The YouTube Files – An Evening With Central.

An Evening With Central (ITV, 1994)

I’m always on the lookout for old adverts online, so I was pleased to discover a video on YouTube recently which was almost an hour’s worth of adverts and continuity from the Central region that was recorded when someone left a tape running one night. I just can’t resist things like this and I had to review it. It was recorded on 10 April 1994 and uploaded to YouTube by “Betaman” so credit goes to them. There is a lot to get through here, so here are some of my highlights. 

We begin with a trail for the film being shown on Wednesday, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Then we have some adverts including McCoy’s, and Kellogg’s Frosties, they’re great. There is an advert for BRMB radio which is interesting because it’s almost identical to the one that would be shown in my region featuring Chris Tarrant promoting his big money Birthday Bonanza competition on his Capital FM Breakfast Show, I didn’t know other stations did it too. It’s not a silly gimmick. 

We then have an advert for Whiskas which stars Smokey the cat. The Daily Express could have your head in a spin as they are running a competition with a star prize of £1million. Then there are trails for Phillip Schofield’s game show Talking Telephone Numbers, and sitcom The 10%ers, from the same team behind Red Dwarf. It ran for two series and I would like to review it but there seem to be no full editions online. 

There is also a trail for an hour-long edition of Coronation Street, designed to coincide with the first edition of BBC1’s EastEnders shown on a Monday after going to three episodes a week. Adverts include Rolo, Clorets with Hale And Pace, and a ruined blouse, before a trail for The Bill, and then a Central cake ident going into an episode of Prisoner: Cell Block H from 1979. 

This features adverts including Pringles and Hugh Dennis for BT. There is then a trail for soap Shortland Street, along with a rather scary Tango advert, and Kellogg’s Bran Flakes. After a trail for Class Act, we then have an ITN summary which gives us a chance to meet the very exciting Phil Roman, before another Central cake ident going into the next programme. 

There is then another scary Tango advert, along with Nestle Clusters, tastes nice. We then have a trail for a repeat of the first episode of Heartbeat, followed by an advert for Chatterbox (the only 0898 phoneline advert in this video, I thought that there would be a lot more of them), and then we have another Central cake ident going into The ITV Chart Show, hooray! 

Then we have an advert for Kellogg’s Corn Flakes that is interesting as it seems to be a parody of a programme viewers might’ve been familiar with if they watched late-night ITV a lot during this time, the low-budget cookery show G*t St*ff*d!! with what appears to be the woman who was in sitcom Spaced. Considering how precious the production team seem to be about the show, seemingly spending most of their time nowadays removing clips of it from YouTube (as I discovered to my cost), I wonder how they got away with that (It also reminds me of when there was a repeat run around 2002/2003 and I visited the show’s official website which just seemed to consist of one page of text in Comic Sans which seems about right). 

There are also adverts for Cadbury’s Fruit And Nut, Peugeot with those two women, and BRMB radio again. Les really wants to give away £5,000! When then have one of those music compilation adverts, this one features the greatest rock tracks on 6 CDs, call now. The ITV Chart Show ends, and we have another music compilation advert, this time for “The Emotion Collection” with 24 original songs. 

After another ITN summary with Phil, it’s time for Riviera (don’t ask), and the realisation that it must be about 3am by now but there are still plenty of adverts around, if not viewers. We also have a trail for Central Sports Special, with crucial points at stake in the football, before a few more short shows including Night Shift which I think managed to have a production team even smaller than G*t St*ff*d!! if such a thing is possible. We conclude with Jobfinder and an advert for a bed that looks like the LWT symbol. Goodnight. 

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