Another trawl through a VHS was the order of this afternoon, in this case one dating from April 2002 with Catherine Noddy Slade Deeley's final SMTV Live.
This was a more lightweight departure than Ant & Dec, especially in terms of guests who included Atomic Kitten, Jeremy Edwards, Cat's "best mate" Edith Bowman who was pretty unknown at the time, H & Claire who would take over as presenters the following week,
and Louise Redknapp, one of the loveliest and luckiest women in the UK.
It was probably not as big a departure because Cat would still be presenting CD:UK but there were a few surprises including Cilla Black making a surprise appearance during the Brian's Brain section of the show.
Instead of Brian Dowling, Cat would be answering the questions which this time round were about her SMTV past, asked by Kirsty who was the girl who answered the phones with Ant in the Dec Says sketches.
It did drag on for quite a bit as it involved plenty of archive clips including the first ever show in August 1998 where Cat really did look younger.
The sketches that took place in the show were "Casually" where Cat's character "Sister Sledge" ended up dying accompanied by a video montage which had been hastily edited to make sure there was no footage of sacked presenter James Redmond.
This was accompanied by "Seasons In The Sun" which the studio audience felt the need to clap along with in the ever innapropriate manner.
There was also the final outing for "The Further Adventures Of Cat The Dog" which brought it to a nice end.
Basically this was a sketch that started off in May 2001 when Louise stepped in to co-host the show for six weeks whilst Ant & Dec were doing there Saturday night disaster "Slap Bang", and involved Cat and her "bestest ever friend" Louise going to ballet classes, shoplifting a clothes shop, or wating in line to see George Michael and Wham!.
The final sketch was set at a school disco where Jeremy Edwards ended up falling for Ms Deeley and Louise took her into town to get a makeover which saw the removal of the permed black wig and the bomber jacket, for the lovely blonde bombshell she ended up as.
Although she still had the heavy "Buurrmingham!" accent.
Towards the end of the show there was another surpise appearance this time from Ant & Dec who chatted to Cat about her embarassing moments, leading up to the obligatory highlights VT.
The boys made a few more occasional appearances on the show later in the year including one transmitted on the Bank Holiday Monday of the Queen's Jubilee weekend as a result of the coverage of the 2002 World Cup.
They appeared to take part in "Eat My Goal" although Ant wasn't in goal this time, and they promoted their ever infamous single "We're On The Ball", now known by the likes of Fiz and Sammy C as "We Are The Boys!"
Immediately after Cat's farewell on the tape was the following week's show with H & Claire making their debut and what for me was the beginning of the end for SMTV.
As if Brian wasn't annoying enough we now had the most irritating member of the countries most hated bands presenting, although unlike Brian we didn't know that Ian (to give him his real name) was out.
Claire had presented the show before as a stand in for Cat in the first series back in 1999 but I really didn't think that the pair fitted into the show and were that likeable as presenters.
Let's face it I doubt they were that likeable as pop stars but Claire was always my favourite member of Steps. Partly because she reminded me of Cheryl Baker.
It turns out that Claire's actually from Hillingdon, not too far from here but she has more of an East London accent, slightly similar to first year radio student Nicola who's from Ilford.
On that note, the guests included two of the Pop Idol finalists Hayley and Zoe which I was pleased about at the time because those were the two I fancied the most.
Sorry Gareth.
They ended up taking part in "Men In Splat" which was exactly the same as "Splatoon" but without the innuendos and with a "Men In Black" theme to tie in with the animated cartoon they were showing.
More or less in the same way that "Brian's Brain" was "Challenge Ant" but with a different name and still using the chant if Brian lost the killer question.
Other guests included the S Club Juniors performing their rather impressive "One Step Closer To Heaven" and promoted a competition where a viewer could win the chance to have them performing at their house.
I bet Chris Langham was one of those who entered.
This brings to mind when Simon Amstell appeared on Never Mind The Buzzcocks first time round as a guest where he told Mark Lamarr when the S Club Juniors appeared on Popworld and one of them was having a "becoming a woman experience".
This resulted in Simon's introduction being "the best band in the world, period".
Back to H & Claire and the only sketch they had in the show was "Casually: The Clinic" which was a spin off from the hospital spoof, only a lot worse.
Brian and Tess's characters were brought back whilst H appeared as gospel singer
"Dr Hollywood" with the catchphrase (to be sung in a high voice) "Hollywoooood, Yeah!",
whilst Claire played the malevolent Nurse Ranker,
"It's going to be a nightmare when Jonathan Ross checks in..."
The sketch was so dreadful it was dropped after two shows and replaced with even worse material such as "Table Footballers Wives" and "Big Bother" which completely lacked laughs.
Although to be fair, most of the new sketches that Ant & Dec did a few months before the end of their reign weren't that good either such as "SMTV 2099" and
"Animals That Would Knack You In A Fight" which involved Ant playing a send up
of the late Steve Irwin.
Cat was still presenting CD:UK immediately after, cut down to half an hour because of the F1 Qualifying. Acts included the presenters themselves performing their new single "DJ" as well as another offshoot from Steps "3SL" which were made up of a band consisting of Lisa Scott Lee's brothers.
One of them, Andy went onto be a finalist in the second series of Pop Idol although now he's more of a target for ridicule along with most of the others from the "difficult second series".
As for H & Claire, the Steps rejects left Saturday Mornings in October of 2002 to "concentrate on their music careers" which thankfully never happened to a great scale.
The show itself went through even more awkward patches especially with Fearne and Simon over on The Saturday Show giving the ailing BBC programme a kick up the backside although probably not to the extent of being as great as Live & Kicking was.
SMTV was a complete shambles with a succesion of guest presenters with Brian and Tess, along with even more unfunny sketches such as "Brian The Builder", "Delia Whiff" which involved a lot of farting, and "The Vicar Of Dribbly" which..., you can probably guess.
By 2003 they decided to relaunch the show by taking the "Live" out of the title and introducing two new hosts, them being Scottish comedian Des Clarke, and
New Zealander Shavaghan Raukere who I thought weren't too bad,
and gave the show a freshen up.
Especially Des's character "David Dustbinman" with "Garbage Hunt" which involved him searching through celebrities dustbins with plenty of tounge in cheek gags;
"Next week we'll be having 'One True Voice' and from what I've heard, they can produce a right load of rubbish".
However they seemed to be giving up before long with Brian and Tess leaving during the summer and a sudden departure of Shavaughn which wasn't really explained, resulting in the show being axed in August 2003.
As you'd expect I've brought back the final show from December of that year as well as Tess Daly's final show from August which was funny in places due to guests Vernon Kay and Federico from Big Brother 4 making snide comments at regular intervals.
As mentioned in an earlier video post, I hope someone writes a book charting the history of Saturday Mornings on UK television and they are more than welcome to steal bits from this site if needed.
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