Cheggers Plays Pop: Missing Episode Found!

Remember the pop-quiz-cum-assault-course game show Cheggers Plays Pop? Well, if you do then Paul has some exciting news for you…

One of the first things my wife told me when I met her was “I was on Cheggers Plays Pop”. Although not on the quiz team, she played one of the Jeux Sans Frontières style games. Along with embarrassing baby photos, her mum was keen to show me the VHS tape she’d proudly made of it.

With the age of VHS drawing to a close, my mother-in-law had her favourite tapes digitised and saved to DVDs. She gave it to us tacked onto the end of disc 2 of our wedding video. We’d been showing people that DVD on our trusty Blu-ray player for a decade or so, thinking nothing more of it.

Until now!

Yesterday I was reading a blog post by the broadcaster, author and David Bowie/Clangers expert Tim Worthington. He talked about a children’s TV show called How Do You Do! which, thanks to the BBC’s penchant for deleting things, is missing several episodes. At the end of the article, he called on anyone with old recordings to check their tapes for missing episodes.

“Hmmm,” I said to no-one in particular. “I wonder if mine is one such episode…”

Well…

It turns out that Mrs C’s appearance in series 7 episode 6 (episode 63 overall) was one such rarity! Jinkies!

It was broadcast on 22nd May 1984, hosted as always by the late Keith Chegwin. That week’s team captains were The Selecter singer Pauline Black and star of the sci-fi drama/game show Captain Zep: Space Detective, Ben Ellison. Pauline Black was captain for my wife’s team, Brooksbank School from Elland in West Yorkshire.

The musical acts were Eddy Grant singing Romancing The Stone, Haircut 100’s Nick Heyward singing Love All Day and, in an extremely rare UK TV appearance, the German singer Peter Schilling performing Major Tom (Coming Home).

I’ve been in touch the good folk from TV Brain to discuss getting a copy to the BBC. I’ll update on that when I have more news.

But for now, enjoy this episode which has most likely not been seen by anyone (apart from the three thousand people my wife and mother-in-law have shown the VHS to) since 1984…