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The final joint from the DVD sent to me a year ago by one James Smith, and it's arrived with interesting timing: we all watched one of her sons get married today; now we go back to the fateful night when the car containing England's Rose smashed into a concrete tunnel. It's a chunk of history disguised as a random clip from ITV Night Time in 1997. Which it also is.
James Smith apparently stayed up throughout the fateful night for the repeat of the Chart Show. By the time of this clip it's around 3.30 am on the 31st of August. The crash has happened and there's been an ITN newsflash about it, but since then everything's been running to schedule.
We begin abruptly with an animated advert for sleepy-times potion Nytol, which considering its placement just seems cruel: like Sandi Toksvig is mocking insomniacs. It's just an antihistamine really, and lots of us are taking it right now for hayfever. But it has the side-effect of making you dopey and ready for nappy-times, so it's sold as Nytol as well. This animation probably quite accurately depicts the state of the nation a few hours later, at least in the "before" section.
Something very similar next: it's animated, it's for one of those micro-medicines that you take for irritating but trivial conditions, and it has a female comedy actress over the top. The actress is Caroline Quentin this time, the animation is clay (apart from the diagram), and the medicine is an offshoot of Settlers indigestion tablets specially formulated to disperse unwanted pockets of methane bouncing around in your stomach making it feel like it's on fire - "without embarrassment", ie it actually disperses them, it doesn't just collect them together, stuff them into the intestinal tract and jump up and down until you explosively fart them out. Although she doesn't say all that.
Next: MAN ADVENTURES. A testosterone-soaked spot for a deodorant whose name and packaging really don't match the tone. Vaseline might be an extremely well-known bodycare brand (to the point of being a genericised trademark for petroleum jelly) but that doesn't mean it fits all possible scenarios. Oh, yeah, and in case you're not aware, the joke is that Vinnie Jones (then still playing football) is a belligerent prick.
Then: one of Karl Howman's millions of Flash adverts, which he kept making until he was too old and puffy-looking to make it as a young cheeky cockney wideboy anymore. In this one he's tormented by a small demon with a weirdly mid-Atlantic accent.
Next: Bizarre love triangle. Two Handsomedroids are off on some kind of windsurfing expedition, and both dream of the same impossibly gorgeous bouncing leotard woman. Who then shows up in real life and elects to give her number to the one that's still awake. Tim McInnerny explains that this was intended in some way to sell us the Renault (We're Still Selling It As A) Megane Scenic. Quite how it's supposed to have done that, we have to figure out on our own.
Then, right when their photographers were murdering their greatest cash-cow, it's the Murdoch shit-press and the News of the World! It's the mid-late nineties, the long-term effects of the video age are starting to come to light. One of them is an increasing frankness about sex, as thanks to VHS everyone over 18 has already seen at least eight nipples by now. So everyone's doing Cosmopolitan-baiting Good Sex Guides, including the Screws, which they introduce with the most startlingly yonic animated transition I've ever seen in an advert.
That's the last advert. Next up, in case you didn't believe me about the sex thing, is the panel show Carnal Knowledge - basically A Question of Fucking, hosted by Maria McErlane and a foetal Graham Norton. BUT! You might be aware that something big is happening in the news! ITV Night Time from London interrupst itself for a newsflash! Because they didn't employ live continuity announcers they're forced to reuse the usual introduction for scheduled bulletins, but who at 3.30 even cares? It takes them a wee while to get ITN onscreen, so you can enjoy the ambient styles of the "Serious Stuff" Night Time dancers for a little longer than usual.
Finally Dermot Murnaghan shows up, visibly blinking away the sleep dirt, to tell the nation, or rather the 5000 people sat up watching Carnal Knowledge, about Diana's crash. She's not dead yet, though Dodi and the driver are. We get some bleary footage of the Pont de l'Alma and, thrillingly, some middle-distance shots of the twisted wreckage they'd just hours ago pulled her from.
All quite depressing really. ANYWAY NOW ON ITV IT'S TIME FOR SEXY HUMOUR AND HUMOROUS SEX LOL! because they don't have live continuity, remember, so the cut (rather artlessly executed by some poor panicking bastard back at LNN) from serious Dermot to the candy-coloured Comedy/Entertainment variant dancing ident with chortling voiceover is a particularly jarring one. These things happen.
