Unearthed letter from Keith Chegwin helped spark Multi-Coloured Swap Shop ahead of its 50th anniversary

An unpublished letter from Keith Chegwin, written when he was 19 in 1976, has emerged from the BBC Written Archives Centre, illustrating how a young jobbing actor helped spark Multi-Coloured Swap Shop, the Saturday-morning show that defined British kids’ television in the late 1970s. The discovery arrives as Swap Shop approaches its 50th anniversary next year and provides new insight into how a single pitch helped shape a cultural fixture.

In the summer of 1976, Chegwin outlined a live half-hour program for children aged eight to 15, drawing inspiration from popular chat shows of the era such as Michael Parkinson’s talks, Esther Rantzen’s That’s Life! and The Russell Harty Show. He proposed a format featuring a news desk, a resident band, a problem corner and an information centre, and suggested that a young compere could interview well-known groups, television personalities and sports figures. He noted his own acting experience, writing that he had been in the business for nine years and had appeared in a range of television, film and stage productions. He also included a CV that referenced Liverpool-born Chegwin’s roles in Macbeth, The Liver Birds and The Tomorrow People, and he expressed confidence that viewers could submit questions for their guests. The letter made clear he saw himself as a potential host for the program.

Three months after sending the letter, Chegwin was appointed as a co-host for the BBC’s new Swap Shop, a position that helped launch a television career spanning five decades. Hosted by Noel Edmonds with John Craven and Chegwin among the presenting team, Swap Shop traveled the country to facilitate the show’s iconic toy swaps and to introduce a format that would become a staple of children’s television. The program also pioneered the television phone-in and popularized elements such as a presenting desk and audience-submitted questions to guests, ideas that Chegwin had proposed in his letter.

Swap Shop ran until 1982 and helped pioneer a generation of similar programs, including Saturday Superstore, Going Live! and Live and Kicking. Its influence extended beyond the BBC to ITV, where the revival of Tiswas, hosted by Chris Tarrant and Sally James, drew on a similar spirit of audience participation. In his personal life, Chegwin married co-presenter Maggie Philbin in 1982. He died in 2017 at the age of 60. Philbin later recalled, in remarks reported by The Mail on Sunday, that she had not seen the unsolicited letter and that it reached producer Rosemary Gill at a moment when the BBC was deciding how to proceed; Gill took a significant risk in bringing Chegwin on board. The discovery of Chegwin’s letter adds a tangible thread to the story of Swap Shop and its enduring legacy in British culture.

Scholars and fans alike view Swap Shop as a watershed in children’s entertainment, blending live interaction, consumer participation and lighthearted stunts with genuine interviews. The BBC archive material underscores how a single aspiring host’s note helped crystallize a show that would, in turn, shape a generation of programming and inspire successors across networks as well as a sister revival on ITV.