Laughs From The Past

More hilarity, and an episode of Friday Night With Jonathan Ross from June 2003 where the guests included Chris Tarrant and a rather manic Jim Carrey.

This was the last show before the summer and it was a good way to bow out, starting with Tarrant's interview which mainly focused on the "Major Fraud" documentary.

Chris pointed out that during rehearsals, Major Ingram thought Rupert Murdoch was South African instead of Australian, although Jonathan said that he felt rather sorry for the Ingrams after watching the programme.

Despite the fact that he thought they weren't the most intelligent of people, and that good looking "especially her".

It made me laugh when later in the interview when Wossy got a bit too raved up, he referred to Tecwen Whittock as "a coughing twat".

They also showed an archive clip from Tarrant's days as a reporter on ATV Today which involved a woman standing on the back of a moving mini and holding on to a rope, which all built up to an inevitable moment where she had a rather painful fall.

Jim Carrey was completely manic throughout and stole the show at any given point although it was pretty funny. Especially at the end where him and Jonathan performed a rather amusing rendition of "Wild Thing" where towards the end they started trashing the studio and guest Johnny Vegas was banging the head of one of the Four Poofs on the piano keyboard.

Following on from that was an episode of HIGNFY from May of the same year where John Seargant was the host for a second time. I would have liked it if he had done more as he was one of the best ones they've had and in the same way as Alexander Armstrong he would never get tired regardless of his appearances.

Paul Merton's guest was a return for Lembit Opik who's then girfriend had just returned from the jungle, whilst Ian Hislop's guest was the first of quite a few apperances for Dara O'Briain.

My favourite part came in the Tabloid Headlines round where one of them was about US Interrogators torturing Iraqui prisoners of war the song from "Barney The Dinosaur" to them constantly.

They proceeded to play the "I Love You, You Love Me" song on the show and Ian's disgruntled face during this is brilliant. Paul Merton then worked out it sounded similar to another song by singing "#And a nick nack paddy wack give a dog a bone!".

They then played a clip of "Enter Sandman" by Metallica which was also played in the PoW camps to which Paul asked "Is that Barney's difficult second album?"

I managed to see more of Lembit Opik's partner in the Reunion special of "Celebrity" series 2 where Ant & Dec brought out all 10 contestants although this time they were all smartly dressed.

Amongst the highlights were when John Fashanu and Wayne Sleep were brought on together as they bonded rather well towards the end. Especially after Wayne broke his foot after bouncing on the hammock which meant John had to collect him from the toliet and was asked over by Wayne's distinctive cry of "FAAAAAASH!".

Also appearing were Toyah Wilcox, Chris Bisson and Sian Lloyd and with the weathergirl, they picked up on what she said during the rebellion when she compained about the "nuts without the nutcracker".

Linda Barker and Antony Worral Thompson were up next and I actually thought Linda was brilliant on that series. It was what happened afterwards that got annoying when she started appearing on every other show on telly, and those dreadful ads for Currys.

Unlike newly crowned King of the Jungle Phil Tufnell who's only real exploits after the show was a permanent position as team captain on They Think It's All Over where he was pretty established as a guest there already.

In fact before his apperance in the jungle, I knew of Phil solely from his apperances on the comedy sports quiz, more than his time as a cricketer.

There were a few familiar faces in the audience included Series 1 winner Tony Blackburn and his rather nice wife Debbie, chef Brian Turner who had a question for Antony, Tony Hadley, Leee John and Peter Cox from Reborn In The USA, and Jordan who none of us thought would be taking part in the following series.

Like the last series there was a special trial in the studio and Catalina Guirado was voted by the viewers to undertake the Hell Holes, although Ant & Dec did a few of them as well in the usual tradition.

The final box was a rather large one and the audience were asked to keep quiet as it was one of the most dangerous jungle animals. It actually turned out to be series 1 contestant Christine Hamilton which provided a few laughs and was a witty end to the series.

I reckon it will be about 20 years before I re-view that tape again.