Noel's House Party

Revision as of 04:57, 19 February 2025

Synopsis

Until its extremely timely death, Noel's House Party was an entertainment show, broadcast mainly live from a fictional village called Crinkley Bottom.

Noel likes the country life (as you can see further down this page, with his second wife Helen, outside their real country mansion). Noel and Helen are not so much Lord and Lady Muck, more like Lord and Lady Gunge.

The show "thrived" on audience participation (in the studio, and unwittingly at home) and practical jokes. Including the one that each episode cost the licence-payer in excess of £400,000 per episode (allegedly). However, it was good once, as we try (we can but try) to prove here.

Series 1

Having already become the greatest (or should we say worst?) gungemeister on TV (with the possible exception of Dave Benson Phillips) on The Noel Edmonds Saturday Roadshow, Edmonds continued the theme in the House Party with the Gunge Tank, only this time with celebrities usually copping it, although members of the public occasionally did too. Telephone voting was introduced in order to decide which of two celebrities or members of the public should get the gunge in a fairly posh and ornate gunge tank. Lots of celebs copped it: they included Phillip Schofield and Gordon The Gopher, Andi Peters and Edd The Duck, Robert Kilroy-Silk, Edwina Currie, Piers Morgan, Jeremy Clarkson, Anthea Turner, John Virgo, Ulrika Jonsson, Bruno Brookes and Liz Kershaw. Edmonds himself inevitably ended up getting gunged at the end of every series - but it should have been much more often than that, shouldn't it?

There were a couple of games that were carried over from The Saturday Roadshow which were The Lyric Game that only lasted for the first series and Wait Till I Get You Home.

The new feature that was introduced exclusively to House Party throughout its eight year run was called NTV where hidden cameras would be placed in the victim's front room, cue shock as they realise that they are live on the telly. They will have done something potentially embarrassing or something.

There was also a really good phone-in game called Grad-a-Grand, even though it's apparently a rip-off of the The Crystal Maze end game. A caller sitting at home is picked at random from people who gave the correct answer to a question, which is a prediction to an upcoming event that would be happening in the forthcoming week. The chosen caller would then be asked three questions that happened in the news the past week, each one worth twenty seconds for a B-list celeb to go grabbing bank notes inside a plastic telephone-booth-sized tank with wind blowing from beneath. Whatever was collected was weighed and went to the caller.

Series 2

The Gunge Tank was the same as the first series but it had an added addition where foam would rise up from the floor before the gunge was unleashed.

Open the Cupboard replaced Lyric Game where two contestants had to guess the songs that are linked to the prizes that Noel lists off before the game begins, but not only that, there was a mystery celebrity behind the cupboard singing with the prizes they're holding accompanied by Prue (played by Pat Coombs) playing the organ.

Series 3

The Gunge Tank had a design change for this series where it was now a car wash style-tank.

The Panel Game was where a bunch of celebrities asked two contestants questions and if they got it right, they got a prize. Although, that didn't really matter because after time has elapsed, Noel gives them the opportunity to "gamble" for what? We don't know. There was no real jeopardy to this as the contestants always gambled and won a grand prize. They weren't given a gamble question to answer where they might lose everything.

The Big Pork Pie had a person from the studio audience who has a secret. Several in fact, but one big, bad embarrassing one, and now everyone's going to know it! All they had to do to win was "Beat the Machine", a polygraph (that's a "lie detector" to you and me), by blatantly lying about the incidents as he mentions them...

Noel: "Did you once do something a bit rude and silly?"
Victim: "No."
[Lie-o-meter shows that he's lying; audience titters.]
Noel: "Did you once do something quite rude and silly?"
Victim: "No."
[Lie-o-meter shows that he's lying; audience laughs.]
Noel: "Did you once do something VERY rude and EXTREMELY silly?"
Victim: "No."
[Lie-o-meter shows that he's lying; audience has an apoplexy.]

Series 4

The Great House was given quite an extension that the Gunge Tank was now a ghost train-style ride or as Noel would call it "A Trip Around The Great House".

Number Cruncher was a modified phone box cum gunge tank was placed somewhere in Britain and we were shown, live, where it was. We were then given a code to get into the box where it was now a race to see who would be the first person in Britain to locate the box, tap in the code and get inside to play the game. Except, in a bizarre twist of fate and unknown beforehand to the contestant, they were then locked in!

The only way out was to play the game. Noel would phone up the box (which had a camera and and a small LCD screen... you'll see why) and after a chat with the contestant, four computer generated numbers were flashed up. These could be seen in the box on the LCD screen, but then they were rearranged so that Noel and the audience and the people at home could see it but the person in the phone box couldn't. This was the code to get out, and the contestant had 45 seconds to try different combinations to get the correct rearrangement. As they were tapping in the numbers, they were building up cash (decided by each digit tapped in - a lot of people caught on to this and spent about 15 seconds tapping in '9' as fast as they could to win a big prize!) If they won, they were allowed to gamble their winnings on a "random" fruit machine type thing. If they lost... well, wasn't that a big tank of gunge placed invitingly above the phone box?

The Big Pork Pie returned but never came back after the first show of the series because it was ruined by adding a panel of three people, which defeats the purpose of a lie detector in the first place.

The pre-question for callers on Grad-a-Grand was changed to a question that is related to what you have just seen on the show just now or last week. There was also a nice touch where a member of the studio audience would be chosen from a moving camera and get a chance to grab money notes for the caller.

Series 5

Wait Till I Get You Home had a bit of a title change to Wait Till We All Get Home with a new format was put in place where it was now not only the parents trying to guess what their child was going to say but also the child has to guess what the parent was going to say. This was dropped after the first couple of episodes and reverted back to its original format.

It's Beat Your Neighbour'! Ooh, controversial! Neighbours would sign contracts agreeing to play the game and they each spent a minute running around each other's houses deciding on prizes they want from their neighbours. For each question correctly answered, a belonging would be put on the big tray. For the final, a random time limit was placed. If you got a question correct (asked alternately), the tray with ALL the belongings on would be pushed to your side. Whoever's side it was on when the time ran out won everything. So, it's a bit like "playing chicken", only without any sort of skill or daring, then. Often ended in heated arguments because Noel (in the studio) asked the questions to the contestants via a video link that would often have a two-second delay on it. Sometimes, a very crucial two-second delay.

Beat Your Neighbour was so god awful that was dropped mid-run and a revamped version of Number Cruncher' was put in place for the remainder of the run. The selection of contestant process also changed where now a bunch of people in one location (which was now no secret as to where it was) would have to search for a stupid object and then two contestants were hand-picked by the researchers where they would go head to head to enter in a four digit code and the first person to get the code gunged their opponent and kept the money they won. the now have to take with them a stupid object and a contestant was hand-picked by the researchers of the people who arrived at the box. Oh, and Jonathan Coleman got involved. Ah, well.

Grab-a-Grand got a bit bigger for this series where the plastic telephone-booth-sized tank was replaced by a couple of huge industrial fans installed in the studio and the game was now played in the whole studio, with the audience collecting money and the celebrity running around grabbing it from them in a bucket. This was more fun but they got stupid after a while with Grab a Grand National and Grab a Grand Piano being two of the variants. Great idea, spoiled in the end.

Series 6

And this is where the features started to become stale starting with The Hot House where two athletes go head to head to win a Golden Spinach award. Yeah, this didn't last long and was dropped mid-run.

There was that "oh so witty-titled" lame game called Cash for Questions that replaced Grab-a-Grand and never came back after the run ended. Based on a Government scandal at the time.

First, the Wheel of Fortune is spun. A person is strapped horizontally to a wheel (chosen because they did something bad, sometime). The wheel stops spinning and points to one of eight phones. The person on the other end of that phone has to get a question correct. If they get it wrong, the wheel is re-spun. However, if they get it correct then they are given a further three current affairs questions. Each correct answer is worth twenty seconds for B-list celeb to go crazy in the Basement.

The Basement is pitch black and the caller, with infra-red camera at their disposal, tries to guide the person through the basement collecting bags of money along the way. Each one was worth £100, with golden ones worth £500. Stupidly, at the end of the time the lights come on, so there is nothing stopping the celebrity grabbing an extra bag or two on the way out. We could, of course, compare the person-strapped-to-wheel lark with Remote Control. We could, furthermore, compare this to "Arianne's Game" from the marvellous Fort Boyard. Cash for Questions isn't fit enough to lick Arianne's boots. If she wore any. Or anything at all, in fact.

Series 7

Yup! This was the series that Noel called off an edition mid-run and you can probably see why with The Secret World of the Teenager, which was an adolescent and less funny version of Wait Till I Get You Home.

During the second half of this series, Panel Beaters was introduced where a panel of three celebrities had to spot the imposter from three members of the public with apparently bizarre occupations. If the panel failed, they got gunged. If they succeeded, then the members of the public got gunged instead.

Series 8

This series had its biggest revamp after the previous series flopped like a burnt turkey. NTV was given a makeover and was now called NTV: Y.O.Y.O. (You're On Your Own) where a person sitting at home would have to face another person who was NTV'ed the week before where last week's NTV victim would have to do a task and if they succeeded then the NTV person at home would then have to spend the next week alone somewhere horrible, like the Utah desert. Or a prison. Or Swindon. It was reverted to its original form for the last few episodes.

For the second half of the last ever series was Three to Go where three regional BBC News studios were linked up and they would each bring us an improbable-sounding news story item from their region. The contestant would then have to guess whether that story was true or false.

The final phone-in game was called Sofa Soccer where people would phone up and fire three-piece suites at high velocity at famous goalkeepers. Not really of course, that would be silly. People phone up and attempt to put footballs past a goalkeeper using the Ballblaster. No, we're not talking Mandy Dingle, here. It's a mechanised cannon that that moves randomly until the caller says 'shoot' and a football is propelled. Noel claimed that it is The Golden Shot for the Nineties. Apart from there being little skill involved, of course, and a complete lack of coordination from the goalies themselves.

The show was put out of its misery in February 1999 after viewing figures fell to below six million, and came off air the following month. Just over a year later, The Best of Noel's House Party (the fifth such compilation) went out on Sunday 26 March 2000, at 11am.

Key moments

Probably the most memorable moment ever happened on the show was when in the penultimate episode of series 1, Noel Edmonds did a Gotcha on Dave Lee Travis (DLT) when he was doing Saturday morning Darts quiz on Radio 1 and after DLT got gotcha'd by Noel, he replied 'YOU ARE A DEAD MAN!'. Then a week later on the series 1 finale, DLT got his own back on Noel by giving him surprises including a song surprise in 'The Lyric Game' that Noel recorded himself during his early career, an NTV/Gotcha surprise and a battle of the gunge tank between him and Noel. DLT's "dead man" remark later appeared in the titles of some subsequent episodes.

Another memorable Gotcha moment took place in the final series and involved Richard Whiteley presenting Countdown, who only twigged after Noel appeared from behind the set. The show featured among other things the six-letter conundrum "HOGCAT".

One hilarious incident on NTV from the first series had a woman running out of the room and didn't come back, leaving Noel and the audience in complete stitches.

Another hilarious incident was from the third series when Mr. Blobby burst through the door of the great house and lead to the head dropping off causing the actor inside Mr. Blobby to panic, slip out an expletive (which nobody heard) and leaving the house as quickly as possible while also tripping over with Noel recovering the situation by saying "The show that appeals to the inner man."

Theme music

1991-6: Ernie Dunstall

1996-8: Stephen Green

1998-9: House of Fun by Madness

Trivia

The show won a Bronze Rose of Montreux in 1994.

When Dutch station RTL4 was making its own version of NHP, called Monte Carlo, the BBC had to spend a lot of time on the telephone explaining the correct consistency of gunge. When Spain's Telecinco asked if Mr. Blobby could be green, the BBC refused - it was important that Mr. Blobby stayed pink, they said.

Market value of a Gotcha award: £500. That's how much Brian Conley's award went for when it was auctioned for charity on Cash in the Celebrity Attic in 2008.

BBC Four repeated the tenth episode from the first series on 7 August 2022 and the penultimate episode from the third series on 3 August 2024. Surprisingly, the latter kept DLT's "dead man" remark in even though he had been convicted in October 2014 of indecent assault.

One Gotcha, involving the chefs Peter Hudson and David Halls, was broadcast after Hudson's death.

Merchandise

One or two tie-in books were published.

Noel's Gotchas (VHS)

Noel's Golden Gotchas (VHS)

Noel Edmonds - Gotcha! (VHS)

Web links

BBC programme page

Wikipedia entry

Opening titles from 1994 and 1997 in the BBC Motion Graphics Archive

Pictures

Helen and Noel Edmonds

The first Noel

Let's see you bend this, Uri

Carol Smillie gets Gotcha'd

Henry Sandon gets Gotcha'd as well

One of Noel's House Party Theme Parks

The man who puts the "do" in "do or die"

Noel with a mock-up newspaper from Crinkley Bottom

The "Gotcha Oscar" (later renamed simply a "Gotcha" due to trademark problems)

Edmonds after doing a My Little Friend skit.

Videos

See also

The Late Late Breakfast Show

The Noel Edmonds Saturday Roadshow

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