15 Facts About Tiswas

Tiswas was a British children's television series that originally aired on Saturday mornings from 5 January 1974 to 3 April 1982, and was produced for the ITV network by ATV.

Tiswas began life as a 'links' strand between many 'filler' programmes, such as cartoons and old films.

Feature of Tiswas was "The Cage" wherein initially the child audience, later their parents and, finally, members of the public could apply were confined and periodically doused in water.

Series 2 of Tiswas began from late 1974, and spanned almost every Saturday in 1975, finishing in early 1976.

Tiswas's had been the presenter of a regional Saturday morning show in London called Saturday Scene, produced by LWT.

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Tiswas returned to the screens in November 1979 for its sixth series, as part of ITV's comeback; this was directly referenced in the first edition of the new series, when the "Welcome Home To ITV" jingle was played to usher the programme in and out of the advert breaks, albeit replacing the vocals by the Mike Sammes Singers with a group of deliberately out-of-tune children.

The only regular Tiswas presenter left was Sally James, who stayed on for series 8.

Almost every edition of Tiswas was transmitted live, and only recorded in case of any future IBA investigation.

Furthermore, the Tiswas Reunited programme in 2007 resulted in the discovery of further footage.

Definitive line-up of Tiswas presenters regrouped for a resurrection of Tiswas on the ITV Telethon of 1988.

Out of the cult Saturday morning shows that were focused on, Tiswas was significantly the most prominent, with many clips shown from it, and even a re-enactment of two Tiswas staples - the Cage and the Pass The Pie game.

Lenny Henry appeared on the BBC's It Started With Swap Shop programme in 2006, in which he spoke to Noel Edmonds about Tiswas being the rival of Swap Shop during the entire era.

New programme to celebrate 25 years since the final Tiswas show was broadcast by ITV1 on 16 June 2007, it started with the traditional ATV logo and jingle.

Tiswas was a pioneer for children's television, making its way to shop shelves.

The majority of Tiswas never survived as recordings, but among collectors, some with the earliest domestic VCRs, and some studio copies of later editions.