would throw flans around the studio at all and sundry. Both Tarrant and the Flan Flinger would take great delight in trying to 'flan' cameramen who would go to great lengths to avoid being hit.

The original logo featured the word "TISWAS" in chunky letters. A later version of this logo featured a circle going round the edge with "Today Is Saturday Watch And Smile" embossed upon it. The classic "zig-zag" logo designed by Stuart Kettle appeared in 1977 - this initially featured a mechanical bird flying above it, but later, Chris Wroe (who drew all of the classic caricatures of the Tiswas team) replaced this with a drawing of the Phantom Flan Flinger.

The first series was intended to be eleven episodes, purely acting as links between the usualstaple fillers of old films and cartoons that ATV would transmit on Saturday mornings. Presented by Chris Tarrant and John Asher from just a desk in a continuity studio, the pair had to rely on ad-libs and jokes sent in by viewers. Within a few weeks, the show was moved to studio 3 at ATV Centre (a studio usually reserved for amongst other programmes, the news magazine programme, ATV Today) from which Tiswas was produced for the majority of its run.

Due to an industrial dispute by technicians at Associated TeleVision, this initial run was only nine programmes in all, but was so well received that a second series was commissioned.

Billed in TV Times as "Today Is Saturday or the Tis-was Show", the title sequence features both "Today Is