Slap Bang
Synopsis
The missing link between their famous Saturday morning show SM:TV Live and their current ruler of Saturday night television Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway. This in feel has more in common with the former than the latter.
It didn't really light up the schedules in the way they currently do (in fact, for many it was a bit of a disappointment in comparison to their Saturday morning work) but that's not to say it wasn't without its moments such as gently ripping the urine from ITV's lamentable Formula One coverage.
In F6½, the contestants were in pedal go karts and were all around six-and-a-half years old. Dec played Grim Rosenthal and Ant played a different variation on Murray Walker every week: Murray Babywalker, Murray Sleepwalker, Murray Skywalker (complete with lightsabre), Murray Tightropewalker, Murray Speedwalker ("And look at me go!") etc. The four 'drivers' were called Michael Pre-school-macher, Teddy Irvine, Johnny Sherbet and Jenson Chocolate Button. They all got to go to the British Grand Prix and meet their real-life counterparts, while Ant & Dec were guests on ITV's coverage, where Jim Rosenthal had a go at them about the Grim Rosenthal character ("I'm deeply upset. You got my hairstyle wrong!")
Other games included Loose Change Lottery, in which everyone in the audience as they walked into the studio had to empty their pockets of loose change and put in in one great big bucket, and then they were each assigned a number. At the end of the show whoever had the number picked out of the hat won the lot. And also Cher and Cher Alike, where one person was plucked out of the audience and asked to identify which of three hairstyles on the big screen was sported by Cher at some point during her career. After five out of the series' six episodes, they ran out of hair styles but, rather than make up a new game, they simply re-titled it The Which Blair? Project, and asked the contestant to guess which hairstyle belonged to a young Tony Blair.
And Challenge Ant always went down well, especially as it was now played by the elderly instead of kids.
Trivia
The show was called Slap Bang because it was on "slap bang in the middle of your weekend".
