That 12.30 pm slot between Rainbow and News at One on ITV was so precious - if The Sullivans were not on in that slot (just like in the Central region) various programmes from middle-to-low ranking ITV companies turned up here, Tyne Tees had Play it Again which was Desert Island Discs on the TV with films instead of music and some aging actor telling us about it; Anglia had Movie Memories with Roy Hudd and much of the same; and Border had Look Who's Talking with Derek Batey, and an audience full of over pensioners on a day out for good behaviour, and either Kenneth Williams or Jimmy Jewel sitting on a second-hand beige sofa for the best part of 25 minutes, plugging a book or talking about what they did during World War Two.

Of course, we need to pay tribute to the titans of 1980s lunchtime ITV in that slot - Muriel Clark and Anne Brand - they were Grampian TV's stalwarts, a bit like elderly sisters, presenting Pennywise and Do it Herself; the latter allowed housewives to be more independent in the home and taught them how to mend fuses, change car tyres and painting the skirting board without painting their own skirts. A way of being equal with their male counterparts, i.e. their husbands. Clark and Brand's Scottish accents were so difficult to understand south of the border, and it made me wonder whether they were actually Scandinavian or further north than we realised? And of course, Pennywise were giving female viewers advice a la the Viz Top Tips concept, and how long to keep a roast chicken in the oven for. Writing for a leaflet, enclosing an SAE to Grampian's Queen's Cross address was highly recommended. They do remind me of The Two Fat Ladies from 1990s BBC Two schedules as well as Grace Mulligan from Farmhouse Kitchen. And it wasn't Do It! as in Sheelagh Gilbey's TVS series either.

I was baffled that Grampian had used the theme tune from Fame of all shows as Do it Herself's opening and closing tune; I actually thought that the tune was too well-known and famous for a small ITV company to use for one of its rarely networked programmes in the mid 1980s, while Fame was full of American women in pink leggings and green legwarmers, trying to get their big break at Stage School. No mention of Irene Cara in the credits, and to say that it was a number one hit in 1982, it was strange to hear on a programme like this. But then again, Jean-Michel Jarre's Oxygen Part IV introduced us to health issues fronted by Dr Mirian Stoppard at around the same time.

I have an episode of Do it Herself, featuring that sexy and freaky KP Nuts advert which would have been more suitable in an episode of Fame (I have commented on that advert on another thread). We then have some Thames continuity from the legandry Philip Elsmore, and then a "still-as-Granada" Grampian TV ident and then the start of Fame. Or is it another programme? You deicde... I know that it wasn't an ironic move a la the Man in a Suitcase/TFI Friday situation, but not re-recorded just like the Grange Hill/Give us a Clue situation.