When it goes in it stays in: Granada adverts, continuity and News at Ten, 9 September 1993

We're still in the clutches of the Enemy Within, but this is the final break from it. In fact it's more of a hiatus than a break, because this is back when ITV would sometimes show movies on weekdays at evening prime-time with the News at Ten in the middle. This mildly irritating setup was part of the reason they axed the bulletin altogether in 1999, hammering home the final nail in the coffin of pre-plc ITV as we knew it. Anyway, this is heralded by an announcement over the break slide - or rather a second, unique break slide after the first, which seems like a lot of trouble to go to. Possibly Granada weren't playing Secrets out but were using their own slide at the start and end of breaks? Turns out Christopher Plummer and Stephanie Beacham are in it. Then there's a trailer (Jim Pope in evidence) for a miniseries about Frank Sinatra that looks so sanitised you can practically smell the Milton. Still, it won two Emmys and a Golden Globe, the latter for the lead actor Philip Casnoff, who looks almost nothing whatsoever like Frank Sinatra. He's got brown eyes, for Christ's sake! Also starring Olympia Dukakis as his mother and Gina Gershon as Nancy Sr. Then we're hurled straight into adverts, starting with one for the doomed British Rail's equally doomed Intercity. Privatisation was practically a done deal by now, with the company about to be divided up into its constituent parts for market, so this campaign was really a sort of farewell lament. Next: It's partwork time. This time it's a limited partwork about blues musicians (albeit with a remarkably broad definition of "blues" to include early rock 'n' roll, but who's complaining), complete with compilation CDs of their cheapest-to-licence hits. Better than World of Cross-Stitch Puppies any day, even without a Free Binder. Then: before the Internet this was how you shopped from home. With a breezeblock-sized catalogue full of department-store staples. We had the Family Album. This one is the Index catalogue and it's promoted by a grinning buffoon promising some kind of free car I guess. Next: pointless abseiling in the middle of nowhere is easy when you have Unifilla! And the voice of the late Don LaFontaine to give you encouragement. Then: am I alone in detecting a faint air of desperation about this highly local advert for a ktichen fitters? The pitchman reminds me of the Phillips Jackson and Baker Hall with the hangdog chops and sunken eyes which always seem to be looking for an exit. He delivers the copy with a vocal enthusiasm that doesn't register on his face. His jacket doesn't fit properly. There's a quiet sense of a man nearing the end of his rope. Maybe it's just his face. Anyway, that's the last advert. Next there's an impressionistic montage of unpleasantness to promote Jimmy McGovern's Cracker, which starts soon. Jim Pope again, naturally. Its percussion-heavy soundtrack makes it the perfect lead for a drum-centric Granada sting. STRIKING THE RIGHT NOTE. That leads into another trail, for an edition of what would turn out to be the last incarnation of Whicker's World. The show had hopped from the BBC to ITV and back again, and back again, and Whicker would retire within a few months. Here he is judging Miss World, as if embracing his status as a relic of a different society. Your voiceover artist ill-advisedly attempts an impression at the end, but I can't cast nasturtiums. I've done it myself on The Hard Sell. It's irresistible. This fades into a Granada ident (still supporting that Olympic bid), and wouldn't you know it, Jim Pope is at the live controls as well. Here's the News at Ten, with Agatha Christie's Parrot's Brother. Biggest headline by far: Yassir Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin sent each other letters affiriming the other's right to exist as part of the Oslo Accords! Which, incidentally, means this must be the 9th of September. Everyone's really happy because they don't know yet that Rabin gets shot two years later and the Oslo Accords are a gigantic false start because of extremist assholes like Hamas and Sharon! Yay! Many of these same assholes are already decrying both Rabin and Yosser for being pussies. Idiots. Also: are these the real Birmingham Bombers, i mean Warrington? If they are, it doesn't help, because no-one ever got done for that one. And look, everyone, it's Paul Keating! The last great PM of Australia to date (I will fight you) and still grinning from ear to ear six months after one of the most implausible victories in any election anywhere. Today he's explaining why he advocates a republic. Sounds like a good idea to me, to be honest. We only gave up ultimate jurisdiction over Australia in 1986, which is ridiculous.