Today is brought to you by the letter…G

Hello, Tele addicts!

A short one today, because I feel as rough as a piece of really rough sandpaper. Really I should have saved this one for a Saturday morning, as we delve today into the realm of kid’s Saturday morning TV. Yes, today G is for…

Going Live

Going Live was a Saturday morning magazine show for kids which ran between 1987 and 1993, so when I was aged 12 to 18. (Yes! I just about qualify as a child when it finished, right?!)

It was hosted mainly by Sarah Greene and Philip Schofield, along with the puppet Gordon the Gopher, who I didn’t especially like. (Oh come on! He was no Ed the Duck! ) Although these were the main stalwarts, other presenters came and went over the time it was on air too. The show succeeded the ever popular Saturday Superstore (which I don’t remember watching so much) and was followed by Live and Kicking hosted by Andy Peters and Emma Forbes, which, despite my entry into adulthood, I must have still watched for a time!)

Of course Saturday morning TV was what you did in the ’80s whilst your parents had their one and only lie in of the week. (We went to church on Sundays so no lounging around then!) Well, watch TV as well as turn the furniture upside down, (quite literally in the case of the rocking chair), scatter the sofa cushions all over the floor all in order to play Shark Attack. In Shark Attack you had to jump across pieces of furniture and cushions, avoiding the floor in case the shark (brother number one usually) ‘got’ you.

Anyway, back to Going Live. It was a typical magazine show having such elements as the ‘Growing Pains’ agony uncle section with Philip Hodgson, whereby he’d take calls from viewers and help them with their teen problems. There would always be superstar guests of course from the land of soap and pop usually and a section called Live Line where a celebrity/celebrities would surprise a caller or viewer in some way.

At the end of the show there was always the Press Conference (the serious bit I was never so much interested in) and in that section a sports star or politician or someone of importance would field questions from the live studio audience of kids or from callers.

Mixed in with this was the game show Double Dare, hosted by Peter Simon who always ended up being gunged with green slime, but which was later replaced by Run the Risk and Shane Ritchie took over.

However, my real reason for watching Going Live, I have to admit, was for the comedy duo of Trevor and Simon who played an array of characters in small comedy sketch snippets during the show. I thought they were hilarious (though looking now I’m sure some of their jokes would have gone right over my early teen brain) and there were three characters I liked in particular.

These were:

MC Mick McMax (played by Trevor) – an over the top cockney MC (MCs very of the time, rather than DJs of course), and his side kick ‘Moon Monkey’ played by Simon who spoke in a broad Mancunian accent and basically danced around in his skin tight yellow, psychedelic, all-in-one jump suit parodying someone at a rave, high on speed! (Though he looked like he needed to pee, more than anything!)
Again a parody reflecting the times but in a very tongue and cheek manner. They ran a competition called Trev and Simon’s Pot Fish Rave club competition (Pot fish of course being a parody of Pot Noodle!) Anyway, they always had me laughing.

I also loved them doing their ‘singing corner’ spot, where they played a folk duo (totally opposite to Mick and Moon Monkey) and in which Trev would play the guitar and Simon would hold his trousers out at the thigh and encourage us all the ‘swing our pants’ Again utterly silly nonsense, but I’d tune into it just to watch them. (If honest I’d also tune in just in case some celebrity I liked was on!) Anyway, this clip highlighted above is hilarious even now, and I probably appreciate the pop references more so now than I did then.

Finally there was ‘World of the Strange‘, in which they wore some weird and wonderful wigs and velveteen suits and told stories of ‘strange ‘mysteries’ which were actually very normal everyday events, such as this one. (Skip to 3 minutes 17 seconds to see.) But events they tried to make see sinister with their very Derren Brown/Twilight Zone way of presenting it. It used to make me laugh, again because it was so ridiculous.