Top of the Klass with Myleene Klass
WARNING! THIS IS NOT A REAL PROGRAMME.
It is a hoax which somebody (not us, OK?) put up on Wikipedia in April 2010. It survived until September, by which time someone had added a mock-up title screen, and someone else had been banned for vandalising the page by writing "i remember this show it was a load of feaces" (sic), which ironically was the closest approach to the truth in the entire article. Anyway, we couldn't just let this prime example of Bad Jokes And Other Deleted Nonsense go gentle into that good night, so here it is...
Contents |
Host
Co-hosts
Voiceover: Alan Dedicoat
Broadcast
Endemol for BBC One, 27 September to 18 October 2008 (4 episodes)
Synopsis
Top of the Klass with Myleene Klass was a shortlived BBC National Lottery television programme in the UK, running for just four episodes from September to October 2008.
It starred former Hear'Say favourite Myleene Klass and, capitalising on both her surname and her musical talents, was set in a studio designed to resemble a school classroom during a music lesson. Contestants didn't have buzzers and were instead required to run to the front of the "classroom" (or "Klassroom" as the show called it) to write their answers on a blackboard. If they gave the correct answer, Myleene would rush to the piano in the corner of the room and sing "You are top of the class" to the tune of "Kung Fu Fighting". A wrong answer would incur the song "You are a dunce", again to the tune of the Carl Douglas classic.
Any contestant who got an answer wrong was forced to wear a heavy and cumbersome "dunce" hat for the next round. It was this penalty which led to the show's downfall. In episode four, contestant Danny Carling answered five consecutive questions incorrectly. He was therefore required to wear five dunce hats, which had an estimated total weight of 11 kilograms. Carling's head was unable to cope with the weight and he fell over, badly grazing a knee.
An abrasion of the patella, caused by an excess of hats.Controversy
The scandal proved to be the deathknell for the show. Both tabloid and broadsheet newspapers quickly picked up on the story of Carling's accident and, a week later, The Guardian revealed that Klass didn't even have a GCSE in music. It also discovered that during her school days Klass had been classified as a "functional illiterate". The BBC quietly pulled the show, covering up the scandal so effectively that few people now remember either "Kneegate", as the press dubbed it, or indeed the programme itself. It was rumoured that Klass made an agreement with the BBC to prevent the programme from being repeated. Klass has also reportedly threatened YouTube with legal action over clips being made available on their site.
Inventor
Jacques Antoine, Rachel Hylton and Stan Moore.
Credits
This page, and only this page, contains (former) content from Wikipedia licensed under the CC-BY-SA licence, and photography by secretlondon123, also under CC-BY-SA.
Web links
Wikipedia's Articles for Deletion debate
