TV Pop Diaries
Pop Music on British Television 1955 - 1999

The demise of Tiswas meant the subsequent hole in the schedule would inevitably have to be filled by lesser shows trying hard to be spontaneous with the odd shock. As contrived as Tiswas was inspired. A worthy successor wasn't going to happen and to be honest no one really tried. Granada's Mersey Pirate and Fun Factory both came and went, while other ITV regions tried with their own ideas of what Saturday mornings should now look like, with TVS's Number 73 the only show willing to take a chance to be different enough.

Get Fresh was set aboard a space ship, the Millennium Dustbin, with hosts Charlotte Hindle, Adrian Mole's Gian Sammarco and Gareth Evans (aka Gaz Top). The space ship would turn up at a different venue each week, usually a public park, where stages would be set up for the performers. Scottish, Tyne Tees, Ulster, Border and HTV among others would each week take their turn at getting the spaceship around the country on Saturdays, while Border took control on Sunday mornings.

Sammarco left after the first series and it would be up to Hindle and Evans to keep in check his replacement, Gilbert the Alien, a Spitting Image created puppet played by Phil Cornwall. The second series would have more studio based material than the first, but would still have plenty of music guests.

Luring Big Audio Dynamite to do the theme was a good move and probably persuaded other acts that maybe this show was not a waste of time and many of the scene's big names appeared with the usual newcomers.

Unfortunately for the human hosts it was the milk-spitting Gilbert who would become the star, leading to two spin-off shows, Gilbert's Fridge (aimed at kids) and Gilbert Late (one for the grown ups) once the Dustbin went to landfill in 1988.

GET FRESH

Tyne Tees / Border and others

3rd May 1986 - 28th August 1988