Celebrity Wrestling
Contents |
Host
Kate Thornton and 'Rowdy' Roddy Piper
Co-hosts
Coaches: D'Lo Brown and Joe E. Legend
Referee: Ian Freeman
Commentator: David Goldstrom
ITV2 coverage (Celebrity Wrestling: Bring It On): Jack Osbourne and Holly Willoughby
Broadcast
Granada for ITV1/2, 23 April to 12 June 2005 (8 episodes in 1 series)
Synopsis
No, go on. Guess.
Actually we'll pad it out a bit since it wasn't really wrestling at all. The Warriors took on The Crusaders in a six week tournament of Gladiators (well, Grudge Match) style games that were a bit like wrestling except not really. Each wrestler faced off against each wrestler of the same gender from the other team over a three game match, each game earning their team a point. Most points at the end of the tournament won. But! The highest scoring individual wrestlers went through to a knock out competition to decide who was the best Celebrity Not Really Wrestler.
One bout each week saw our contestants do battle against the mystery "Masked Wrestler" (somebody who had been on I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! once) for a bonus point.
There were some bright ideas here somewhere - we liked the idea of each of our wrestlers having a spectacular entrance, for example. But the games were really quite dull and unengaging, as were the celebs. And with Doctor Who on BBC1 at the same time, it didn't really have a chance in hell.
Participants
- Boys: Marc Bannerman (actor), James Hewitt (tabloid personality), Oliver Skeete (showjumper), Mark Speight (TV presenter); Iwan Thomas (athlete), Jeff Brazier (TV presenter) (Subs: Lee Sharpe (footballer), Phill Turner (DIY bloke))
- Girls: Michelle Heaton (singer), Jenny Powell (TV presenter), Annabel Croft (ex-tennis player and skyrunner), Leilani Dowding ("glamour" model), Kate Lawler (TV presenter), Victoria Silvstedt (actress) (Subs: Emma B (model)).
Theme music
MCASSO
Trivia
The show only lasted four weeks on Saturday night before being relegated to filling in a dead spot in the schedules on Sunday morning.
Celebrity Wrestling was named among the 20 all-time worst television shows by Jeff Evans in The Penguin TV Companion in 2006, alongside 3-2-1, Shafted, Top of the World and another sixteen non-game-show programmes. You've got to do lists like that for the pre-launch press release nowadays, it would seem.
