Junkin

[Messypockets]

Hi all

Does anyone remember a mad show hosted by the late great John Junkin in the early 70's? featuring guests and a weekly audience of 100 women (usually 'housewives'). Individuals from the audience were invited to do something they'd always wanted to do, usually with a 'holiday camp' style twist that involved varying degrees of anarchy and often mess. Would love to know if any pics survive.

[Trouso]

Bar brief references to it in his obituaries in the online broadsheets there's sadly nothing out there other than anecdotes and fiction. Certainly no pictures - let alone videos.

This became a little obsession of mine last year but I pretty much exhausted all lines of enquiry so far (Hence my 'mock-up' here based on anecdote).

The only hope is if a private collector turns up an early home video recording of the show - which is very unlikely considering it was 1971-74 and not even broadcast nationally.

Would be great to hear some anecdotes from anyone who actually saw it.

Trouso

[rightonblue]

I do remember the show Junkin, mainly because the execution never quite lived up to the promise. The audience and topics would be similar to Paul O'Grady's chat show. I can recall three audience participation activities;

1. The audience were told everyone had a custard pie under their seat and were invited to pie the person next to them. I'd say the audience was about 200 people, mainly women. The result was pandemonium, with the cameras catching relatively little of the action and what you saw was a bunch of people with varying degrees of shaving foam on them.
2. A 'game where a women from the audience was to have cake batter poured on her, but she was given a shower cap and most of it ended on him.
3. For some reason a woman in a short low cut dress had items tipped inside the front of her dress. There must have been a French theme, as all I can remember being poured, were a plate of frogs legs and a bottle of red wine. At the end she admitted she had been prepped and told to wear a swimsuit under her dress.

Don't know how many episodes there were, and maybe there were some better scenes, but I don't remember seeing them, and this was before VCR's

[Messypockets]

Sadly you are probably right. The reality may not live up to the fantasy. I hope there were some gems in the show. We can but hope. There was some great messy stuff on 70's TV and Junkin may have been no different... with any luck

[Trouso]

Thanks for the reply, Rightonblue. It's sadly, much as I feared - but grateful to you for being honest. I might just stick with the fantasy versions!

Perhaps, like the untimely death of Spinal Tap's first drummer, it's a mystery 'best left unsolved'.