I've had a look through more VHS's that I didn't take back with me to London including another from March 2003 containing one of the highlights of series 2 of SNT.
With the current series coming to an end tomorrow (and possibly forever) it was good once again to see the show at it's best which I've been more or less doing for the last month or so.
At the beginning of the show Little Dec came down instead of the real Dec and when Ant found out, it was revealed that Dec was off sick whilst he was really backstage flirting with the female guests.
When Ant said that he refused to present with Little Dec (or Dylan to give his real name) everyone started booing to which Ant responded "Yes, we know he's more popular than me anyway!"
It proved they'd definitely caught on to the fact that everyone watched the show just for the smaller doppelgangers but unlike some of the others, I can understand why that item had to be dropped from the more recent series.
The home run that week involved the cameras invading a ballroom dancing class where all the couples had to twhirl all the way back to their houses which provided rather amusing telly.
We had no idea that just over a year later, a show devoted entirely to ballroom dancing would end up beating the Geordie duo in the ratings.
Other items included one where a contestant who lost on Blankety Blank in 1985 was given a second chance to win the star prize of a Davenport writing desk.
This involved bringing back some of the celebrities on the panel including Paul Shane and Lionel Blair who were joined by Ant McPartlin in place of one of the others.
Dec was the host where he was holding a wand mic in the same manner as Terry Wogan.
One of the other stand out items was when the boys revealed that guest Kym Marsh had written to Jim'll Fix It asking to perform with the Bangles.
However she later revealed that she hadn't written to the show at all but Ant had done so wanting to perform "Baggy Trousers" with Madness.
So sure enough the band were there to perform at the end of the show, which meant that Dec had to do the endgame on his own while Ant got changed into said trousers.
Whilst the above was a more entertaining example of how Saturday Nights were in 2003, the tape also contains the first episode of an otherwise inferior series, that being "Reborn In The USA".
Basically it was a show hosted by Davina McCall where a set of performers who's careers were as good as dead, attempted to launch themselves on an American audience who they were completeley "Oblivious" to. (Just slipped in one of Davina's old shows there)
Actually, it's worth pointing out that apart from Don't Try This At Home, Davina has never had a successfull prime time ITV series despite being ever prominent on the network.
Examples include said show Oblivious, The Vault, Love On A Saturday Night, and that god awful sitcom she was in that got axed after just two episodes if I remember correctly.
Although that's not to say that her time at the BBC has had good results if you're unlucky enough to remember her chat show.
I don't thankfully, but that's because it went out on Wednesday evenings when I was doing my radio show.
For me Davina's best telly was on MTV and shows such as Streetmate although she's probably realised now that Big Brother is probably the only long term sucess she's achieved, even if I'm not a fan of the programme.
Bearing that in mind, in that same year Comic Relief did a special celebrity version of Streetmate for Red Nose Day 2003 and I can remember Jonathan Ross introducing it like this;
"We've had celebrities on Big Brother, we've had celebrities on Fame Academy,
and maybe sometime we'll see them on Des and Mel's chat show"
If there's one man who can do the best jokes about television apart from Charlie Brooker, than Wossy is the ideal man.
Back to Reborn and this series was just flaw after flaw.
The heats were done in various night clubs in different American states which resulted in crap lighting, really bad acoustics, and it didn't help that the show was filmed in NTSC picture quality.
The singers taking part included Leee John from Imagination, Gina G, Elkie Brooks, Michelle Gayle, Dollar, Tony Hadley and Sonia to name a few.
However before any singing even took place there had been a lot of aggro involving contestant Mark Shaw, formerly the lead singer with late 80s band Then Jericho.
Basically Mark had "pulled" at the airport but wasn't allowed to bring her onto the tour bus so this put him in a moody and he effed and blinded at everyone before walking out of the show.
This meant he was replaced by Go West front man Peter Cox who's one of the best male vocalists I know of who never got the right sort of recognition he deserved.
He's probably remembered for forgetting the words to an otherwise superb version of "Don't Know Why" by Norah Jones at such a crucial part of the competition, although he took it with really good humour.
However the first show came from New Orleans and all the artists gave their own take on classic jazz numbers. Dollar performed "They Can't Take That Away From Me", Leee John did a version of "Unforgettable", although my favourite was Gina G's rendition of "Fever" although that was mainly because the music arrangement had some nice Rhodes chords added to it.
Peter Cox's performance wasn't really a jazz song but fitted in with the location as it was "House Of The Rising Sun".
I can remember watching the show at the time and it did drag on for a bit although my Dad was unsually keen to enter a viewer competition where a viewer and three others could go to New Orleans.
Dad being quite a jazz fan wanted me to ring up but we weren't sucessful anyway.
I barely watched the rest of the series after the first show although in the second show it kicked off again, this time between Dollar and Sonia.
Basically Sonia had returned to the UK and was almost ready to leave but then she returned to the tour bus at the last minute.
This really pissed off David and Therese who then gave her a rather unpleasant ribbing about her performance on the first show and this probably resulted in them being voted out that week.
A further indicator to what an overly conceited man David Van Day is.
However as in most cases I tend to play Devil's Advocate and thought that Sonia may have done what she did just to get more attention in the press and manipulate the viewers into giving her the sympathy vote.
Unsurprisingly she ended up being eliminated not long after.
To be fair I was never really a huge fan of Sonia in her heyday as there were only two songs I really thought were good. One of them being her 1989 debut "You'll Never Stop Me From Loving You" and the other was the Motown-esque "Only Fools" from a couple of years later.
She mentioned in the first edition of Reborn that at the time she was getting bored of the repetetive tunes from the Hit Factory and wanted to show what she was really capable of.
This lead to her entering Eurovision in 1993 where the song that was chosen for her in a viewer vote was ironically titled "Better The Devil You Know" but certainly wasn't the same SAW record as performed by former labelmate
Kylie Minogue.
With regards to Dollar I reckon Thereze bears a resemblance to Phil Harris' girlfriend Annabel which I'm not sure how she'd take to, but come to think of it Phil shares a few things in common with David Van Day, especially when it comes to losing control at the worst of times.
Actually I don't think Phil is as bad as David has been percieved on television.
Anyway, one of the other problems with the series was that it started around the same time as the first Comic Relief Does Fame Academy, although that ran nightly for a week, whereas Reborn ran for 8 weeks and it was difficult to sustain interest for the latter over that time.
It certainly showed as where the first show was transmitted at a 9pm timeslot, the final done in a proper studio in London (for once) was shown at a 5:45 timeslot before shows such as Millionaire were scheduled.
Tony Hadley was the overall winner who ended up taking part in a succesfull tour round the country with Peter Cox which I really would have loved to have seen.
Although it now turns out that Peter's reformed with band mate Rich and the band are still touring to this day, with a date in Rochester confirmed for July so I may keep an eye out for that.
The 80s still live.
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