but kind headmistress of an unruly school. When she got the go-ahead, she told me: 'We’ve booked the hall for Saturday mornings!'"
Critical to the show’s success was Craven’s chemistry with his co-presenters. “None of us had met before but we quickly became really good friends [in fact Chegwin was married to Philbin for 11 years] – and that doesn’t necessarily happen when producers throw strangers together. We all had such a lovely time together and Noel and I still keep in touch, though he now lives in New Zealand.”
Resident toys included dinosaur Posh Paws (Swap Shop almost backwards) and a Craven sidekick with an amusing origin story. "On one programme there was a technical hitch that delayed the showing of a cartoon and we had to fill. Soft toys lined the desk, so I ducked underneath and grabbed one of them. It happened to be a lamb, and I wiggled it around so Noel could talk to it until the cartoon was ready.
"After that, Lamb became a quite star; it was modified to become a hand puppet and on the very last show I emerged from under the desk to be revealed as 'Lamb’s other half'."
Swap Shop's opening instalment had an enticing line-up that included Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen dropping in to tease the latter's (then) final story for Doctor Who, which began later that day, The Hand of Fear.
Any favourite guests? "Just about everybody who was anybody wanted to be on Swap Shop. We had Hollywood stars like Christopher Reeve, pop royalty like Paul McCartney, comedy giants such as Billy Connolly... there were concerns he might say something rude on live children’s telly but, of course, he didn’t – he told me later that his children were watching at home. And wildlife legends like David Attenborough. I was as star-struck as the viewers!"
Swap Shop was such a success that it set the template for the shows that followed, from Saturday Superstore (1982–7) and Going Live! (1987–93) to Live & Kicking (1993–2001). It was a case of “anything goes” but within BBC parameters – ITV’s anarchic, flan-flinging rival Tiswas had a very different rulebook. “I don’t think we ever took any notice of Tiswas and I’m sure they didn’t care about us," says Craven. "We were different in every way.”
Nevertheless, filling three hours of TV every week must have been nerve-racking? “It certainly was for me because I was used to working on my own in a small news studio. And there I was, walking into a big showbiz studio 30 minutes before we went on air, with bands rehearsing, cameras working out moves, the production team rushing around everywhere – and Noel, cool as a cucumber, going through a check-list at his desk.”
Any touch-and-go moments? “Noel and I lived quite close to each other and one Saturday we were travelling in together and I got completely lost. We made it to the studio with only a few minutes to spare.
"Once, I was holding some letters from viewers that I was about to read out when Vincent, Noel’s one-eared goat who was making a guest appearance, ate them. The beauty of Swap Shop was that when things went wrong, as they often did, we made it part of the show. When a cameraman bumped into the set he was given an L plate, on air.”
The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here.
Check out more of our Entertainment coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.