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TV: G is for...

Game for a Laugh

Watching us, watching you...GENERATION GAME-SLAUGHTERING, hysteria-mongering, surprise-springing, staircase-shimmying, Beadlebum-annointing ogre of Saturday nights which bequeated “people telly” to the nation along with shrieking studio audiences and Sarah Kennedy. Helmed by feted fateful foursome HENRY KELLY (“headmaster” figure, smartly dressed in suit, would “arrive” on set by striding sensibly down studio steps); MATTHEW KELLY (harmless “kid brother”, casually dressed in rainbow jumper, would hop and skip down the steps); SARAH KENNEDY (evil matron, sporting giant smocks, would totter down steps in purposefully slow and boring fashion); and JEREMY BEADLE (Jeremy Beadle). Each would then perch on the obligatory 1980s chrome stools while discharging menu comprising wacky stunts (feel the melon/Duncan Goodhew’s head); zany reports (nudist colony in Bognor, “world’s slowest 100m race”) and inane vox pops (“What stupid noises can you make?” etc.). Audience, the loudest in the free world, would hoot and holler every other second. Beadle would venture among them, begin casual question (“Supposing you lived next door to someone…”) before whipping round and fixing luckless individual with evil eye and half-jutting hand (“…who hung their washing out in the nude!”). Madness soon paled and Henry, Matthew and Sarah all quit. Show moved to Sundays. Beadle threw a hissy fit (“You’re fucking killing the golden goose!”) but hung around with – yikes – replacements LEE PECK, RUSTIE LEE and MARTIN P. DANIELS. Audience buggered off. Show followed shortly afterwards.

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  1. Glenn Aylett

    June 14, 2009 at 6:27 pm

    Mercifully axed when viewers decided it was a load of garbage and also part of an attempt to move ITV upmarket which sadly killed off World of Sport. Bargain bucket LWT light entertainment from my least favourite ITV contractor- the joke at Thames was LWT stood for Let’s Watch Thames.

  2. Lee James Turnock

    May 1, 2010 at 11:24 am

    Spawned two equally ace (and viciously cruel) sketch show parodies – the Not the Nine O’Clock News skit with Griff as Henry Kelly and Rowan as a bereaved husband, and the There’s A Lot Of It About (Spike Milligan) skit ‘Laugh At A Cretin’, with Julia Breck as a bewilderingly buxom Matthew Kelly and Spike as Richard the Third for some reason!

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