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Beadle's About

television series

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 10, 2026
Entity authorityQ4876066 ↗
Source-derived summary

Beadle's About is a British television programme hosted and written by Jeremy Beadle, where members of the public became victims of practical jokes, filmed by hidden cameras. It was produced by LWT for ITV, and ran on Saturday nights from 22 November 1986 to 31 October 1996.

Format

The format originated as an element of the show Game for a Laugh, which Beadle co-presented. Many of the practical jokes involved someone's car or van secretly being swapped for an identical one, and then having a disaster befall it, such as exploding, falling into the sea, or being dropped from a great height, as the owner of the vehicle looked on in horror. Another common prank was for unauthorised building works to be carried out close to, or within, the victim's home or garden.

After a few minutes, Beadle would appear in disguise (typically, as a policeman or some other figure of authority, and often wearing a fake beard on top of his natural beard), and interact with the shell-shocked and/or irate victim. He would subtly drop more and more hints and would remove his disguise and point a stick microphone at the person. As the public were familiar with Beadle from the earlier show Game for a Laugh, they would then immediately realise they had been had, often with the words "I don't believe it!". A follow-up series was entitled 'It's Beadle!' which followed a similar format.

Memorable pranks

One of the most notable pranks was where Dorset resident Janet Elford was convinced into believing that aliens had landed in her garden.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Beadle's About” as television series. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1986, 1996—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Beadle's, television and series can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as television series. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4876066. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1986 and 1996.

Critical limits

Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Beadle's About”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Beadle's About primary sources, Beadle's About archive and Beadle's research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Beadle's About”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Beadle's About” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.