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Researching a programme like The Golden Shot (1967-75) is a nightmare. As I pointed out<\/a> last time, for a show which ran for hundreds of editions, vanishingly few of them<\/a> actually survive. Even fewer are generally available to view. You\u2019re left scrabbling for what you can find in old newspapers and magazines\u2026 and the odd autobiography.<\/p>\n Such as Bob Monkhouse\u2019s incredible Crying With Laughter (Century, 1993), often regarded as the gold standard in celebrity memoirs. And one of the most arresting sequences in the whole book is the section where he details his thrilling takeover of The Golden Shot from first host, Jackie Rae.<\/p>\n \u201cHaving concluded that I was lucky not to be presenting this calamity and so suffering condemnation by press and public alike, I was puzzled when Peter1<\/a> phoned to say I was wanted as the guest star for the tenth week. The fee was insignificant and the inconvenience considerable as it meant travelling from Liverpool to Elstree and back again for my midnight jobs at Jack Murphy\u2019s Cabaret Club in Duke Street. And who was watching \u2018The Golden Shot\u2019 now anyway? Its Saturday ratings had plunged. \u2018I know, love, but it\u2019s a chance for you to show \u2019em a thing or two on that set.\u2019 <\/p>\n I got the message.<\/p>\n Having made sure the set was standing, I drove out to the studio and looked it over. The guest had to fire the bow using a joystick in a glass booth. The booth looked like the one featured in a frequently seen soap commercial of the day where a man went into a phone kiosk which turned into a bathroom shower. I sought out my pals in special effects and had the booth rigged to do the same. Next, I consulted the props men and they agreed to build what I\u2019d drawn.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Bob, his guest performance went spectacularly well.<\/p>\n \u201cHalf an hour of the usual stuff, tedious as ever, with no audience reaction other than cued applause where required. Then I was announced and my first appearance brought a crack of laughter that registered on the Richter scale. I was dressed as a big target, the golden bullseye over my middle. The absurdity of anyone showing up at an archery contest in such an idiotic costume delighted the previously bored crowd. A fusillade of gags followed as I removed my outer costume to reveal a Tyrolean outfit in the style of William Tell, put an apple on my head and did some comic business with a curved crossbow that could shoot round corners. Then I announced that I had my own private armourer, \u2018Heinz the dolt!\u2019 A four-foot tin of Heinz Potted Shrimp was wheeled on and tiny Johnny Vyvyan climbed out, dressed as a stormtrooper with a spiked Prussian helmet and carrying a gigantic door bolt. We plunged into a fast and crazy routine in which I fired at various objects he was holding up, each of them rigged to explode when hit and shower the stone-faced little man with their contents. The laughter was just as explosive, roars of hysterical mirth and applause bursting from two hundred and fifty people who had been spending an evening starved of any semblance of fun. <\/p>\n When I started stuffing Johnny feet first into a large cannon, Jackie Rae must have been wondering what had hit him. Unrehearsed, he was rooted to the spot by his need to read his lines off idiot boards. <\/p>\n I ran into the glass booth to fire the cannon and rattled off a few funny lines while Johnny was secretly replaced by a dummy. On a signal that Johnny was out and clear, I pressed the firing button. There was a hell of a bang with confetti and red smoke, the dummy soared fifteen feet in the air and its spiked helmet stuck firmly in the bullseye. <\/p>\n The crowd went wild and Jack Parnell, watching the show on the screen of a TV monitor in the bandroom, waited for the din to diminish before giving his orchestra the downbeat. Precious seconds were ticking by. <\/p>\n Then the music from the then famous soap advert filled the air and, just as in the familiar commercial, the lighting changed to make a silhouette of me as my firing booth became a shower stall. A cascade of water hit me from above and I washed myself, working up a lather with the detergent already in my clothing.2<\/a> If an audience ever howled with laughter any longer and louder, it could only have been in comedy heaven.\u201d<\/p>\n The inevitable then happened:<\/p>\n \u201cOn the Thursday of that week Lew [Grade] sent for Peter. ATV\u2019s light entertainment booker Alec Fine joined the meeting and Lew told them to do a deal for me to take over as host on \u2018The Golden Shot\u2019 as soon as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n All very nice. The question is: how much of it is true?<\/p>\n *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0*\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0*<\/p>\n The first edition of The Golden Shot, hosted by Jackie Rae, aired on the 1st July 1967. This was a short ten minute programme, where Jackie talked to the great unwashed on the telephone, in order to get contestants for the full show the following week. For reasons which will become apparent, I\u2019m going to call this short programme the first edition of the show.<\/p>\n In his autobiography, Bob states that he was originally wanted as the guest star \u201cfor the tenth week\u201d. In fact, it was rather sooner than that. Bob was announced in the programme billings as the guest for the fifth show broadcast, on the 29th July 1967. This show is the first edition of The Golden Shot known to survive, and is sitting nicely on YouTube, as Challenge repeated it a few years back.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Sadly, Bob isn\u2019t on it. Why? Jackie Rae explains:<\/p>\n JACKIE: If you\u2019ve been reading this week\u2019s Television Times you will have seen that our celebrity this week was to have been Bob Monkhouse. But at the last minute, he got a call to go to Aden to entertain the troops, and of course all we could say was good luck, and agree with him, indeed and hope he could be with us another time\u2026<\/p>\n Bob\u2019s replacement was John Junkin, who ended up working as a writer for Bob on many shows, including late-period programmes like Bob\u2019s Full House and The $64,000 Question.<\/p>\n As for the reason why Bob missed his guest appearance: it wasn\u2019t bullshit. On the same day as he failed to appear on The Golden Shot, the Liverpool Daily Post published a picture of Bob dancing with four lovely girls:<\/p>\n \u201cComedian Bob Monkhouse joins the beat girls3<\/a> in a dance route in Floral Street, London, yesterday, and it\u2019s good news for British troops in troubled Aden.<\/p>\n The girls are in a show-business party headed by Bob Monkhouse who fly to Aden next Tuesday to entertain the Servicemen.\u201d<\/p>\n There are numerous pictures<\/a> from this Aden concert online, showing Bob Monkhouse and The Beat Girls. Here\u2019s one of just Bob performing<\/a> \u2013 while it would be wonderful to have a close-up, I\u2019m amazed anything is available of this:<\/p>\n This trip is actually mentioned by Bob in his autobiography \u2013 \u201cI flew out to Aden on 2 August to entertain the troops\u201d4<\/a> \u2013 but he doesn\u2019t link it to The Golden Shot, or indeed say that his planned appearance on the show was postponed in any way.<\/p>\n So when did Bob actually appear as a guest on the Shot? Well, he\u2019s also billed in the TV Times and contemporary newspapers as being on the seventh edition of the series, broadcast on the 12th August 1967. Sadly, this edition does not survive. Bob does state at great length in his autobiography that his guest appearance was recorded at his request, in order for Lew Grade to judge how good he was, and hopefully give him a shot at hosting the show. Sadly, this recording wasn\u2019t found as part of Bob Monkhouse\u2019s famous archive. I guess it\u2019s unlikely to show up anywhere at this point, but one can hope. It would certainly be one of my holy grails.5<\/a><\/p>\n However, we do have visual proof that this was almost certainly the edition which featured Monkhouse as guest. Hidden away in the archives of image library Shutterstock are lots of beautiful publicity photos<\/a> from the show. And we\u2019re interested in three<\/a> in<\/a> particular<\/a>, one of which I will reproduce below.<\/p>\n This photo is labelled \u201c\u2018The Golden Shot\u2019 TV Show, Episode 7 UK \u2013 17 Aug 1967\u201d. Well, the date is wrong, but that\u2019s not really surprising \u2013 the stated date is often inaccurate when looking at old publicity photos. But the episode number is correct, if you include the 10-minute pre-show at the start of July, as we have been doing. And the Shutterstock archives generally have these numbers right \u2013 this picture of Tom Jones performing<\/a> is correctly labelled as Episode 5, from the show which is embedded at the start of this article.<\/p>\n So I\u2019m happy to say that the date when Bob Monkhouse guested on The Golden Shot was indeed the 12th August 1967. Sadly, none of the pictures include any of Bob\u2019s claimed comedy shenanigans, not even him dressed as a target; just him standing there looking funny in a suit. It doesn\u2019t mean they didn\u2019t happen. It also doesn\u2019t prove they did, either.<\/p>\n *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0*\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0*<\/p>\n Whatever the case, the reception to Bob\u2019s guest appearance was clearly great, and it was decided that Monkhouse should indeed take over presenting The Golden Shot. This was reported on the 12th September 1967 in the Daily Record, exactly one month after Bob\u2019s guest appearance almost certainly occurred. Interestingly, Jackie didn\u2019t bother coming up with a face-saving cover story:<\/p>\n \u201cCanadian Jackie Rae is to be replaced as compere of ITV\u2019s Golden Shot programme by comedian Bob Monkhouse from October 14.<\/p>\n Jackie, who will then have completed a 13-week contract, said last night: \u2018I am very disappointed. I had hoped to compere the show for its entire run.’\u201d<\/p>\n In fact, Jackie\u2019s last edition would be on the 7th October 1967\u2026 which was actually the fifteenth show. Bob took over as host from the 14th October.6<\/a> I\u2019m sure everyone loved it, right?<\/p>\n The Sunday Sun\u2018s letters page on the 29th October 1967:<\/p>\n Being a reasonable sort of character I can tolerate almost anything which appears on television. But if they don\u2019t get Bob Monkhouse and that other silly man7<\/a> off \u201cThe Golden Shot\u201d I\u2019ll put the poker right through the screen. Then I\u2019ll be in real trouble because the set is rented. Please bring back Jackie Rae.<\/p>\n (Mrs.) M. CREIGHTON.<\/p>\n \u2026What a shambles Bob Monkhouse has made of the show. The sooner Jackie Rae comes back the better. I, for one, would have been grateful to see that old, familiar sentence: \u201cThere is a fault, please do not adjust your set.\u201d<\/p>\n (Mrs.) E.M. STEPHENSON.<\/p>\n \u2026Bob Monkhouse has brought filth and smut to \u201cThe Golden Shot.\u201d<\/p>\n T. PATTERSON.<\/p>\n Oh well. While Bob Monkhouse wasn\u2019t always admired by everyone over the years, the above letters strike me as people complaining about change to a show they liked as much as anything else. Although to be fair, the last letter reads more like a recommendation to me than a warning.8<\/a><\/p>\n What about Bob\u2019s account of his first show as host? Well, he talks about it in-depth in his autobiography, and it\u2019s ludicrously exciting just reading about it, let alone watching it:<\/p>\n \u201cMy first show kicked off with a historic reunion of the RAF Skyrockets Dance Orchestra conducted by Paul Fenoulhet. Our detonating apples were located in barrage balloons over the skyline of London in the blitz. Anne Shelton sang a wartime medley and then the free-standing bows fired at models of Luftwaffe bombers diving through the sweeping beams of our searchlights, the flying bolts exploding the enemy aircraft seconds before they could drop their deadly cargo. Comedy guests from \u2018Much Binding in the Marsh\u2019 were Richard Murdoch, Kenneth Horne and Sam Costa. After a comedy routine, they fired on behalf of their charity, the RAF Association.<\/p>\n The target for the silver shootout was a marvellously accomplished model scene of the kind only the artisans at ATV could produce. Sitting in the booth operating the joystick, the contestants were given the point of view of a fighter pilot, homing in on a choice of three enemy planes of increasing difficulty and prize value. It was only just possible to shoot down all three in thirty seconds and our second player, a decorated and one-legged ex-RAF rear-gunner named Basil \u2018Ginger\u2019 Cody, did it. Then, in an atmosphere as tense as the thread he had to split, he fired a perfect bull and won the golden shot as well. As Anne Shelton presented him with the treasure chest and his other prizes, the official Band of the Royal Air Force played their stirring march anthem and cheered the winning hero. I promise you, there wasn\u2019t a dry eye in the house.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s only one problem: it doesn\u2019t sound at all like the edition which actually aired on the 14th October 1967, which was billed as featuring Frankie Vaughan. However, it does sound remarkably like a show which aired six months later, on the 7th April 1968. This was billed as an \u201cRAF 50th Anniversary Edition\u201d, featuring Richard Murdoch, Sam Costa, and The Skyrockets, who were indeed conducted by Paul Fenoulhet.9<\/a><\/p>\n 14th October 1967<\/p>\n 7th April 1968<\/p>\n As for Bob\u2019s second show, broadcast on the 21st October 1967, he describes it like this:<\/p>\n \u201cThough our switchboards were jammed for over two hours with congratulatory calls, the national press took no account of us until the second week. For this, Tony Hawes and I designed old time Music Hall targets, drawn in the style of Donald McGill\u2019s vulgar seaside postcards and based on such songs as \u2018My Old Man Said Follow the Van\u2019 and \u2018Any Old Iron\u2019. The set resembled a typical variety stage of fifty years earlier and our two musical guest stars were eighty-nine-year-old Hetty King dressed in top hat and tails singing \u2018Piccadilly\u2019, her success of 1909, and seventy-eight-year-old Randolph Sutton recreating his beloved \u2018On Mother Kelly\u2019s Doorstep\u2019 from 1925. Our comedy guest was dear old Sandy Powell, who gave us his hilariously inept ventriloquist sketch and then fired a winning bolt on behalf of the Variety Artistes\u2019 Benevolent Fund. Once again the golden shot was won, this time by a sixty-eight-year-old ex-chorus girl. Luck was smiling on those early shows. This time the papers noticed us: \u2018A Bolt Out of the Blue!\u2019, \u2018Golden Shot Bobs Up\u2019 and \u2018On Target at Last\u2019 were three headlines that conveyed the new opinion of the series. A quarter of a century later, it\u2019s difficult to communicate the extraordinary warmth with which these shows were greeted.\u201d<\/p>\n Again, this doesn\u2019t sound like the show which actually aired that week, which apparently featured the Dave Clark Five. But it sounds very like the edition broadcast on the 21st April 1968, which was billed as an \u201cOld Time Music Hall\u201d show, and specifically mentions Randolph Sutton, Hetty King, and Sandy Powell.<\/p>\n 21st October 1967<\/p>\n 21st April 1968<\/p>\n What to make of this? Did Bob simply misremember here, or \u2013 as I suspect \u2013 was it a deliberate choice to give details of two really special shows, instead of his first two? <\/p>\n I have to be honest: for me, this is where Bob\u2019s writing about the show becomes a little troublesome. I entirely understand why he didn\u2019t want to complicate the story of his guest appearance by discussing how it was postponed; equally, getting the week of his guest appearance wrong doesn\u2019t really seem that important. But here, it feels like a leap too far. It would have been absolutely fine to simply discuss the success of his \u201cearly shows\u201d \u2013 a perfectly legitimate term to use for editions transmitted in his first six months \u2013 without portraying them as the very first shows he hosted.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a similar issue with his memories about how he changed the format of The Golden Shot. To take just one example, when talking about how he came up with ideas on how to revitalise the programme, he remembers the following:<\/p>\n \u201cThe seven wearisome stages of the original game were simplified into only four: home contestants used their phones to aim the bow at the central detonator in each of four apples, thus blowing them to smithereens, the successful marksmen qualifying for a place in the studio next week. These four players then handled free-standing crossbows, aiming at a more difficult target to win a bronze prize. The two with the highest scores qualified for the silver stage, using the joystick to aim at an even tougher target. Finally, the week\u2019s best archer tackled the \u2018golden shot\u2019 itself, trying to sever a thread.\u201d<\/p>\n In fact, the above is largely the format of the Jackie Rae version of the show, as can be seen when you watch his single extant edition. Of course, Bob most certainly made changes to the programme, and if it were possible to compare the final Jackie Rae edition and the first Bob Monkhouse one10<\/a>, I suspect I would much prefer the latter. <\/p>\n But the changes simply weren\u2019t as major or as immediate as his autobiography indicates.<\/p>\n *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0*\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0*<\/p>\n To which you might reasonably say: well, so what? Bob Monkhouse in preferring nice, neat anecdotes to the pure facts, what a shocker, right?<\/p>\n Well, maybe. It\u2019s perfectly within your rights to just consider me naive. In my defence, however, I will quote one final part of Bob\u2019s autobiography, regarding the show changing studios.<\/p>\n \u201cTowards the end of 1968, ATV decided to move the production to the major city of the Midlands area the company was franchised to serve, Birmingham. [\u2026] <\/p>\n So by 12 January 1969, the \u2018Shot\u2019 had moved again, this time physically. Proved to be a success as a Sunday teatime fixture, we were now ensconced in our new but old home, the technically out-dated rabbit warren known as the Aston Studios in Birmingham.\u201d<\/p>\n I will now point you towards the edition of the Sunday Mercury published on the 24th November 1968, and the article \u201cMidlands gets (golden) shot in the arm\u201d:<\/p>\n \u201cThe producer \u2013 yet to be appointed \u2013 who takes over \u201cThe Golden Shot\u201d when it comes back to the screen in January is in line for a headache almost as big as the one William Tell\u2019s son stood to get.<\/p>\n For the first time the show is to be mounted at A.T.V.\u2019s studio in Aston, Birmingham, which is only half the size of the Elstree studio where the popular Sunday afternoon series was originally produced.<\/p>\n A high-powered crossbow, as lethal as a .303 rifle and aimed by twitchy-fingered contestants, poses serious problems in a confined space.\u201d<\/p>\n The Golden Shot took a break after July 1968. And when it did return to the screen, from the Aston studios, it was indeed on 12th January 1969.11<\/a> A man who was purely interested in providing pleasant anecdotes would not have bothered to give a date here\u2026 let alone actually get that date correct.<\/p>\n So forgive me. If I poke a little at Bob\u2019s writing while trying to come up with a timeline of events, it\u2019s because I think it\u2019s worth poking at. And because I want to know as much about that damn man, his amazing life, and his amazing shows as I can.<\/p>\n With many thanks to Paul Hayes<\/a> and Tanya Jones<\/a> for editorial help.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/goldenshot-aden.jpeg\")
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