Features
The programme was broadcast live from Southern Television's Northam, Southampton studios, with occasional film inserts. The show took over from Our Show, another Saturday morning kids' programme, and Susan Tully, one of the young hosts of Our Show, came to Southampton and stayed with Banana.
Presenters wore bright yellow T shirts with the Banana logo, and metal circular badges, firstly on yellow backdrops, then mass-produced on red backdrops, were issued to both guests and the child audience chosen from local schools. For the programme, Southern Television built a giant yellow, peeled banana, which they placed in front of their studios, and which often featured in opening titles and in the background of any item where the cameras were taken outside the building. Around six opening title sequences were pre-recorded, backed by Oddie's theme song, including a one-off Christmas Special sequence.
Items featured on the show included a weekly chart rundown, with guest pop groups miming their latest hits, then being interviewed after being forced to slide down half of the main interior set. Children could also write-in with their 'dream activities', which show researchers would attempt to grant. One such feature saw Bill Oddie wrestle a small child in a side-sealed square filled with a foot of mud-coloured 'gunge'.
Saturday Banana featured a version of the children's television game show Runaround, made famous by comedian host Mike Reid, later to star in BBC's EastEnders. But for Banana, one of the programme researchers who doubled as a presenter, Bill Gamon, hosted the madcap quiz.
On one show, West Side Story star George Chakiris, then starring in 'Passion of Dracula' in a London production at the Queen's Theatre, opened the show by being driven, in a horse-drawn hearse, across Northam Bridge (by the studios), bringing startled drivers to a virtual halt.
The opening programme featured a steam train on the railway siding that ran through the car park. The locomotive was Bonnie Prince Charlie borrowed from the Great Western Society at Didcot.
Read more about this topic: Saturday Banana
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