Poor old TV Times. Always the cheap and nasty downmarket relation to the aesthete's choice Radio Times, and never held in as high regard, nor indeed any regard at all. It might have told you what time Skiboy was on, but it did so surrounded by acres of lightweight tabloidy frivolity, assembled on the assumption that viewers would be less interested in how a programme was made than what Bruce Forsyth might be able to throw together with some 'leftovers' and a comedy oversized chef's hat.
Celebrated neither in its time nor in retrospect, the Second Division status of TV Times is evidenced by the fact that while every last vaguest mention of Doctor Who in Radio Times has long since been collated, anthologised and scrutinised in forensic detail, its commercial counterpart could concievably have published an article in which Patrick Macnee and Patrick McGoohan explained how to turn base metals into gold using just some 'leftovers' and a comedy oversized chef's hat and nobody would ever even have noticed. In fact, we can't be entirely sure that they didn't.
What we can be sure of, though, is that - especially during the sixties and seventies - TV Times frequently ran items that did it absolutely no favours whatsoever. Rampant sexism, rabid right-wing pontificating, racially offensive adverts, retrospectively ill-advised billings for certain celebrities, they could all be found within its pages and over the next couple of instalments we're going to be taking a look at what horrors you might well stumble across when trying to work out which came first out of City Beneath The Sea and Secret Beneath The Sea. Please leave all notions of Safe Spaces, No-Platforming and Trigger Warnings at the door. You have been warned...
Although it was certainly ITV who kept the ghastly, patronising, insulting, pervgusting and above all not in any way 'sexy' spectre of Miss World haunting our televisions into the late eighties and well past the point where anyone with a shred of decency had started to decry it as outmoded sexist claptrap, we have to be fair here and point out that it was actually the politically correct lefty biased BBC who started the whole depressing business, probably as part of a plot to misrepresent Jeremy Corbyn, and continued to show it up until the late seventies, even after 1970 host Bob Hope had been attacked with flourbombs by people shouting about it really being called Dalek Cutaway or something. Throughout that time, however, ITV weren't content to be left standing outside the party, and attempted to get in on the action by launching their own annual - and, it must be said, slightly less glamorous - Miss TV Times award.
In a typical scenario, here's 1964 winner Valerie Martin of Lancashire, hoisting her crown aloft in honour of her £100 prize plus free clothes and a 'TV Test', which doesn't seem to have netted her any actual roles, even in TV's Turn Out The Lights. Valerie would probably be smiling a good deal less if she knew that this photo was being used not just to launch the search for her successor, but to announce that they would walk away with almost five times her winnings. She must have been absolutely delighted. Still, send that swimsuit pic in NOW and you too could pocket a crisp tenner!!
Just in case Valerie's putative successors were worrying their pretty little heads about it, the rules were spelt out in no uncertain terms on the following page. Just so it was all nice and legal and above board, entrants had to be between seventeen and a half and twenty five, prepared to wear evening or cocktail wear and a swimsuit, and content to be judged on beauty, face, hair, teeth, figure and deportment. All that they had to do in return was declare that they were neither an employee of the magazine or related to Ian TV Times himself, consent to waiving all rights over use of their image, and agree to abide by the rules set down by Mecca Ltd, who in somewhat shadowy fashion are only just entering into proceedings now. So what are you waiting for? Tell the world your name, address, age, occupation and bust and hip size, and you too could get to the regional finals without making a personal appearance! Meanwhile, what happened to all those photos afterwards is something we're best not speculating on...
Still, we shouldn't be too judgemental. Although we can clearly see such contests for what they are now, back then they were largely considered to be harmless fun family entertainment, and here's a reminder for any stray hopefuls to get their entry in while there's still time, underneath a headline that in no way looks unfortunate or ill-advised in retrospect. And if you're wondering what that 'Bedtime Story' was all about, I've read the whole thing and have no idea either.
As a bit of a change of pace, taken from comic strip-fulled close relation TV Comic rather than from TV Times itself, here's TV Favourites Eccles and Bluebottle from The Telegoons urging readers to 'Send 9/11'. And if you think that's in slightly dubious taste, you haven't seen what else was lurking in TV Times at the height of the Swinging Sixties...
