The Definitive Guide to L&K's Titles

You might not have noticed, but there were 5 different versions of the L&K titles - and there were at least 8 variants of those over the years, so that makes a minimum of 13 different versions technically!

Many thanks go to Jon Bufton for filling in the huge gaps on this page with his contribution of screen shots.

What most people don't realise is that there are some very small differences which are easily missed, all connected around the signage on the side of TC1...

This is the original version of the titles. As you can see, the signage is the original that was installed when Television Centre was opened back in the 60s.

Used from 1993 to 1994.







There was also a Christmas variant of this set with snow and festive music (which can be found in the show's gallery section).

Used from 1994 to 1997.







And another variation of the titles for Christmas, this time with a snowball crashing about instead of the metallic one.

This is the version that was introduced in 1997 to reflect the change to the new corporate look, and was introduced on the morning of 4th October to co-inside with the re-launch of the new look BBC ONE (This was actually programme 2 of the series, programme 1 sported version 2 of the titles). The programme was also the first to have the new BBC logo at the end of it.

Unfortunately, the signage was not installed at the time that the titles were made (in fact they were not in place until mid November - just in time for that year's Children In Need) and whoever assumed that they would look like this guessed wrong!


The 'Television Centre' sign is actually mixed case and is right-justified on the building facade.
Sort of like this:- |B||B||C|              Television Centre

Used from 1997 to 1999.

Also from this era was the spin-off programme L&K Friday, which boasted it's own set of variant titles.

With the opening of 'Stage 6' at TV Centre, the reception was moved to a new glass fronted area of the building, so the titles were changed to show the big metallic ball smashing it's way out of that part of the building, rather than through the wall of TC1.

Used from 1999 to 2000.






Another year, another set of titles, another Christmas variant...

And then, a week later there was the special set used for the 'L2K' edition of the show - broadcast on 1st January 2000 as part of the BBC's fabulous 2000 Today project.

There was another variant of these titles used for the special Music Live & Kicking. This version was wide-screen and also had the addition of the images of Steve Wilson, Emma Ledden, Ortis Deley and guest presenter Stephen Gately being superimposed on part of the Concrete Doughnut's frontage.

These were the first widescreen titles for the show, well sort of as all that was done was to wedge the titles in to 16:9 rather than 4:3...

It's probably worth a mention that the title music of this show was somewhat appropriately played live by a band led by the theme's writer Dave Arnold.

The final set of titles were the first real wide-screen set and a complete change to reflect the show's new image.

Used from 2000 to 2001.







And here's the Christmas variant of the final set of titles with lots of floating snowflakes and reindeer!