126. Win the ads

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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?

After the success of Pop Idol, Ant and Dec had turned around a career with ITV that had looked like it was hitting the skids. It was now time to try to make it work with a programme where they were the stars. In the year since Slap Bang, the duo had realised the flaws in the original concept – the most obvious being that there was no real hook or reason to stay tuned in.

For their new show, starting in June 2002, the pair were now working in tandem with Granada Television, a company more at home with Saturday night television. Some aspects of Slap Bang made a return, with the programme broadcast live in front of a giant studio audience, and the pair’s banter and affability still playing an important part in the mix. However the most obvious change was the concept that gave the programme its name. Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway was the first fruit of a new scheme Granada had introduced whereby staff members were encouraged to come up with new ideas – very similar to David Young’s development unit at the BBC. Here, the main concept was a simple one – what if contestants could win everything that was advertised in the commercial breaks?

Rather obviously, this idea needed some development before it could reach the screens. The biggest hurdle to overcome was the regulations that demanded a separation between programmes and advertising, and the outlawing of product placement. ITV’s regional structure meant it also wasn’t possible to use Takeaway’s own ad breaks as they would differ around the country. What eventually showed up, then, was a game where the prizes were taken from a “randomly-selected” commercial break on ITV that week. In the end, a potentially revolutionary concept became a fairly standard format where the contestants were playing for a range of standard prizes, some good, some rubbish.

Still, at least it was a concept, and one that meant every episode of Takeaway would end with members of the public winning or losing huge prizes. The rest of the show included sketches and games, and with the “Win The Ads” concept running throughout the show, this was an approximation of the old Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush format – proving again Chris Evans’ enduring influence on Saturday evening television nearly a decade on. In the first series, there was also a role for a former staple of TV light entertainment. Jeremy Beadle appeared in a slot where he was holed up in a bunker and joined each week by a member of the public to compete in a task to win prizes. It even had it’s own ITV2 spin-off show, Banged up with Beadle.

“They asked me to be locked away on this island,” remembered Jeremy Beadle in 2004, “and I realised what the idea was, you know – the brand Beadle, let’s lock him up – I knew what it was all about. I know that I can handle all the mind games that they want to throw at me. They gave me a member of the public each week and together we were going to learn a skill. And it was meant to be dreadful and it was pretty dreadful, it was cold and it was damp and it was dark and it’s cold, but I had a great time.

“Each week it was live on …Takeaway and we had to perform a task. We had six and we won five, where each of the contestants won five thousand pounds, which was a life changing amount of money for these people.  So it was very important to me. On the first week, we had to do a yoga position and the experts said we didn’t do it properly and I thought they were playing a joke on me, so I was very calm about it, and I was waiting for the producer to say ‘oh don’t worry it’s all been a joke’, but that didn’t happen.

“I then made it very clear that unless that person got their money I was walking.  The producer came down, and so did the exec and Claudia Rosencrantz [Controller of Entertainment for ITV]. They made it very clear that the expert had got it wrong and I was delighted. I felt that was going to be great for Ant and Dec because they’re going to show that they’ve got heart. It made for great television. And of course the excuse to go into these ridiculous yoga positions in the first place was to show my fat arse on the screen. So they got the laugh as well.”

If Saturday Night Takeaway didn’t set the world alight, it managed to make it to the end of the run in one piece. It was also recommissioned for a second series starting in January 2003. This run ditched the Beadle exploits and also slimmed down the “Win The Ads” game so it was played entirely in the last five minutes rather than running throughout each episode. The spare time was given over to new features with Ant and Dec’s personalities at the fore. “What’s Next?” was a completely unscripted part of the programme where each week the du0 would be confronted by a stunt or game they had no knowledge of and had to participate in there and then – plenty of scope for banter and embarrassing situations.

“Ant and Dec Undercover” saw them don prosthetics for a hidden camera stunt. The first few instalments were split equally between surprising fellow celebrities and members of the public whose friends and family had nominated them, but the latter were quickly phased out. Here the antecedent was obviously the Gotchas on Noel’s House Party, but by taking advantage of Ant and Dec’s bulging contacts books the regularly featured in the tabloids due to their big name subjects. Meanwhile two child actors from Newcastle were dubbed “Little Ant and Dec” and were deployed to interview celebrities at press junkets with a blend of innuendo and rudeness that regularly delivered easy laughs. Obviously the series traded heavily on Ant and Dec’s personalities and the ideas the production team came up with – Noel’s House Party being a testament to how quickly a light entertainment show can run out of steam. There was less chance of this happening on Takeaway, though – especially as the duo’s other commitments (fortunately for the commercial channel, all on ITV) meant there was more than a year’s gap before the third series.

Ant and Dec were now billed in Takeaway’s closing credits as “Creative Consultants,” showing the regard ITV held the duo in. With Cilla Black on her way out, and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire’s audience declining since its heyday, they were ITV’s two most bankable stars, and the only ones that seemed able to guarantee a huge audience. This was again illustrated in early 2003 when Matthew Kelly asked to be “released” from his duties on Stars In Their Eyes after he was arrested on charges of child abuse – which inevitably led to doubts over the future of yet another ITV light entertainment institution. Davina McCall stepped in for a run of specials and Cat Deeley was employed to front Stars In Their Eyes Kids, a series spun off from a previous one-off special (which in itself highlights how much ITV were trading on their popular brands). Kelly was completely cleared of the charges, but later announced that the next series of Stars In Their Eyes would be his last as he wanted to go back into acting.

Next Monday: A name in search of a series