‘I've ALWAYS WANTED to be in HOLBY'

Harry Hill on trawling the archives for TV’s magic ingredients and his unexpected acting ambitions...

- Sean Marland

Harry Hill sits in his home office beside a chaotic bookcase, proudly showing TV Times some of the interesting wooden carvings he’s created during the long weeks of lockdown…

‘My theme was 70s pop stars,’ says Harry, 55, with a smile, as our video call gets underway. ‘This one is Peters and Lee and this one over here is Dana. I got a bit obsessed with her after watching a wonderful documentary on her career!’

It’s a wonder Harry’s found the time for crafts, having spent the past few months trawling through hours of vintage telly to research Harry Hill’s World Of TV, his new BBC2 series – while also teaching himself to edit it all together!

Harry – whose biggest hit to date was another clips-and-comedy show, ITV’s Harry Hill’s TV Burp, which ran from 2001 to 2012 – takes us on a trip through the archives as he examines six popular genres to see how they’ve evolved and reveal their magic ingredients.

So after admiring his carvings, we asked Harry to tell us more about a series that covers everything from Angels to Z Cars and much more besides…

How did this series come about?

When lockdown started, it seemed the only shows you could really make were clips shows, so I got calls from lots of commissioners saying, ‘We’re going to run out of shows in about six weeks – have you got any ideas, Harry?’ Watching all the old shows was interesting because there’s something wonderfully naive about the old stuff compared to what we watch now.

Did watching archive TV bring back fond memories?