More trawling, and like most of my trawls it involves the lovable pair that are Ant & Dec with two editions from the third series of Saturday Night Takeaway in Spring 2004.
This series consisted of 6 shows and inserted between two series of the disastrous "Love On A Saturday Night" with Davina McCall which after it's return wasn't enough to warrant a recommission.
Despite it being shorter than the previous series in 2003 it arrived at the right time as I'd just about settled into my HND course and living conditions were pretty good as I only worked in ASDA on Thursdays and Saturdays by now and SNT was one of the main things to look forward to before finishing at 5pm in the store.
The series was still on top form with features such as Undercover, and What's Next which continued to provide the laughs although one of the minor but important parts which helped the show work was the use of a proper announcer rather than the guest announcers they've been getting in with slightly less enthusiasm;
"No! What's coming up on the show?!"
The first show I watched was the second programme in the series where the stand out point was a special "Jim Didn't Fix It For Me" where at the beginning of the show they called down 20 members of the studio audience who all wanted weird and bizarre things to happen to them such as dressing up as a hippo and rolling in mud, becoming a town cryer, and meeting Orville to name a few.
They pulled it off at the end of the show by lining them all up in the LWT corridor and went through each one with Alan Freeman's Pick Of The Pops theme used to accompany it all which was a really great touch.
To finish it all off they got the man himself Sir Jimmy Savile to appear and reward them with their badges and it more or less suggested that it would be the last time they would be doing that item on the show having been there since the first show in June 2002.
Other items included Little Ant & Dec meeting Richard Branson and asking him what the name of his company meant, and following the success of Simon Cowell in the last series, the boys did an Undercover stunt on Pete Waterman by inviting him to take part in a programme celebrating his interest in trains.
This involved him enduring a rather embarassing rendition of his hit "The Locomotion" performed by the boys, involving a Thomas the Tank engine train with his face plastered onto it.
Not forgetting an amusing "What's Next" which involved Ant & Dec taking part in a Wild West spoof alongside the delightful Surranne Jones from Coronation Street where just about anything that had the potential to go wrong did, and made it even more fun.
The second show from that series I had a gander at was show 4 where the stand out point was the much awaited Undercover stunt with John Fashanu.
The whole idea for it came from producer James Sunderland who had seen Fash appear on a Stars In Their Eyes special where he gave a really bad rendition of Otis Redding's "Sittin' On The Dock Of The Bay".
Fash never claimed to be vocally capable so this made him the perfect target to pull a stunt on.
However when he appeared in the studio with Ant & Dec despite being in good form he flatly replied "no" when asked if he was pleased to be there.
The stunt itself involved the I'm A Celebrity runner up being invited onto the short lived ITV1 show "Celebrities Under Pressure" and had to stay over two nights at a house in Newcastle where two of the family members were played by the cheeky duo.
The challenge that John was set involved practising as many karaoke songs as possible in order to be asked to sing 10 of them at random on the show itself.
As you'd expect John was dreadfull at it but it made great telly, especially his tuneless rendition of Lionel Richie's "Hello".
John then mentioned in his video diary that he really wasn't enjoying his time there but felt the need to carry on in case things improved. However to make things worse all the family were arguing with the producers and wanted to abandon the challenge as they feared Fash wouldn't win them any prizes.
It was this point that the reveal was meant to happen but Fash was like "Come on, we can do this!" and so they carried on!
The reveal then came when they starting singing "Let's Get Ready To Rhumble" and after a confused conversation as to who sung it, the boys revealed themselves much to John's surprise.
John later mentioned that he was a bit peeved for them wasting his time but was still a really good sport, and managed to get his own back in Series 5 of Takeaway by presiding over a Gladiators match in what has to be my favourite Ant Vs Dec challenge.
I was just about to start sorting my cooking out but it appears some bugger in my flat has put the oven out of action again which makes things really incovinient.
Probably a good thing that I'm returning to Canterbury tomorrow.
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