God's Gift
Contents |
Host
Davina McCall (1996)
Claudia Winkleman (1998)
Co-hosts
Voiceover: Stuart Hall
Broadcast
Granada for ITV (partly networked), 4 January 1996 to November? 1998
Synopsis
Four Lads (yes, the capital L is justified) who really fancy themselves try to persuade an audience of randy, drunken women (or, sometimes, gay men) that they really want to, you know, do it with them.
A succession of rounds sees the men show off their (limited) talents in several different areas while Stuart Hall maniacally eggs them on, dreaming of his own Romeo days, long, long ago. The women vote as to which Lad is the winner, who then picks a lady of his choice (or a Mystery Date behind a curtain) for a night out on the town.
Like Man O Man, but designed to be shown after the 9pm watershed, so anything really does go. About four or five hours after the 9pm watershed, actually.
Trivia
The late Bruce Gyngell was managing director of Yorkshire TV and Tyne Tees TV at the time of broadcast. He hated God's Gift so much that he axed it from his schedules. Other adult programmes that were chopped by Gyngell included that self-explanatory series The Good Sex Guide.
Paddy McGuinness was a contestant on the show in 1997. Ironically he now hosts his own dating show, Take Me Out.
The long-forgotten show attained a certain notoriety in October 2008 when some eagle-eyed person spotted that not only had convicted murderer Anthony Morley appeared as a contestant on a 1996 edition, but his victim Damian Oldfield had been in the crowd on that occasion.
