the Mike Sammes Singers with a group of deliberately out-of-tune children. Many ITV regions took the programme for the first time, establishing the show strongly in the nation's consciousness. London-based viewers tended to complain to the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) about some of the edgier moments the show had.

With an almost national audience, the show became inclusive of its increased viewership by making a bigger role out of specially invited viewer performances. Many of these were children who sang songs or performed dance routines. Chris Tarrant, now producer as well as presenter, found most of these contributions to be of little value, until he came across a unique act by a five-year-old boy called Matthew Butler. Encouraged by his Tiswas-obsessed mother, Matthew auditioned for the series wearing arabbit costume and sang the song 'Bright Eyes' made famous by the animated film Watership Down, although his own singing ability was rather poor. Chris found this so amusing that he arranged for him to appear on the following Tiswas, as well as many subsequent editions.

Also appearing a number of times in this series was Norman Collier, the Yorkshire comedian best known for his broken microphone routine and chicken impressions.

Another by-product of Tiswas' increased audience was the merchandise bandwagon - an annual book was established, and there was a tour of universities (recognising their adult and teenaged audience) by the Tiswas team, under the name of The Four Bucketeers, which tied in with their spin-off album on CBS Records. This all was born out of one feature of