Babestation Xtra 2009 Retrospective

Originally posted 23rd October 2014.  This blog, written by Babestation super fan, @Babe_TV covers the Autumn of 2009 on Babestation Xtra.  Read on for an immersive stroll into the good old days of classic Babestation.

Autumn 2009 is full of vivid memories from Babestation’s Freeview channels, a number of which I’m looking at in this retrospective. I’m going back in time five years for this post, as I’ve done before, but on this occasion I’ve widened the net a little to cover the mid to late autumn of ’09, rather than just one show.

I was always going to include the show of the moment. I’m referring, of course to the then brand new Babestation Xtra. And what a freaky little hive of offbeat shenanigans it was. In the top pic above, from October 2009, Michelle Moist and Lori Buckby are in the hotseat, as the insets keep tabs on the three call channels. Louise Porter is on Babestation 1, Stevie Ritchie is on Babestation 2, and Charlie C is with Yvette Merriman on Partyland.

The rest of the pics show what happens when you hand the baton to anyone who wants to text in. Yep, the show instantly turns into a leg, foot and tickling fetish bonanza. The two pics in the middle show Geri responding to texts with a leg and feet show, closely supported by Reede Fox, in mid November. And the bottom two pics show sweet little innocent Paigey-waigey Tyler. One minute she’s opening the Freeview show at 1am on 2nd November 2009. And one wacko text later she’s got her ankles tied together and some bloke from behind the scenes tickling the daylights out of her feet. They certainly don’t make babeshows like that anymore, although whether that’s a bad thing or a good thing is open to debate.

Unfortunately none of these pics were available to publish along with this write up.  But the descriptions are pretty crazy to imagine.  Here’s some other pics of some of the babes mentioned to help visualise the scene better.

Babestation tried to entice back this top ranking chatline firestarter after her departure from the live babeshows, but without success. Yvette Merriman was in her final weeks on the channels when this autumn 2009 section was shot on the stairways of ‘Babestation Towers’. It’s interesting in that it was shot in the disused 4:3 aspect ratio, which had been replaced with widescreen 16:9 in late spring. It seems BS had a roaming camera which was set in that format, and was also used for one or two shower sequences. Yvette’s image, with short hair and a more alternative look than the norm on Babestation, lent itself well to the wide range of roleplays she covered, and helped her stand out visually as well as in terms of her edgy personality. The channel was Babestation 1, which by this time was transmitting on Freeview 94.

Even though the Party People night show had finished in the summer, the early morning Freeview show continued to use the brand. Here’s Amber James, Amber had also worked on the Party People night show, but in general she was rarely seen on Freeview in 2009. This was one of just two appearances I’ve got logged for the whole autumn. Amber was, however, on Freeview much more frequently in 2010.

All the Babestation intro sequences (excluding Partyland) were updated on 23rd November, and interestingly, Babestation 2’s vid featured exactly the same girls as Babestation 1’s, except for Karina and Louise. BS Xtra’s sequence had only comprised vector graphics up until this point, but it was replaced with a “Welcome to Babestation Xtra!” video, the start of which (captured above) was shot in front of a bus, outside the BS studio, almost certainly on Bonfire Night, 5th November 2009. That was the night Babestation held a special BS Xtra launch party, not far from the old studio in the West End. It should be noted, however, that the actual show began in late October, over a week before the launch party.

It’s hard to identify all the babestation girls in the bus clip because the video effect degrades the quality and some faces are partly or fully obscured throughout the footage, but it looks like Amber James, Cleo O’Booty, Jada, Michelle Moist, Rosie Lee, Charlie O’Neil, Yvette, Lori and Camilla are all there. Paige Tyler may be one of the girls who’s obscured. The group wouldn’t have included Geri, Caty Cole, Ella Jolie, Daryl Morgan, Reede Fox, Megan Moore or Karina Currie, because they were all working on the shows that night. Stevie was on holiday abroad, so she couldn’t have attended the party, and I don’t think Dani O’Neal was very well, so she may not have gone either.

You really do know you’re back in the golden age of Babestation when the first face you see after the opening sequence is that of Miss Dani O’Neal. Dani was the longest serving Babestation babe at this time, having worked for the channel almost since it started. She was very intensively employed across the BS channels through autumn ‘09, even doing some work on Babestation Daytime. And notably she was runner up in the Queen of Babestation viewer text poll at the end of that autumn. That was a remarkable feat given that she hadn’t been on screen at any point during the vote. All of the other babes who placed prominently in the poll had been on the mics for long periods, canvassing for votes over the course of the contest. But a Dani O’Neal fan was a Dani O’Neal fan. They knew who their favourite was, and they’d vote for Dani. No one else.

Autumn 2009 saw babes walking onto set without underwear for the first time on a permanent Freeview channel, and from the amount of nakedness which ensued on Babestation Xtra it was fairly evident that viewers couldn’t get enough of it. In this section, at the height of the excitement on 25th November 2009, Nurse Camilla was joined by Charlie C for a nudie romp with a syringe. Camilla introduced the section with…

“Hmmm… I forgot to wear my knickers to work… I think someone stole them… So [giggles], I think that you guys out there should come and help me… I can’t believe I’ve lost them… again [laughs]… So, why don’t you come through, and bend me over, and come and tell me what a… cheeky, little nurse I am…”

And finally, a look at Partyland, the fourth of Babestation’s main night shows. In the Partyland mechanic’s office is Stevie-Louise Ritchie, talking to a ‘girl caller’. The use of ‘girl callers’ was scaled up just on the cusp of summer and autumn 2009, and accompanying ‘black box’ text insets were implemented around the same time. It’s funny to think now, given the piles of obstructive visual advertising that subsequently found its way onto the Babestation screens, that these small text displays were considered as bad as the graphics policy could possibly get at the time.