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You Should Be So Lucky!

NOTICE HOW all these “YOU…” shows have bloody exclamation marks in… Anyway. This was basically a giant in-studio Snakes and Ladders game show in which teams of stage school kids competed against each other for “fame”. A clapometer was used to determine the number of moves, after a group from one team had performed an act. “Fame” quotient measured, logically, in Blackpool rock. Hosted by an impoverished COLIN BENNETT as the oleaginous Butlin’s reject Vince Purity. Weird career curve, has our Mr. Bennett. Theatrical background (produced a musical of Nillson’s infamous “The Point” – the story of Oblio, a bloke with a round head in a land of pointy-headed people, songs like “Me And My Arrow…” etc.) Moved into TV as presenter and writer, most famously for Luna, but also such stuff as bizarre and diverse as Captain Zep, Roland Rat, Women of a Certain Age, Panda Pete, Headfirst, Greetings from England, Little Thistle, Tricky Business, Robo Pigeon (yeah), Fantasy Five, It’s Weird, etc. etc. Whatever they are. Also the model railway fanatic in the non-classic Yellow Pages “R186 signal box” ad, as well as dad in one of those “There may be trouble ahead” insurance ads.

10 Comments

10 Comments

  1. Pearlyman

    January 25, 2010 at 6:30 pm

    This drivel floated into my mind for some reason the other day and I felt compelled to come and spew forth on here. This was dreck and raised my ten-year-old hackles no-end. If ever there was a bunch of kids to hate more than the presenters of Why Don’t You, it was the stage-school troops on here. On one episode, one of said stage schools came from my home town which made me hate them even more. How could Walsall possibly have a stage-school??

    The ‘winner’ then got to do their solo act. I vaguely remember one ‘comedian’. Saturday Superstore had better acts.

    So, annoying, trying-too-hard brats, a ‘game’ that made no sense with a completely arbitrary result, Vince Purity’s ‘Purettes’, an annoying theme song with obligatory hand gestures..it all added up to a depressing half hour, which always left me simmering inside, asking one vital question:

    WHY COULDN’T I BE ON THERE??

  2. Gareth James

    January 25, 2010 at 9:49 pm

    Wasn’t there a square marked ‘Kick a Shin’? If more than one person landed on this, Mr. Bennett would shout ‘Kick a Shin time’, and pretend for a pre-watershed moment that the two constestants had to indeed kick each other in the shin, before revealing this was a joke and they had in fact to do something pointless and painfree instead.

  3. Lee James Turnock

    May 4, 2010 at 3:29 pm

    Hands up who wanted to strangle that kid who did Ben Elton’s “double seat, double seat” routine verbatim. This routine wasn’t even funny in the first place, but hearing it recited by a youngster who’d probably never even been on a train on his own before just made it all the more depressing. Obviously his parents hadn’t smacked his ear enough when he did his ‘party piece’ for all and sundry, choosing the ‘quiet life’ option instead and sighing “that’s nice, dear”. For shame.

  4. Debbie

    March 14, 2011 at 5:02 pm

    I was actually one of the stage school kids in 1986. I remember feeling quite deflated that the clap o meter was rigged by a man standing behind it. It was an enjoyable day out at the bbc studios in milton keynes for the day. Does anyone have a clip of it for me to show my kids?

  5. Sharron

    September 22, 2013 at 2:08 pm

    I too was once one of those kids who appeared on the show!! Great day out as I think we got a day off school to go down to Milton Keynes. The theme tune still goes round in my head sometimes (which is no annoying!). Vince and those twins were just as annoying !! Yes there was … Kick a shin time. Our school (whittakers dance and drama from Blackpool) were up against the one and only Sylvia Young theatre school (if you dont know it, its the famous stage school in london). Needless to say, it was all a set up. They had dance routines ready for the group and final dance, and we had nothing . We were just there to look like the competition . We were never going to win, which we were told once we got there. But it made for a good day out and I have it on video somewhere! Will show it my kids one day and show them what amazing fantastic tv we had in the 80s!!! Embarrassing or what!!!!!

  6. Richard16378

    September 24, 2013 at 2:35 pm

    For some reason most of the set was lugged out of a van at the beginning of the show & load back in at the end.

    Colin Bennett was also Tony Hart’s clownish caretaker / sidekick Mr Bennett (someone had to name the character in a hurry) in Take Hart & Hart Beat.

    I’ve got the feeling he had a bit part in the TV version of The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy.

  7. Tom Ronson

    May 8, 2021 at 10:08 pm

    Colin Bennett also hosted an odd little programme shown in the small hours on ITV during the nineties in which he interviewed night shift workers.

  8. Droogie

    May 10, 2021 at 11:36 pm

    Colin Bennett is a mysterious man! The last show I recall him producing was another rotten late night show from 2004 called Shoot The Writers where aspiring comedy scriptwriters could supposedly send their sketches in and see them performed on TV. Unfortunately this meant seeing your precious sketch shot on the shittiest low budget videotape available and performed by rubbish actors with no comedy chops – one of whom was Tom Bennett, son of Colin.

  9. George White

    May 14, 2021 at 6:24 pm

    Colin Bennett also is in Bn Wheatley’s Rebecca, bizarrly.

  10. Glenn Aylett

    May 15, 2021 at 3:29 pm

    Hughie Green must have been laughing to himself, as the clapometer was indeed his invention to gauge audience reaction to acts on Opportunity Knocks, and was now being used again on a show with an audience who wouldn’t remember Op Knocks. Odd the blacklisted pseudo Canadian and his entertainment ideas would appear again in a CBBC show.

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