British viewers of a certain age will know this show very well, it was called Crackerjack, and it was a children’s show that ran for a whopping 30 years, from 1955 to 1984. The hosts in this era were Peter Glaze and Bernie Clifton. (Some credit Glaze with inventing the phrase “Don’t get your knickers in a twist.”)
As you can see, this video depicts a bunch of sophomoric comedians making fun of XTC’s 1979 single “Making Plans for Nigel.” I was trying to think of what the comparison of this would be in the United States, and the closest thing I could come up with was Hee Haw—but Hee Haw didn’t do song parodies, did they? It does have a certain flavor of The Carol Burnett Show spoofing Gone With the Wind. Since Crackerjack was a children’s show, I suppose you could say it was a bit like Captain Kangaroo or Soupy Sales? Again, neither of those were exactly known for parodying well-regarded post-punk acts, right?
Sadly, according to the end credits, this episode seems to have featured Sparks, but there’s no trace of their performance on the Internet that I could find.
In case your appetite for the original has now been whetted, here it is: