Portal:BBC

From October 1988 to September 1994 the British government banned broadcasts of the voices of representatives from Sinn Féin and several Irish republican and loyalist groups on television and radio in the United Kingdom (UK). The restrictions, announced by the Home Secretary, Douglas Hurd, on 19 October 1988, covered eleven organisations based in Northern Ireland. The ban followed a heightened period of violence in the course of the Troubles (1960s to 1990s), and reflected the UK government's belief in a need to prevent Sinn Féin from using the media for political advantage.

Broadcasters quickly found ways around the ban, chiefly by using actors to dub the voices of banned speakers. The legislation did not apply during election campaigns and under certain other circumstances. The restrictions caused difficulties for British journalists who spoke out against censorship imposed by various other countries, such as by Iraq and India. Ireland had its own similar legislation that banned anyone with links to paramilitary groups from the airwaves, but this restriction lapsed in January 1994. This increased pressure on the British government to abandon its policy; John Major lifted the broadcast ban on 16 September 1994, a fortnight after the first Provisional Irish Republican Army ceasefire (declared on 31 August 1994). (Full article...)

Bernard Cribbins and Freema Agyeman feature as Old Jack and Shelly Periwinkle in the CBeebies series Old Jack's Boat.

(Full article...)

Mark Warwick Fordham Speight (6 August 1965 – 7 April 2008) was an English television presenter and host of children's art programme SMart. Speight was born in Seisdon, Staffordshire, and left school at 16 to become a cartoonist. He took a degree in commercial and graphic art and, while working in television set construction, heard of auditions for a new children's art programme. Speight was successful in his audition and became one of the first presenters of SMart, working on it for 14 years.

Speight was also a presenter on See It Saw It, where he met his future fiancée, actress and model Natasha Collins. He took part in live events, such as Rolf on Art and his own Speight of the Art workshops for children. He was involved in charity work; he became the president of the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign's Young Pavement Artists Competition, and was a spokesperson for ChildLine. (Full article...)

BBC Television Centre on Children in Need appeal night 2008. The annual telethon was formerly broadcast from Television Centre on BBC One until its closure in 2013.

Highlights from Wikipedia's Did you know

• ... that despite attracting the highest ratings ever for a comedy show debut on BBC Three, Horne & Corden was described by one critic as, "about as funny as credit default swaps"?

• ... that Olivia Colman bonded the cast of Beautiful People by arranging a visit from a mobile blood donor unit?

• ... that BBC traffic reporter Sally Traffic has also narrated poetry albums for the blind?

• ... that Clothes-Line, aired in 1937, was the first television programme on fashion history and also probably the first to feature a heavily pregnant female presenter?

• ... that Up the Women was the last sitcom to be filmed before an audience at BBC Television Centre?

• ... that working broadcast journalists were used as extras for the portions of the Doctor Who episode "73 Yards" that were filmed at the BBC Cymru Wales New Broadcasting House?
• ... that Jauchzet dem Herren, alle Welt by Heinrich Schütz, a 1619 setting of Psalm 100 for double choir, was performed at the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall in 1972?
• ... that in 2014, BBC Three cancelled a debate on being gay and Muslim featuring Asifa Lahore, a Muslim drag queen, citing security concerns at the mosque where it was filmed?
• ... that BBC Breakfast's resident doctor Nighat Arif has advocated for more women to be given vibrators for medical reasons?