107. Congratulations, you have got the fucking Gen Game

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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?

“Here I go again! I should have been a channel swimmer, I’m always going backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards. I’ll be sad to leave The Generation Game, but I always like to move on when I’m at the top.” So said Bruce Forsyth when, in 1994, he announced he was to defect to ITV yet again. Although Brucie cited artistic reasons, he later revealed his departure was in part thanks to a falling out with BBC management. In any case, come 1995, the press were desperate to find out who Forsyth’s successor would be on one of the most famous Saturday night shows of all time.

Perhaps this would be the carrot to convince Michael Barrymore to finally leave ITV? Could flavour of the month Chris Evans reinvent Saturday TV for a second time after his success with Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush? Might Dale Winton, considered by many to be a star of the future, be given the opportunity to do the show that had always been his ambition? Or could Julian Clary bring back memories of Larry Grayson’s successful stint? All these names were bandied about at one point or another. In fact, when the time came to choose Forsyth’s successor, none of these made the final running.

Instead, there was Matthew Kelly. Over a decade previously he had contributed to the original Gen Game’s downfall as part of the Game For A Laugh team, and was hosting two ITV Saturday staples: You Bet! and Stars In Their Eyes. He’d achieved much acclaim for the gentle way he handled the contestants. Then there was Jim Davidson, who had re-established himself as a reliable presenter with Big Break.  He also had previous direct experience when he filled in for an ill Brucie on one episode of the 1994 series. Yet surely, his reputation as something of a rogue with a shady past meant he was hardly suitable as the host of the number one family show? Seemingly not as, claimed Davidson, the next time they met, Kelly immediately commented “Congratulations, you have got the fucking Gen Game.” How much of this was down to the fact Davidson already had a contract with the Beeb, and thus came cheap, is unknown.

“Jim came with baggage,” remembers Michael Leggo, then head of light entertainment at the BBC. “Because he was famous for some outdated humour. But that was a very narrow view. Jim was a very talented comedian, so I was certainly never in any doubt that he could be funny He brought with him an added sense of danger.  Because viewers knowing that reputation think, ‘oh is he going to overstep the mark here?’ And in any case he had that sort of cheeky chappie type demeanour so it bought 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.”

Come 21 October 1995, Davidson was now in charge full time. He was joined by GMTV weathergirl Sally Meen, and various changes to the format were introduced, with the conveyer belt prizes now adding up to one large prize, contestants arriving on set in an open-topped car and, apparently on Davidson’s suggestion, the dropping of the regular playlets. Sadly, though, Davidson was something of an acquired taste, and clearly struggled in this first series, unable to bond with the contestants to any great extent or get much of a relationship going with Meen. Mediocrity ruled OK. Still, ratings remained fairly buoyant, and Davidson was kept on for another series – albeit with something of a revamp.

Luckily for Davidson, his stint on the Gen Game coincided with BBC1’s most dominant period on Saturday evenings for a number of years. The lottery was still doing good business, especially with a series of double rollovers in late 1995 and early 1996 . Virtually all of these viewers then stayed on for Casualty, which come January 1996 was guaranteed at least 18 million viewers – the largest audience on television outside the soaps.  ITV was at a disadvantage regardless of what it showed. Yet this period coincided with an incredible run of high-profile flops on the commercial channel, with almost a year of non-stop stinkers. ITV still had Gladiators, Blind Date and Family Fortunes on a Saturday night, all of which were reliable enough. But the audiences were getting older and gradually decreasing, so some new ideas were needed.

The first attempt to freshen up the schedules, and the first of a seemingly endless string of flops, came in September 1995 with the debut of Raise The Roof. This quiz was much hyped as the prize was at that time the biggest ever seen on television – a house worth up to £100,000. It was suggested that ITV would run this head-to-head with the lottery draw; the prize wasn’t as big as the multi-million pound lottery jackpot, but at least you could actually see who won. However come September, there had clearly been a change of heart and it was scheduled for 8.15; the graveyard slot opposite Casualty. Hence it was on the back foot from day one, and despite the big prize, it resolutely failed to capture the public’s imagination. Perhaps this was because the format was fairly uninspired, being simply a procession of questions. Maybe too it was the presence of Bob Holness as host – best known from Blockbusters, Holness clearly had experience, but his presentation style somewhat dated and formal for a Saturday night audience more used to the chummy presentation of Cilla and Noel. As such, few noticed when the run ended at Christmas, never to return.

At least Raise The Roof was a recognisably ‘ITV’ programme, cut from the same cloth as its Saturday stablemates. The next attempt to freshen thing up was something entirely different, and part of ITV’s semi-regular attempts to attract a younger audience to the channel. Half a decade previously, LWT had attempted to subvert the usual LE output with Trick Or Treat, with somewhat mixed results. Now in December 1995 came another attempt to mix alternative comedy and a more traditional framework, with Jack Dee’s Saturday Night. Dee, poached from Channel Four, fronted a variety series from a theatre stage, linking a number of fellow stand-ups, pop bands, novelty acts such as the dance troupe Stomp and other personalities. Scheduled at 9pm, the idea was that Dee would attract a younger, hipper audience while the guest list would also include a number of figures that the more mainstream audience would appreciate.

Inevitably, this new idea failed to come off. The choice of guests was often absurd, with the first programme featuring Peter Baldwin and Thelma Barlow singing a track from the Coronation Street album, alongside Pulp and Robert Palmer. These weird guest lists continued throughout the run, with Freddie Starr alongside kd lang, and Hale and Pace rubbing shoulders with Seal, and failed to strike a chord with audiences young or old. To add to the problems, the theatre setting didn’t translate well on screen, seeming too big and sterile, Dee wore the same suit throughout as if it had all been filmed in one go, and most of the acts did old material; Pulp on the first show miming to the single “Disco 2000”, several weeks after it had been a hit. The mix of styles was wholly unsuccessful, and the only real interest came when one programme had to be edited just before transmission due to ITV getting cold feet over a religion-themed stand-up routine from Dee. After six shows, the concept was abandoned, with Dee being given a more traditional stand-up showcase (Jack Dee’s Sunday Service) the following year.

Next Monday: The programme has done extremely badly and will be dropped after this series