Hyuk Hyuk Hyuk Haaaaarrgh

I know that I haven’t updated this page for a little while, but I’ve been busy watching the television. Actually, I’ve largely been watching DVDs this summer, because the schedule is so appalling. Over the last week or so, I’ve been catching up on one of the flickering flames of my childhood, “It’s A Knockout”, which has been being repeated every once in a while on Challenge TV. To say that this has been an unexpected pleasure would be one of the understatements of the summer.

The programme was a pan-European affair, adapted from the French show “Intervilles”. The French invited other countries, under the watchful eye of the European Broadcasting Union, to join a competition called the “Inter Countries Games”, which would later become known as “Jeux Sans Frontieres”. It launched in 1965, and the BBC entered a Great Britain team from 1967 until 1982. At the peak of its popularity, it reached a pan-European audience of 100m people. The show continued to run in Europe until 1999, and the EBU is due to revive it from next year on, though it is unlikely that the British will enter.

The format was fairly simple. Each country would have its own competition to pick a national representative, who would then go on to a live, televised European final. Hosted by Stuart Hall and Eddie Waring, with referee Arthur Ellis, the show consisted of three teams battling against each other in a series of ludicrous games, with points for first, second and third place. Each team had a joker that they could play in one round each, which doubled their score for that round, and there was an individual round called the “Marathon”, in which the teams played out a single event. The British version of the show was probably most notable for Hall’s hosting style. Otherwise best known for his lavish BBC Radio football reporting style, Stuart Hall was a natural choice to succeed the original host, David Vine, as the host of “It’s A Knockout”. His commentary style would be best described as “idiosyncratic”, often collapsing into fits of giggles and hysteria as accountants and estate agents dressed in twelve foot high latex costumes stumbled around a playing field whilst thousands of people screamed deafening encouragement at them.

“Jeux Sans Frontieres” was notable for two things. Firstly, there was a massive budget allowed for the this. On “It’s A Knockout”, the majority of games were run to a tight budget, with something of the feel of a school sports day on testosterone. The final, however, was more like an enormous, ridiculous series of staged events on a national theme. When Britain hosted the competition, the theme was “Camelot”, for example. Secondly, Great Britain didn’t win very often. With four wins in sixteen competitions, they won more than France (who managed a feeble three in twenty-five) and Belgium (who managed an even feebler two in twenty), but the champions of “Jeux Sans Frontieres” were Germany, who won six in sixteen between 1965 and 1980.

It’s probably asking too much for the BBC to bring “It’s A Knockout” back for next year. Channel Five had a go at reviving it between 1999 and 2001, hosted by Keith Chegwin, but it didn’t really work. It needs a big budget, a lot of latex, and it needs Stuart Hall cackling and screaming over the top of it. We can but hope.