Beadle's About

{{Infobox television

| image =

| genre = Comedy

| creator = Ralph Edwards

| presenter = Jeremy Beadle

| producer = {{Plainlist|

Keith Stewart (1986)
Richard Hearsey (1987)

}}

| theme_music_composer = Laurie Holloway

| country = United Kingdom

| language = English

| num_series = 10

| num_episodes = 93

| location = The London Studios

| runtime = 30 minutes (inc. adverts)

| company = LWT in association with Ralph Edwards Productions and Action Time

| channel = ITV

| first_aired = {{Start date|1986|11|22|df=y}}

| last_aired = {{End date|1996|09|14|df=y}}

| related = Game for a Laugh

}}

Beadle's About was a British television programme hosted and written by Jeremy Beadle, where members of the public became victims of practical jokes behind hidden cameras. It was produced by LWT for ITV, and ran on Saturday nights from 22 November 1986 to 14 September 1996.

Format

The format originated as an element of the show Game For A Laugh, which Beadle co-presented. Many of the practical jokes involved someone's car or van secretly being swapped for an identical one, and then having a disaster befall it, such as exploding, falling into the sea, or being dropped from a great height, as the owner of the vehicle looked on in horror. Another common prank was for unauthorised building works to be carried out close to, or within the victim's home or garden.

After a few minutes, Beadle would appear in disguise (typically, as a policeman or some other figure of authority, and often wearing a fake beard on top of his natural beard), and interact with the shell-shocked and/or irate victim. He would subtly drop more and more hints and would remove his disguise and point a stick microphone at the person. As the public were familiar with Beadle from the earlier show Game for a Laugh, they would then immediately realise they had been had, often with the words "I don't believe it!". A follow-up series was entitled 'It's Beadle!' which followed a similar format.{{cite web|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/jeremy-beadle-loved-and-loathed-tv-prankster-776730.html|title=Jeremy Beadle: Loved and loathed TV prankster|work=The Independent|date=February 2008|accessdate=4 November 2014}}

Memorable pranks

One of the most notable pranks was where Dorset resident Janet Elford was convinced into believing that aliens had landed in her garden. Members of the public were set up by a resident team of Beadle's About actors including: Pam Cole, Ricky Diamond, Tony McHale, Nicholas Young and Flavia Brilli.{{cite news|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7217383.stm|title=Janet Elford|date=30 January 2008|publisher=News.bbc.co.uk|accessdate=4 November 2014}}

Popularity

At its peak, the show attracted approximately 15 million viewers, making it one of ITV's most popular Saturday night programmes during that period.{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/media/2008/jan/31/itv.television|title=Veteran TV joker Jeremy Beadle dies of pneumonia, aged 59|author=Martin Hodgson|work=The Guardian|date=31 January 2008|accessdate=4 November 2014}} After the show was axed by ITV in 1996, Beadle's About was repeated on Granada Plus in the late 1990s.

The show was then repeated in full on Challenge TV throughout the 2000's; although Challenge (and sister channels Ftn and Virgin 1) sometimes aired certain Beadle's About sketches (under the banner The Best of Beadle's About) as programming fillers whenever the channel had allocated time to fill after programmes finished early, Beadle's About then wasn't repeated in full on national TV for over a decade afterwards, until That's TV announced in December 2021 that the programme would feature in its Christmas schedule alongside other ITV programmes like The Benny Hill Show and Kenny Everett's New Year Specials.{{Cite web|url=https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/benny-hill-back-on-national-tv-after-two-decades-809573636.html|title = Benny Hill back on national TV after two decades}}{{Cite web|url=https://www.atvtoday.co.uk/188328-gold/|title=Benny Hill, Tommy Cooper, Jeremy Beadle, Kenny Everett and Mike Yarwood for Christmas TV|date=18 November 2021}}{{Cite web|url=https://www.cordbusters.co.uk/christmas-channel-freeview-freesat-thats-tv-xmas/|title = New Christmas Channel on Freeview / Freesat: That's TV Xmas|date = 18 November 2021}}

Profanity bubble

The "Bleep!" or "Oops!" bubble used to block out offensive language was a well known feature from the show. The bubbles were simply clouds with either "Bleep!" or "Oops!" in them, the text being set in [[Balloon (typeface)|

Balloon typeface]]. These were also used to cover up offensive hand gestures as well.

Jeremy once revealed in an interview that during editing, they deliberately inserted "bleeps" where there were no profanities as this made it funnier.

Transmissions

=Series=

Series	Start date	End date	Episodes	Recorded
class="wikitable" style="text-align:center;"
1	22 November 1986	27 December 1986	6	1986
2	5 September 1987	24 October 1987	8	1987
3	22 October 1988	17 December 1988	9	1988
4	16 September 1989	2 December 1989	11	1989
5	15 September 1990	24 November 1990	11	1990
6	22 September 1991	1 December 1991	10	1991
7	10 October 1992	26 December 1992	9	1992
8	29 October 1993	12 February 1994	10	1993
9	11 March 1995	20 May 1995	11	1994
10	29 June 1996	14 September 1996	9	1995

=Highlights Specials=

Date
class="wikitable" style="text-align:center;"
9 December 1989
16 December 1989
8 September 1990
8 December 1990
15 December 1990
5 December 1992
3 April 1993
10 April 1993
18 April 1993
21 August 1993
4 September 1993
11 September 1993
19 February 1994
24 June 1994
12 August 1994

DVD releases

The first two series of Beadle's About have been released on DVD by Network.

class="wikitable" width="55%" style="left: 0 auto; text-align: center;"
DVD Title !Discs !Year !Episodes !Release date
Complete Series 1 \|1 \|1986 \|6 \|28 March 2011
Complete Series 2 \|1 \|1987 \|8 \|2 April 2012

class="wikitable" width="55%" style="left: 0 auto; text-align: center;"

DVD Title

!Discs

!Year

!Episodes

!Release date

Complete Series 1

|1986

|28 March 2011

Complete Series 2

|1987

|2 April 2012