Neil Buchanan

Neil Buchanan (born October 11, 1956) played Smart Arty for 7 series from 1993 to 1998 and was one of the figure heads for CITV in the 90's. He also produced and appeared in Zzzap!, he is best known for presenting Art Attack from 1990 to 2007. He also presented Finders Keeper's (1991–1996), It's a Mystery (1996–2000) alongside Sophie Aldred who played Minnie the Mini Magician.

Early Life and Music Career
Neil Buchanan was born and grew up in the suburbs of Aintree, Merseyside (which was originally part of Lancashire) latterly claiming he and his sister lived in the “rough part of the posh part”. He attended the Liverpool Institute High School (now the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts) and like millions of other children read a comic book called The Beano.

By the mid ‘60s, The Beano (which had been running 30 years by then) was one of the biggest values for pocket money and had a stream of favourite characters for both children and adults alike such as Dennis The Menace, Biffo The Bear and Minnie The Minx. Buchanan was a eager reader- and considering other comics were beginning to come out like Wham and Sparky, Neil was still addicted to The Beano.

Comics were the only “proper” cheap form of entertainment for kids- television sets were still expensive and there was only BBC and ITV (known as Granada Television where Neil was based due to the different regional stations). Most televisions were still black-and-white, even when colour was introduced in the late 60s.

Nonetheless Neil would watch cartoons on the old TV set and often put his own cartoons on the screen to make the flickering light seem like they were alive.

Neil’s biggest inspiration was his dad and often he encouraged his son’s talent of art- even partaking in creating artwork with Neil. Neil adored his dad and greatly admired his gift for drawing as well as his warm nature.

Neil was a normal regular kid growing up- often going to the canal bank with homemade fishing rods or hanging around rural Liverpool with his friends. He often dreamed of being a footballer (probably encouraged by the fact that he lived round the corner from Liverpool Football Club) but he started to drift away from that when art and music came into the limelight.

Neil’s first love of music came around presumably when he heard about The Beatles and the effect it had on Liverpool. He was determined to be the “new scouse sensation”. He bought a second-hand guitar from a junk shop.. but the guitar didn’t have any strings so he doodled some on until he had enough money to buy some!

The influence of the charts changed the music style which Neil preferred- during the 70s, bands like Queen and Led Zeppelin followed the roots of The Beatles with more “rocky” songs and became classed as Heavy Metal.

Neil and a few of his mates liked this style of music and decided to set up a band called “AC/DC” with Neil playing bass guitar. A while later ironically- another unrelated band (which were based miles away in Scotland and didn’t even met Neil or his band mates) took the name, and the original AC/DC renamed themselves Marseille. Presumably after the French town.

Neil and Marseille gigged throughout the last few years of school and Neil hoped that some of the money raised would help towards funding for Liverpool Art College.

Sadly he got declined on the grounds that the principal said that Neil had to choose between a future in art or music, not both- this rejection was one of the biggest turning points of his life even though he didn’t know at that time.

According to one interview Neil latterly gave, it appears that he auditioned to be a presenter on BBC’s Blue Peter around the same time although he had never appeared on television prior.

The year after Neil and Marseille made their first ever appearance on television on “Battle of the Bands”. They won the final at Wembley in London, £5,000 prize, and signed a contract with Mountain Records- with it came the release of their first album “Red White and Slightly Blue”.

As well as this, the band appeared on television again in 1978- this time on The Saturday Banana. This event signified the first ever meeting of Tim Edmunds and Neil Buchanan although they may had only spoken briefly.

Mountain Records suddenly sank- meaning unless another record company signed up Marseille, the band members (including Neil) would have severe financial problems. Ultranoise Records picked the band up in 1982 for a new contract but due to legal issues the band’s equipment was still stuck in the USA and the paperwork would take two years to sort out.

Neil deemed that this was unfair and left the band. The fame and supposedly fortune of Marseille faded away and Neil ended up technically broke- later claiming he lived in a one-bedroom flat eating cornflakes out of the box.

However Neil reformed Marseille in 2008 and recorded/ released a new album called Unfinished Business. They're currently touring the UK.

Television Career
Neil looked through the local papers to find “a proper job” or another band to join and one advert caught his eye in music newspaper “Melody Maker” for a children’s programme (which he thought was TISWAS)- the advert oddly requested:  Have you ever had breakfast with a gorilla?

Neil wrote back “No but I did let a monkey sit on my lap” and attached a photo of himself when he was younger with somebody in a monkey costume.

His answer got him an interview with TVS. Neil Buchanan travelled the long journey from Liverpool to Southampton where TVS were based.

The programme TVS wanted Neil to take part in was No. 73. Other people auditioning were Sandi Toskvig, Nick Staverson, Andrea Arnold and Patrick Doyle. They were all asked what they could do and Neil probably did some caricatures of some TVS production crew.

Sandi, Nick, Andrea and Patrick got presenting jobs on No.73 as Ethel, Harry, Dawn and Percy respectively.

Neil got hired as the occasional artist of the programme albeit “unofficially” – this was probably pushed forward by the unusual persuasion of researcher Tim Edmunds who remembered Neil briefly from The Saturday Banana. The producers of No.73 were also part of The Saturday Banana but needed some convincing reminder of Marseille. Despite the fact he had no productive or directive control or background over any of TVS programming at this point, Tim oddly got asked around this point to devise a concept for a brand new children’s game show which later became “On Safari” hosted by Christopher Biggins.

No.73 was first broadcast live on 2nd January 1982 at 10:30am and was only broadcast to areas of England which could receive TVS. The programme was based in a fictional house which was the apparent seventy third one in the street hence the title: No. 73. The show featured competitions, musical or talented guests and cartoons- each episode for the first series lasted a hour and 15 minutes in length.

For the first three episodes Neil was classed as a “secret admirer” sending in drawings of Ethel, Harry, Dawn and Percy. The pictures were later seen hanging up on cupboards in the No 73 kitchen- Neil’s exclusion was probably due to the fact of the travel time from Liverpool and accommodation prices in Southampton.

Nonetheless Neil first appeared on episode 4 of No 73 in a big prop parcel wheeled in by Percy that “claimed” to have come from Liverpool by Red Star Parcels.

The first series of No. 73 broadcast until February 1982 and it proved so popular that Series 2 of No. 73 started in the summer.

A lot of changes were afoot when Series 3 started in April 1983: January that year saw the start of the children’s weekday block Children’s ITV (which replaced Watch It!) and the brand new breakfast division TV-AM. No. 73 was classed as part of TV-AM’s Saturday morning line-up latterly among other TV-AM produced programmes such as Wacaday which featured Timmy Mallett, Tommy Boyd and future Austin Powers star Mike Myers.

Neil was hired as a permanent presenter of No. 73 from this series, as well as Kim Goody.

Series 4 started to include more freedom for Neil rather than just being “a presenter”- He was allowed to create his own segment within the show where he created art from common household objects.

Around the same time- he got hired to take part on a new TVS children’s programme: Do It.

According to Look In Magazine, shortly after the fifth series began- Neil teamed up with Nick Staverson to create some music cassette tapes. These were planned to be sent to numerous record companies once completed: Neil would play guitar as well as write the songs and Nick would sing. This was a idea Neil and Nick had for a while- but the larger than life plans never got off the ground and so Neil and Nick stuck with television and No.73.

One of his co-stars on the last 2 series of No.73 was future Cuthbert Lilly star Richard Waites.

After production ceased on No.73 (which was swiftly retitled 7T3) in 1988 he went on to present Motormouth, another Saturday morning children's programme made by Television South alongside Gaby Roslin. Buchanan stayed with Motormouth until the show's cancellation in 1992.

In 1990 he began presenting the CITV show Art Attack from its inception. In March 2000, Britt Allcroft, subsequently Gullane Entertainment, purchased the rights to the series from Buchanan in a £14 million transaction. In one episode of Art Attack he payed tribute to his Zzzap! character Smart Arty by making a Big Art Attack of him, right at the end he said "Recognise this bloke".

In 1991 he hosted the British version of Finders Keepers, a room-raiding game show for both Television South and Scottish Television when Television South lost their licence to broadcast. He co-hosted the show with Diane Youdale, the former Gladiators star, in its final series in 1996.

In 1993 he and Tim Edmunds co-founders of The Media Merchants created Zzzap!, Neil appeared, produced, occasionally wrote and provided the voices for all the Zzzap! character's including Daisy.

He also presented Animal Crazy (1994-1995) for two series with co-host Jenny Powell, the show was produced for Granada Television. From 1995 to 1997 Buchanan presented the awards show The CITV Awards, which gave the viewers a chance to vote on who they think should win a CITV Award.

In a interview Neil stated that he has no desire to return to television and that music and touring with Marseille is now his main priority.

External Links.
Marseille official website.