O.T.T.
O.T.T. ("Over The Top") was a late-night adult version of the anarchic ATV children's show Tiswas, but made by its ITV franchise successor Central Independent Television. It was broadcast at 11.00pm on Saturday nights for one series in 1982. O.T.T. was created and presented by Chris Tarrant, and also starred ex-Tiswasians John Gorman, Lenny Henry and Bob Carolgees. Helen Atkinson-Wood was the female sidekick replacement for Sally James, who stayed behind to present the concurrent and final series of Tiswas alone.
Origins
The programme's origins can be traced to Independent Broadcasting Authority worries about the increasingly risqué content of Tiswas. To find an outlet for this aspect of Tiswas's content, Tarrant joined up with Gorman, Henry and James in a live tour of nightclubs and colleges called The Four Bucketeers. The success of this tour (plus album, single and Top of the Pops appearance) made them realise that an appreciative adult audience existed. On 28 March 1981, Tarrant, Carolgees, Gorman and Henry left Tiswas for good to start work on O.T.T..
In January 1982 Chris Tarrant told Kenneth Kennaugh: "We know it has enormous potential appeal for adults. Quite what that appeal was remained remarkably ill defined." The same article stated that Lenny Henry "doesn't know what he will be doing in tonight's O.T.T.. But one thing is sure. When the show ends he'll be standing under a hot shower - 'just to recover' ... Henry loves the uncontrolled humour where even he never knows what is going to happen next. Tiswas was marvellous to work on. It was a new style of lunatic humour, and we got away with murder. When I first started Tiswas, my nerves used to go before each show simply because it was live. But now, in OTT I just get on with it."
Series
Later, in his book 'Great Bus Journeys of the World' Alexei Sayle said of his time on the show "I was good, Lenny Henry was good, the show was packed with vibrant life... it was happy to come from Birmingham and not tainted with Londoniswhereitsatism... it was very popular, with 7-8 million viewers...".
The name OTT
An abbreviation of the phrase "over the top". The origins of the name being chosen are uncertain: Rick Wakeman told an interview with Tiswas Online that he was a member of:
- "an elite showbiz club, called 'Over The Top' in the late seventies. I became chairman and the president was a record plugger called Allan James, who also used to supply some of the music acts for Tiswas. We would all meet up in restaurants. There were about 20 of us in all, and whilst the evening meal would start quite normally, it usually ended in ejection or sometimes arrest as things became very similar to that of the Tiswas programme. We called ourselves the Over the Top Club and that indeed was where the name and idea for the spin-off TV series of the same name came from, hosted by Chris Tarrant. Membership was elite and we were banned eventually from at least nine restaurants to my knowledge."[1]
Episode guide
12 episodes and one compilation finale were broadcast between 2 January and 3 April 1982 [2]
References
- ↑ http://www.tiswasonline.com/interviews.php?section=guest_stars&article=rickwakeman
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
External links
- Comedy Guide - O.T.T. bbc.co.uk
- O.T.T. discussion forum at Tiswas Online
- Tiswas Online page on related shows (including OTT)
- Rare British Television Reviews - A detailed look at the last ever episode of OTT
- Off The Telly - The Glory Game - The Rise of Saturday Night Television Part 5 (includes section on OTT)
