Mad for It
Contents |
Host
Mike McClean (and Yiolanda Tokkallos from 1998-9 / Danielle Nicholls and Nigel Mitchell from 2000)
Co-hosts
Alex Verrey as "Pie Boy"
Broadcast
Carlton for ITV, 2 September 1998 to 31 March 2000 (39 episodes in 2 series)
Synopsis
Magazine show/Game show format. Featured children playing various games, competitions, performances from the flavour of the month pop acts, loud presenters and "Pie Boy" (Alex Verrey) running about custard pieing random children, in the style of The Phantom Flan Flinger from Tiswas.
Losers of the various games were rounded up in to the 'Dungeon of Gunge' and covered in sludge at the end of the show.
But what of the games? Well, there was:
- Stars Up Their Noses - People get a 30-second slot to show off their particular talent and the winner was chosen by the Bedheads, a group of kids filmed live in their bedroom. Opportunity Knocks it isn't. Winners got vouchers to spend in the popular hardware chain MFI. Do you see what they did there?
- That's My Pet - trying to guess which pet is yours amongst similar looking things. That will be a random guess, then.
- How Far Will You Go? - Three people played horrible games, such as filling up a bucket of horse manure with your hands and finding shower caps and putting it on your head with lard. I'm sure Paul Ross and the Endurance UK team were quaking in their boots with that little lot!
- How Far by Car? - Dull phone-in where people attempted to guess how far it is from the Mad for It studios in Nottingham to wherever the Bedheads were, without going over.
All made for an amusing half hour show which pleased a generation of 90's kids.
Trivia
Singer Katie Melua made her TV debut on the talent contest segment, "Stars Up Their Noses". She sang "Without You", and won. So no second-to-a-singing-dog embarassment there - she didn't even get gunged!
Gladiator Wolf once appeared on the show, he didn't get gunged though, instead he picked up and put Pie Boy into the Dungeon of gunge, who was gunged at the end of the show.
Over the course of the second series, all of the hosts of CITV were gunged at some point.
Web links
Pictures
Yiolanda and Mike - quite obviously Mad for It.Videos
An episode from the year 2000.
