123. King of trash, that’s me

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Also:  It's Saturday Night 2. An autograph before you go 3. A new kind of game show 4. A rising exasperation with the quantity of dirt 5. The whole thing suddenly fell apart 6. Synthetic propensity 7. It was destined to be an anti-climax 8. This is your show now 9. The awesome scale of our wastefulness 10. Hands up those who couldn't care less 11. Together We’ll Be Ok 12. Decide the shape of ITV in the 1980s 13. Alan is too commercial 14. It worked like a dream 15. Older men, doing school boy tricks 16. Killing the Golden Goose 17. People love us to be sexy 18. The manure is worth more than the cattle 19. They were big in the States and we noted that 20. I’m still aggressive and I’m still handing out the insults 21. A new style of lunatic humour 22. The Habitat-bean-bag-hessian-wallpaper brigade 23. Thoroughly sinful 24. All carrots should be scraped, sliced and cooked 25. Back then it was radical stuff 26. Whatever they do, we can do it better 27. You'll have to take us as you find us 28. Entertainment that keeps on the move 29. It's the public that has to pay 30. The last we saw of either of them was their sad faces 31. Just shoot the bastard 32. Britain could clearly be facing its darkest hour 33. Any enthusiasm we may have had for continuing discussions is waning 34. It was considered by LWT and then put in a bottom drawer 35. Watch the redoubtable Terry take off 36. I thought it might be terrible and I wouldn’t enjoy it at all 37. Kamikaze Mastermind 38. We haven’t moved into luxury 39. We are investing in people 40. Delivered impeccably 41. He has to allow you to do your bit 42. All the anticipation of the great emotive point 43. If you want Russ Abbot to do it, then you have to accept me and my ideas 44. Let’s get straight into this 45. Unedifying Greed 46. We’ve got the fucking lot! 47. Scope for humour and danger 48. Pure Megablast 49. There’s lots of killing, but not much else 50. I wanted to make sure it was going to be disastrous 51. Oh dear – Auntie’s playing bingo! 52. A Shrivelled Little Thing 53. I shouldn’t have accepted it 54. We would be the spoilsports 55. The Most Sexless Person In Television 56. They’d have strung me up if I hadn’t chosen him 57. Is there some way to play with the internal constituent parts? 58. The most important entertainment programme of my time 59. The plumply pretty female duo 60. The audience just sort of started to freeze on him 61. More pilots than British Airways 62. There's going to come a time when you'll have to go to the BBC 63. A slightly pretentious manifesto 64. Things Look Very Precarious 65. It’s no good doing all the same old people all the time 66. That’s just not funny Bobby, it's corny - just don’t do that 67. Well bottom’s not funny 68. We Are The Funnymen 69. The powers that be listened to Denis 70. Stretchers never go up stairs 71. I was in obscurity until this series 72. I don’t care if he doesn’t like me 73. There’s such a passion for nostalgia right now 74. I Heard A Seat In The Stalls Go ‘Gerdonk!' 75. This is your show, folks, and I do mean you 76. There’s good news for perplexed fans of 3-2-1! 77. Taking on Blind Date would be a real challenge 78. You wanna bet on it? 79. The yarns worked their tried and tested magic 80. The Charge-And-Shout Brigade 81. I sat for a moment in silence, then turned in my chair and left the stage 82. We just weren't allowed into UK terrestrial television 83. Beadle’s A Prick 84. The interviewer always has to know when it's best to keep his or her mouth shut 85. Can you come up with a good solution for the Murder Weekend mystery? 86. He's not a goody- goody hero 87. The Sexism, The Dolly Birds, The Catchphrases 88. The feel of Saturday night 89. 1990 Who would employ an ex-alky with lowered self-esteem 90. It were a right smack in the face 91. Look Straight Into My Eyes And Everything Will Be Alright, That's A Promise 92. That's the last thing I was expecting, Jim 93. The characters and situations are real 94. Oh Man, There Go All My Women Fans 95. A Double Order of Talent 96. If there is an air of spontaneity about it, it’ll be genuine 97. NTV brings you ... empty rooms! 98. You’re BBC, you shouldn’t be here 99. If this doesn’t work out, we’re both snookered! 100. The humour of Beadle comes through humiliating people! 101. To allow such bilge on TV is an insult to the audience 102. Like a cup of cold sick 103. A litre of gin, ecstasy and crack cocaine 104. A reliable tent pole for Saturday evenings 105. It is in the cutlery drawer 106. Welcome to the new Saturday night 107. Congratulations, you have got the fucking Gen Game 108. The programme has done extremely badly and will be dropped after this series 109. Building the excitement and tension to a crescendo 110. He gives us our spirit of unity; we’d all like to strangle him 111. The worst programme currently on terrestrial television 112. I award the city state of Milton Keynes 100 credits! 113. There’s nothing that makes people scream, ‘Did you see that?’ 114. It was of a standard frankly well below what the public would want 115. Waxing An Ape Is My Ambition 116. Don’t Get Mad, Get Even 117. The penalty shoot-out is the greatest ever endgame 118. 200 black boxes are strapped to the back of a cross-section of the nation 119. Better For You, Better For All Of Us 120. I mean who on earth thought that was a good idea? 121. I’m sure the tune was in there somewhere 122. This Time, You Decide 123. King of trash, that’s me 124. It’s about rejection now 125. They lost what Popstars was all about 126. Win the ads 127. A name in search of a series 128. Getting grief from the papers 129. I’m so pleased to be back on television 130. Saturday nights haven't been this interesting for 10 years 131. It’s the Usual Nonsense 132. The trip of a lifetime Epilogue: Why Haven't You Written a Series of Articles on Tuesday Night Telly?

By the start of 2002, Saturday night television had become fashionable again. One of the biggest TV audiences of the year had tuned into ITV to watch Will and Gareth battle it out in the grand final of Pop Idol and it had become a huge national talking point. What was particularly notable, though, was that this was a traditional Saturday night programme. Sure, the phone voting and dissection of the music business was something you’d only have seen in the 21st Century, but with its huge set, flashy lighting, besuited hosts and enthusiastic studio audience, it could really have come along any time in the previous thirty years.

The great thing about Pop Idol was that it appealed to a huge family audience. Of course the age of the participants and the style of music meant it had an obvious draw for younger viewers, but with Ant and Dec’s mild cynicism and a huge range of musical styles, older viewers could still get a lot out of it as well. At last, Saturday night television had worked out how to tailor a modern approach to a broad demographic.

Existing programmes, however, found it harder to develop for a new generation. This was particularly obvious in the series running opposite Pop Idol on Saturday evenings – Jim Davidson’s Generation Game. By 2002, Davidson had been presenting the programme for seven years – longer then Brucie’s first stint.

“Choosing the host is subjective,” says Michael Leggo, the BBC’s head of light entertainment from 1994 to 1999. “You put some names forward and kick them around and think who would be right for this. Who would be wrong and Jim Davidson, our eventual choice, took the show somewhere else, did well in the ratings and gave it a new energy and anarchy that perhaps it hadn’t had before.”

During his spell at the helm, Davidson had slowly but surely made changes to the format to better play to his strengths and banish all memories of its previous hosts. The changes seemed calculated to ensure Davidson was centre stage throughout. The anonymous theme that had been introduced from Jim’s first series was replaced by a track by Emerson, Lake and Palmer – one of his favourite bands. The game would often be delayed for comedy sketches starring Davidson and old pals such as Cannon and Ball or Jess Conrad. Meanwhile, since the demise of Noel’s House Party, Jim had ensured Mr Blobby stayed off the breadline by featuring him as a regular guest each week.

One of the more memorable moments – though perhaps not for the reasons Davidson had hoped – came in 1999 when Jim was joined on stage by his son Cameron, and the pair duetted in an irony-free rendition of ‘Father and Son’. This summed up the current state of the Generation Game – it was now Jim’s show, more a vehicle for his brand of comedy than the tried and tested format that Brucie and Larry had helmed. The contestants seemed pushed further and further in the background, not least when they were regularly showered with gunge.

If you were being generous, you could say that Jim Davidson was simply doing what Larry Grayson had successfully managed two decades ago – not slavishly replicating Forsyth and instead letting his own comedic style take the format into a completely different direction. However, Davidson had a style that was an acquired taste. Anyone tuning into the current Generation Game after a few years’ absence would have been at a loss to understand exactly what was going on, and what had happened to the classic format that had served the show well enough for 20 years. It also meant that the Generation Game’s success was now inexorably linked to the appeal of Jim Davidson.

Come 2002, it was hard to work out exactly why this programme was still on television. As had been the case through most of his career, Davidson still regularly appeared on tabloid front pages detailing the latest exploits in his private life. This behaviour seemed inconsistent with the host of what was once the perfect family show.

“Well Jim came with baggage,” says Leggo. “Because he was famous for some outdated humour. But that was a very narrow, and wrong view of Jim. He brought with it an added sense of danger.  Because viewers knowing that reputation think oh is he going to overstep the mark here? You know and in any case he had that sort of cheeky chappie type demeanour so it brought a bit of added zest to it. But we all knew we were perfectly safe because the show was pre-recorded anyway so even if there’d been something unsuitable we would have just chopped it out.”

However, the regular appearances of end-of-the-pier veterans alongside Davidson left the show reeking of formaldehyde, of a comedic style that seemed to now only exist on this programme. A decade previously the BBC had been clearing out their light entertainment department by dropping the likes of Bobby Davro and Little and Large. So what was this creaking old series still doing on telly in 2002?

It’s not that veteran comedy could no longer do the business – the two halves of the Pop Idol final had been bisected by Another Audience With Ken Dodd and Doddy’s old jokes had been a huge success. Davidson was just doing it badly, and by the start of 2002, in the face of a rampant Ant and Dec, the Generation Game was pulling in only around three million viewers. It was perhaps not surprising, then, that Jim decided to call it a day, and the BBC didn’t appear to be in a rush to replace him. This came shortly after Big Break had also ended meaning, as Davidson confirmed, “I have no TV work except presenting funny TV clips – read the autocue, very difficult – for the BBC”.

Davidson later said, “It was a joint decision. The BBC said ‘How do you feel about not doing them any more?’, and I said ‘Fine’. So they took away £1.5 million salary a year. I was disappointed. I loved the Generation Game. You didn’t need a huge brain to enjoy Big Break. It was trash rather than crap, and viewers enjoyed it. King of trash, that’s me.” April 2002 therefore saw the end of the Generation Game’s second spell on screens after 12 years. Later, the BBC would produce a pilot for a possible new series with Paul O’Grady as host, but this became notorious in TV circles for its apparent poor quality, with O’Grady later suggesting it was the worst thing he’d ever done on television. Others have followed – with Graham Norton hosting the one-off Generation Fame at Christmas 2005, featuring celebrity contestants.  Then in 2011 the format cropped up again as part of 24 Hour Panel People, a marathon stint for Comic Relief.  In 2014 Miranda Hart recorded a pilot episode, which failed to lead to a full series and in 2018 Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins hosted two, poorly received episodes.

At the time of writing, the legendary format, part of Saturday nights for generations, remains on the shelf.

Next Monday: It’s about rejection now