Mad for It

Host

Mike McClean (and Yiolanda Tokkallos from 1998-9 / Danielle Nicholls, Simon Amstell and Nigel Mitchell from 2000)

Co-hosts

Broadcast

Carlton for ITV, 2 September 1998 to 31 March 2000 (39 episodes in 2 series)

Synopsis

Magazine game show format featuring 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, er, gunge 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 embarrassment there - she didn't even get gunged!

Wolf from Gladiators appeared on the last ever show, after cheating at Shatter That Platter (a cononut shy game featuring dinner plates) he was sent to the Dungeon of Gunge. Any Gladiators fans expecting to see it's most well known baddie being gunged would be disappointed as Wolf tricked Pie Boy in to the dungeon instead.

Over the course of the second series, several CITV hosts were gunged. Hosts Danielle Nicholls and Mike McClean ended up on the receiving end as well as fellow CITV continuity presenters Stephen Mulhern, Tom (Arthur) Darvill and Andrea Green as well as Vanessa Bewley (from The Top Ten of Everything).

The catchy harmonica driven theme music was an edited version of the dance tune Harmonica Man by Bravado. Originally released in 1994, reaching No.37 in the UK charts.