Few people ever heard it, let alone remember it, but series one had a very different theme tune....

 

No. 73 Theme (by Peter Gosling)

 

Hoo-ray, it's Saturday,

School's out so watch out.

Look out, find out,

come along with me to 73.

 

Overseas, fly-by-air,

just as long as you get there.

Move your feet, down the street,

Come inside and see a-73.

This was quickly replaced by the tune we all know and love:

Theme tune (series 2-6)

Hey you, get ready get on your feet

Get into gear and hit this street

Hey you, get moving, it's not too far,

You're looking good so come as you are.

Hey you, you never know what you'll see

When it's through that door with the 73.

 

Never seen nothing, no, not like this place

Never been no, no way not ever known

Never seen no place nowhere similar

Not like 73

 

Hey you, get ready get on your feet

Get into gear and hit this street,

It's you that we wanna see

So get down to 73

Get down to 73

Hey you, get down to 73....

Series 7 and 8 of No. 73 had a jolly remix of the familiar theme (by Ray "On Safari / Worldwise / Do It" Shulman). As well as adding an array of handclaps and 'n-n-n-n-nineteen' touches, he also - unforgiveably - removed the "never seen nothing..." middle-eight. It's like remixing The 12 days of Christmas and taking out "Five Gold Rings".

7T3 had a new theme which only used the phrase 'Hey You'. Talk about dumbing down.

The Sandwich Quiz (series 2-6)

It's...

The daring, dazzling, death-defyingly dull, *

devastatingly dangerous, delectable, delicatessenable,

divinely decadent -

Sandwich Quiz.

 

* In the first few series, Ethel sometimes inserted

"desperately decimalized" here. 

When Ethel wasn't around, the sandwich quiz was replaced by Neil Buchanan's 'Chip Butty quiz' (presumably a reference to the fact that he hails from the north of England). The song, first heard on the 4th April 1985 edition, went like this:

 

Salt and vinegar, green mushy peas

Scallops and chips all covered in grease

A big fat sausage, the curry's the biz

Frying tonight, the Chip Butty Quiz

After the departure of Sandi Toksvig, a new game was introduced. It was something to do with cleaning the house and involved collecting household cleaning materials and tools. The song was, if anything, even more of a mouthful than the sandwich quiz. It went like this:

Purgative, ablutionary,

Clean-up revolutionary,

Dawn + Kim + Neil + Harry,

Manifestly sanitary,

Grab your squeegee, grab your mop,

Shake your tail and shimmy to...

the Duster Muster

Duster Muster

Duster Muster...

 

In series 8, this was replaced by Neil's drawing board game - imaginatively entitled "The Game" - which didn't have a song. In one of my rare bursts of creativity I actually wrote some lyrics for it, but I was too wet to send them in. Shame, really.