"You Know Where It's At!"

I've just started rummaging through the VHS with the Geordie Boys final SM:TV although the tape itself contains a few other surprises.

One of them being the opening to the first ever edition of Friday Night With Jonathan Ross in early November 2001 where the studio set and the theme tune are the same but the opening titles consist of a bizarre pop art sequence involving images of Andy Pandy, a Dalek, Barbara Windsor, Elton John, Valerie Singleton and Basil Brush along with "Mr Roy".

The other notable difference was the addition of Jonathan's sidekick Andy Davies from the Radio 2 which was rather awkward as they shared anecdotes together in between the interviews and it didn't really work, especially as Andy had to vacate the chair for when each guest came on, with occasional cutaways to him laughing as he does.

They solved the problem in series two by getting a long leather sofa so he could stay throughout the whole show but by series 3 he was dropped completely and the show's remained the same since.

Also on the tape is the episode of SM:TV from the day after where the guests included Matt Hardy and Lita from WWE promoting their UK pay per view taking place that evening.

If I remember correctly it was two weeks before the 2001 Survivor Series with the key match being a "Winner Takes All" fight between WWF (as they were known then) and "The Alliance" which was an amalgamation between WCW and ECW as earlier in the year Vince McMahon had brought WCW only for it to be poached by his son Shane.

As you'd expect WWF came up trumps resulting in both companies in the Alliance going bust.

The real reason however, was because TNT in America were dropping WCW from their schedules and this lead to the purchase and shortly after the demise of the company.

Back to Ant & Dec, and their other guest was erstwhile Saturday Morning legend Neil Buchanan promoting the new series of Art Attack and making a guest appearance in Ant's send up "F'art Attack" which was superb and proved he was a good sport willing to send himself up.

Basically the sketch usally involved Ant as "Neil Pump-cannon" and involved plenty of flatuence jokes whenever Ant uttered a phrase such as "trouser badger".

The other highlight was an important match of Challenge Ant where Ant was hoping to make it five wins in a row. The tall half of the pair made his entrance by doing a hilarious dance to the tune of Manfred Mann's "5-4-3-2-1" complete with Ted Rogers esque hand movements.

Just this once I was wanting him to win, only to see him to the dance again.

T4 did a competition called "5-4-3-2-1" around the same time and had a sting which was loosely based around the Manfred's song but they had to change the notes for various reasons.

Overall I still find myself laughing at the antics of Ant, Dec & Cat in the same way as I did 9 years ago which proves that since their departure, hilarity at that time of the morning has never really been the same.

Especially with sketches such as "Anty & Decky The Garden Goblins" with plenty of analogies to "dizzy water" and Cat playing the "Giggle Fairy" who used to be called Prozac but they had to drop the name shortly after.

I'm just about to finally start viewing the pairs swan song and from what I remember it was pretty much a star studded affair.