Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway…”Let’s Get Ready To Rhumble”

They say Nostalgia is always better the first time around. Sometimes it isn’t. I remember 1994 and I certainly remember PJ and Duncan and their hit single Lets’ Get Ready To Rhumble. It is safe to say my CD Rack feeble as it was back then was never remotely threatened by its addition.

Roll forward nineteen years. PJ and Duncan have become Ant and Dec. The Geordie lads from Byker Grove have become a pair of, not yet middle aged but certainly get closer, Saturday night Entertainers far removed from their suburban “Hip-Pop” roots.

As they evolved they carefully managed the change of their brand leaving behind all the vestiges of what they once were, that is until tonight.

In a nod to a recent reality TV series on ITV2 that saw 5ive, Blue and Atomic Kitten reforming, these bands were invited to perform on the Saturday Night Takeway tonight and the surprise was for one night only Ant and Dec were going to perform their hit single alongside the other bands.

The song might have been cheesy, pop-pish and very Vanilla but the performance Ant and Dec gave tells you everything you need to know about why they are Mr & Mr Saturday night TV. It was stupendously fantastic, especially when you consider that they were busting these same extremely energetic moves close to twenty years ago.

I shouldn’t have liked it but I loved it.

p.s. I you don’t remember the original, thanks to the wonders of YouTube, now you do

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ITV’s Ant and Dec’s Saturday Takeaway…My kids are in Paris????

Ant and Dec are British TVs most wholesome double act, so wholesome that they probably count as one of your five a day and ITV’s Saturday night line up is not complete without the dynamic Geordie duo turning up in some guise or the other.

The latest offering is a new series of their successful Saturday Takeaway a mix of prize giveaways,  celebrity appearances, competitions and surprises for the audience.  Nothing controversial and as I said all very wholesome. Sometime even the most wholesome show hits a “this is a bit awkward” moment.

A young lady was picked out of the audience and Ant and Dec explained how the Mothers Day spa trip her two daughters organised for her was far from ordinary.  In disguise were quite a few of her favourite celebrities.  Clips from the visit revealed to her that the receptionist at the spa was Olympic medallist Louise Smith, her chef was Dancing On Ice Judge Jason Gardner and the  swimming pool attendant was TOWIE‘s Mark Wright.

Each clip bringing lots of audience laughter and humorous surprise from the mum.

All fine and normal, it then moved onto her chance to win a prize – ” A trip to Paris”. The camera cut to her daughters who we were told were in Chesterfield as they read out three clues for their mum  “Where do they say bonjour?”, “Where is the Eiffel Tower?” and “Where do they wear berets?”. Mum answered the questions and won the prize and then the real surprise she was  told she was off to Paris “to join her kids”.

Then her expression changed she was no longer amused more bemused. You did not have to be a mind reading to see the thoughts racing through her head. What the  h@#! were her  7 and 4-year-old daughters doing in Paris? How did they get there? Who was with them?

She was literally frozen to the spot with incredulity and not of the happy kind, and had to be subtly ushered off the stage. I suspect there are going to be many questions asked back stage.

It deem seem a bit gung ho,  I not sure if there was another parent present but there had been no suggestion on the show that there was, so I can imagine the mum being less than happy. I think Ant and Dec may have dropped a tiny notch on the wholesomeness scale.

I Am A Celebrity…How Do you Solve a Problem Like Helen Flanagan…

ITV’s ratings winner “I am a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here” has run into a big problem and it is causing the producers endless headaches. Simply put they have a problem with Helen Flanagan

For anyone who has never watched the show the premise is this.

1. Pick a bunch of a bunch of “celebrities” who are looking to give their career a boost and earn some extra cash.
2. Fly them out to Australia.
3. Stick them in a “jungle” camp over there for three weeks. (In reality a camp built on the edge of a nature reserve).
4. Put them on very basic food rations mainly rice and beans.
5. Every day the public vote for one of the celebs to go through some sort of ritual humiliation (aka Bushtucker trial) to win more food for the camp. The trials range from eating Kangaroo testicles to crawling through bug infested slime.
6. If doing the trail proves to be too much for the celebrity, they can yell out “I am a celebrity get me out of here” and the humiliation will end but obviously they will win nothing.
7. If celebrity completes the trial successfully they win improved rations for the other celebrities back at the Camp.
8. Next day repeat 5-7
9. At the end of about two weeks of repeated celebrity humiliation the public start voting to kick out the celebrities they were least entertained by and the last man / woman standing is crowned King or Queen of the Jungle.

Now if all goes well the celebrities endure the rounds of humiliation, sometimes winning some times losing, but providing the show with lots of footage to keep the watching public entertained.

As most of the celebrities involved are only border line famous, a lot of pre-show publicity is required to raise awareness of who they are before it kicks off.  Some get more publicity than others and in the run up to this show a significant amount of publicity was given to ex-Coronation Street actress Helen Flanagan. In addition to endless shoots of her in her jungle kit,which she did look good in, much of the publicity was about the inordinate amount of things she was afraid of.

I suppose from ITV’s perspective she was the ideal celebrity a beautiful woman, guaranteed to provide oodles of amusing footage during bushtucker trials as wades through a pipe of slime, slugs and spiders a fetching two piece swimming suit.

It all seemed to be going to plan, the public were voting for Helen Flanagan  to do the trials day after day. The problem was Helen was not really playing ball, trial after trial she has either ignored the instructions, put in a half-hearted attempt or as we saw last night simply said she was not doing.

The problem now for ITV is that it seems to have a war of attrition on its hand. The viewers of the show are relentless in voting for Helen, and Helen in turn is becoming increasingly unapologetic about not doing the trails, leaving the producers with very little celebrity humiliation to pad out the show.

They’ve apparently tried to make the trails as easy as possible  and host Ant and Dec have cajoled, persuaded and pleaded with Helen to give the trials ago but it looks like it is not working and people are getting livid according to The Sun

An ITV source said: “The amount of time and effort to set up these trials is huge. “So it is infuriating for them to see that work go to waste.

This time the anger is so high producers are planning to use the trial again.”

The real big problem is unlike other days today’s trials is supposed to be beamed live and if Helen (who has been voted to do it again) wimps out they will be left with a significant amount of live broadcast time to fill in.

Looks like it is time for the production staff to really earn their keep, as they need to find a solution to this before tonight.