It’s Dave Benson-Phillips as it turns out.
I was doing some Youtube diving the other night going into the channel that had that Price Is Right episode the other day (lots of good stuff on it btw) that we talked about and rather brilliantly it had this, a piece of music I was kind of fascinated by as a teen.
It’s the rather fabulous end theme for peak era Get Your Own Back, which was also used as clock music for some of the games at the time, the show’s early foray into the arena-style after it left the fairground set. It sounds like it was written by Harold Faltermayer of The Running Man and Axel F fame, and it sounds completely out of kilter for a light-hearted kids It’s a Knockout style show. The music for Squeal On The Wheel feels especially doom-laden, and I kind of dig it.
Yet it wasn’t written by Harold Faltermayer, it was written by the musician and comic Steve Brown, who is probably best known for playing band-leader Glen Ponder in Knowing Me Knowing You With Alan Partridge in the early 90s.
GYOB went through a couple of variations on its decade-plus long run and has TWO golden periods. No, not the fine-but-unnecessary Lisa Brockwell years (let’s be clear here, it was always going to be Big Dave’s show). Not the era of the Forfeit Furnace where they tried to go large on the fairground set, but when the show first moved from a 15 minute show to a 25 minute one and the very last series where the adult (the Chump) was the one earning the points to avoid the gunge with the kid (the Challenger) trying to stop them (for the latter two-thirds of the run the kid would try and earn the points whilst the grown-up would try and obstruct or undo the work under a handicap). They added a new big round – It’s Puzzle Time, which had a clever twist with the kids swapping teams to try and help the other adult earn as many points as possible – and a couple of bonus games where the kids could reduce their adult’s score. It all felt quite well thought out and fun, and I think the Brain Box round and it’s mangle was missed.
This series was also the last time we saw the original and best Gunk Dunk game where the adult had to answer questions against the clock with obvious answers that all started with a certain letter but none of their answers were allowed to begin with the letter. I’m surprised this has never been reversioned in some capacity.
Anyway it’s quite sad watching DBP scrabble about in the internet wilderness these days, if Pat Sharp can can still dine out on a haircut he’s not actually had for 25 years, is there really no room for Uncle Dave on CBBC?
They need to talk with simply media to see if they can bring dvd back catalogue content. Gyob & playdate (playbus) are two shows which comes to mind
Playdays I must add not playdate. That’s something completely different
I put something up a while ago that he was doing pro wrestling in Brighton.
His finishing move is…not for CBBC.
Wow! I loved GYOB as a child – DBP was such great fun and made the show even more fun than it already would have been. The 90s seemed to have such great children’s TV hosts.
The summer quiet season is letting me watch as unbefore seen shows to me… I’m currently loving C8 France’s ‘Couple ou pas Couple” – a youtubed ep if you’ve not seen it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b5d5Mvwl_s
I find the music composition really good on this – one of my faves since 1000 heartbeats!
In the style of the title of this post, GYOB – and many other shows – would have been better had DBP said “Without further ado…. it’s time… to start…. GUNGING!”
You have, at least, reminded me of this relevant earworm. It’s a quarter of a century old now, y’know.
Nice!
Only very weakly relatedly, I got to see the last episode of (and it’s probably redundant to say “the first series of”) Wedding Day Winners at the weekend. It was adequate, but it really reminded me how much I miss the absolute best bit of The Shane Richie Experience, which was The Legend declaring “There’s gonna be a wedding!” Fingers crossed that the next wedding game show, in another decade or two, is more fun.
My problem with Lisa Brockwell is she didn’t even get gunged unlike Dave who frequently got set up by surprise guests including none other than Peter Simon and erm…Mr Blobby
As I recall, towards the very end the music was redone ‘again’. Matt Katz and Richie Webb (the Bamzooki announcer amongst many other things) did a sort of dance knock-off of the main theme and less intense game themes. There’s probably a story there as to why to go to that trouble when little else changed, but there we go.
In other news, Netflix has confirmed Flinch for later this year:
https://deadline.com/2018/08/netflix-the-final-table-death-by-magic-1202450979/
“The show is set on a remote farm in Ireland where brave and foolish contestants gather to test their nerve against three fiendish games. If they flinch, there are painful consequences both for them, and for our hosts, who have each chosen a player to represent them in the games. The series is hosted by comedians Desiree Burch, Lloyd Griffith and Seann Walsh.”