Saturday Night's Alright For Poke-Fighting: Approaching 20 Years of SMTV

Dear Ant and Dec (or if too formal, Antworth and Decimalisation)

I, a regular 'umble member of the public who what never done nuffin' wrong in 'is life and loves his mother, Mrs Peter Kay's Brown's Boys and fightin' in pubs, was delighted to read earlier this week that you had been approached to do a 20th anniversary edition of SM:TV Live, the much-loved Saturday morning kids show strand that ran under your stewardship from 1998 to 2001, along with Cat Deeley.

I think this would be a magnificent idea to do a big celebration of all things SM:TV and return to some of the old characters and running bits BUT there should be some ground rules in advance. I mean, every git covering this story for the entertainment sections has had a field day listing old stuff that should return, which I'm sure has nothing to do with the Wikipedia article for the show being surprisingly lengthy.  But first my credentials for why you should listen to me:

1). I Have Big Muscles

2). I Have Trained To 'Pro' Level

3). I have been watching you on television since we were all pre-teens. Admittedly Byker Grove and its cheeky but 'VR SERIOUS MSG' scripts were never much my bag but the spin-off variety show you launched at 4:30pm on Thursday 6th April 1995 was. "The Ant and Dec Show" was funny, irreverent and a little bit actually dangerous, even if that was just playing up to the masses of frothing teenage girls in the audience. I was a 14 year old lad with no such desire to kiss you on the bottoms but I couldn't help be won over by the easy charm and comic partnership that is now pretty much the actual spine of England as we speak.



(SIDENOTE 1: If anyone remembers anything about "The Ant and Dec Show" (other than noted non-homosexualist David Walliams being one of its main writers) these days however it would be series 2's big innovation "Beat The Barber" in which a child put their hair up as collateral in order to try win top prizes, presumably assuming that if they lost, they wouldn't ACTUALLY have a professional hairdresser shave off all their manes. But as many angry red-penned writers to Points of View learnt, they did. And took huge delight in it too.)

After that, I followed you to Channel 4 where you continued your attempts to be an actually successful version of Lee and Herring for 1997's "Unzipped", which being broadcast at a staggeringly late 6:25pm meant an increase in the naughtiness and winks to the camera, plus slightly more interesting guests like Eddie Izzard, Neil Hannon, Jo Brand and um...Lee and Herring...

(SIDENOTE 2: Stew and Rich were actually paying back the favour after the Geordie twosome appeared in an episode of their "Fist Of Fun" back in 1995 around the same time as series one of "The Ant and Dec Show".)



Sadly only running to one series (and the odd one-off, out of character but on a boat TFI-lite "Geordie Christmas" featuring blog-favourites Kenickie as house band), I'm not sure it whether it was bad ratings, boredom from wither party or the desire only to show "Friends" repeats and "Hollyoaks" in that slot for the next 400 years but the move of McPartlin and Donnelly to Saturday mornings in August 1998 definitely felt like a bit of a demotion at the time. Indeed those first few shows, which I tuned in out of curiosity for, were a bit dull and well, I may have accidentally stopped bothering watching after a few weeks in favour of popular teenage past-time Not Being Awake Before Afternoon.


It seemed somewhat inevitable the axe would fall like most other ITV Saturday shows, especially as Zoe Ball and Jamie Theakston had proved to be a magnificent pairing on Live And Kicking over the channel. I still checked in though when L&K was showing a rubbish cartoon or doing something about ISSUES and SM:TV was definitely getting slicker and looser. Gone were the original million "stages" and that grating theme tune with lots more sketches and fannying about. By this point there was "Chums", the thin Friends pastiche that allowed the show to basically become a Morecambe and Wise flat sketch for fifteen minutes a week and would eventually spawn a sell-through best of video and repeats on CITV long after SM:TV had left the building.

We all know what happened next: fame, money, prime time...Alien Autopsy. Truly, these were the greatest days oh masters of cheeky banter and Geordie noises mentioned in order to keep up the pretence of this being a letter. And I was watching it all, although admittedly not that much in the past decade or so, but - I ASK YOU - did anybody else tape the full run of forgotten "Takeaway" precursor "Slap Bang" onto one 240 VHS in fast play? EH? SO YOU CAN BLOODY WELL KISS ME AND LIKE IT. I mean, erm, listen to my points for how the "SM:TV" revival should happen...

1. Yes it'd be nice to see it in its original slot but realistically no commissioners are going to want to put it there, especially reminding people of all the kids shows ITV cant be bothered showing anymore. So do it at night but between a similar sort of running time e.g. 7:25pm to 9:30pm.

2. Remember the roles. Dec is the angry, over-confident idiot whilst Ant is the long suffering friend. And Cat is smarter than both of them.

3. Please don't involve Cowell whatsoever. He may have his grubby fingers over the acts in the pop sections but this was pre-Pop Idol and any need to nods to the Satan of Saturday night should be stepped upon heavily.

4. In fact, no celebrities full stop unless they're prepared to dress up like idiots, do the postbag dance and get into the actual spirit of things.

5. Please remember that the low key nature was why people liked it. So just crew members and some baffled schoolchildren chuckling is instantly preferable rather than industry wankers at the front of the 02.

6. My personal favourites of the old bits were "Dec Says" (the flashbacks to the team's fake school years with Cat The Dog and a exceptionally high voiced pervy teen Declan), the Pokeraps (just edges the Pokefights and not for the raps themselves but the increasingly contrived reasons for the feature being cancelled. Oh and the Pikachu jumpers, obvs), "Challenge Ant" (well, you have to. Preferably a win with a real child please), "F'Art Attack" (because farts are funny) and Wonkey Donkey (because nothing is funnier than grown men shouting "ITS GOT TO RHYME" at bewildered children.)

7. We don’t need the cartoons. But if its that or unrelated celebrities telling us why it was BEST GRATE SHOW, badly dubbed Pokemon - I choose you!

8. Make sure Cat Deeley has plenty to do. Her story has moved away from the UK so its easy to forget how good she is and really funny she became as the shows progressed, getting better with the years and filling in with Louise Redknapp and Tess Daly very respectably. It was only after she left it went to shite.

9. We don’t really need an hour of CD:UK after though. It was the death of The Chart Show and inevitably pleased no-one. 

10. Have fun!

But seriously, don’t jeff it up. You know what happened to those blokes who replaced Trev and Simon on Going Live that one series? Exactly.

Your pal,

Ben Baker (Ms.)

(SIDENOTE 3: Alien Autopsy is rubbish.)

You Don't Know How Much I Love You: Reclaiming Kenickie's "Get In"

Has there ever been an opening line in a top 40 single as quietly devastating as "I'm in pieces / does no-one see it?"

Outside of their media-friendly former front-woman, Kenickie are probably best, if at all, remembered as air-punching, glam stomping, pint-swigging mouthy teenage BFF girls (Lauren Laverne, Emmy-Kate Montrose and Marie du Santiago or Lauren Gofton, Emma Jackson and Marie Nixon at home) who were hilarious in interviews. Press and TV loved it because they had an instant angle and didn't have to do any real work. The début album went top ten. Bombing down the street, its a laugh. So what happens next?

"Oh great, we're getting a band together...lets get all yer mates. And then you find yer mates cant play..."

The sixties influence running through the album even made it to the artwork, as baffingly generic as it is.

There's a definitive mood that holds together Kenickie's second album "Get In" only hinted at briefly by that confusingly damning sample from BBC2's magnificent video diary "In Bed With Chris Needham" as the opening seconds of "Stay In The Sun" punch through your speakers. Thankfully it isn't quite as relentless as the single mix but has a simple summer-friendly chorus that should have seen its sunny - even funky - indie dance beats push further up the chart than its profoundly disappointing No.43 peak in August 1998.



Despite this, "Stay In The Sun" is a defiantly arms-aloft POP! record that sounded magnificent the few days it was played on daytime radio. There seems to be no reason for its lack of Radio 1 support, it just was the right song for the wrong summer. These were strange times for indie bands though with many who had thrived just a year earlier (The Supernaturals, Ash, Babybird and Symposium to name a few) now struggling to get anywhere near to the lofty positions they'd previously reached.  July and August 1998's top ten is the playground of SERIOUS boy bands (Boyzone, Savage Garden, Another Level) and ridiculous novelties (Ace of Base, Aqua, Alda) plus a lot of dance music as befits a summer chart, the best of the bunch undoubtedly being Stardust's "Music Sounds Better With You".

Besides, Kenickie might have sounded like they wanted to have fun in the sun and yet to avid fans of their earlier music, something felt a little hollow in their insistence. The giddy passion of "Punka" and "Stay Out 2Nite" replaced by hearts and keyboards. And did Lauren really just sing "I'm so weakened / We feel bloated / I feel sick"? Is...is everything okay?

Several months later, we learned the answer. Kenickie were to split. Second album syndrome, some said. With a chart peak of 32 after the top ten highs of the first LP you could well believe it. But had Kenickie really fallen into such an obvious trap? Had they shed too many fans of their original rambunctious punk pop sound with a new pop image? Or was it the public that got it wrong, giving up on a band just as it was becoming something much more interesting?

Track two on "Get In", "Lunch At Lassiters" gives little time to assess, coming on like the title sequence to perhaps not a Bond film but one of those shit-in-a-field knock-offs that were prevalent in the 1960s. Its a decade that looms large over this record, despite the group's youth, with the hippy themes of romance and having fun, joined by a N‭ixon (Richard, not Marie) era paranoia and fear. The production is much smarter than to just attempt a sixties love in with a lightness of touch and almost hip-hop take on percussion from main producer and drummer Johnny X (Pete Gofton). This runs right through the record and is perhaps most successful on magnificent first single, "I Would Fix You", home to the line at the start of this article, which takes a John Barry-style orchestral approach to a gorgeous, shimmering but desperately fragile record that has encapsulates the feel of the whole record much more succinctly than "Stay In The Sun". Its a punch-drunk boxer standing up in the third round despite all that’s been thrown at them. A sunflower fighting through the concrete. Something has gone very wrong indeed.

[CHARMING SIDE NOTE: "I Would Fix You" was one of the songs pastiched by Smack The Pony in its exceptionally funny first series (March/April 1999), along with The Corrs, Republica, Steps, All Saints, B*Witched and weirdly, Velocette. Becoming "Colours" by "Kinkee", the track is not especially funny lyrically, with the comedy coming from the cast being annoyed by butterflies and fannying about on wires, but absolutely dead on in both music and visuals as a parody with lead vocals from the always superb Doon Mackichan. Quite how many people got the reference at the time is hard to say but it was very much appreciated by me regardless.]



This thinly-veiled anger and sadness continues with "60s Bitch" clinging hopelessly to a relationship already over, whilst getting its claws into high street shops diving on the easy listening revival too late. ("You don't want her / She's got a waistcoat / She shops in Mark One / She's not strong enough / She's known in New Look / She's got a card there...") There's been drugs. There's been a lot of alcohol. But is there a way through it all? No answers are forthcoming in the much more lively "Run Me Over", which would fit comfortably on "At The Club", although barely hidden under the surface is the lyric "I hate it when you talk about me" suggesting somebody (Lauren Laverne? the band?) is approaching a limit.

This feeling of emptiness continues on track six "And That's Why", an achingly fragile piece that removes the regular band in favour of strings and minimal brass with Lauren seemingly looking down from above on a person nobody wants and wondering why. Of course, you don’t have to be Ian Q. Psychologies to work out that its the narrator who is truly hurting, a theme that continues on album stand-out, the initially sparse and dramatic "Weeknights" in which Laverne tackles the increase in drinking she seems to be doing as "a broken mind breaks out of me". The resigned sound of someone proudly marching over the cliff.

Between those tracks however comes something of a mood change as the keyboard-drenched dance number "Magnatron" featuring Marie on vocals and writing duty finds a bouncing disco beat reminding us that drinking and going out can still be the vicarious pleasure it seemed on the first album - the song even starts with someone pouring out a drink. But look deeper and there's talk of vomiting, sleeping it off and the slightly chilling "she'll be alright / but it's a long way down". On another planet this was a top five hit, here its just a slightly ill-fitting mid album track.

From a purely musical level, "Psychic Defence" is probably the album's catchiest track with a full chorus of harmonic "do do do"s (and occasional "ba ba ba"s) accompanying a simple glockenspiel melody which again leads into some beautifully arranged strings. With lines like the acidic "here's a reason for all the heavy hearts to stay / your mates don't really like you / and neither do I" throughout though, the happiness may all be as surface as the sounds. Marie's second vocal (and one of two songs solely written by her, with two other co-writes) comes on "5AM", a Kenix take on the pop RnB ballad doing big business for the likes of All Saints and Honeyz at the time that doesn't really divert, although the lyric "So much hard to go home / came in someone else's car / shiver in your night time clothes / you don't know where you are" seems to deliberately try and cast the darker side of earlier singles "In Your Car" and "Nightlife".

Marie and Lauren. They were really exceptionally good, you know...

"411 (La La La)" is perhaps, outside of "I Would Fix You", the most positive song Laverne contributes to the album. The words of loneliness and feeling lost are still there but joined with an optimistic belief that things could actually change. "Come to me / let me be kind", sings Lauren and you hope more than anything that this time she really was singing to herself.

After all the sadness and self-searching throughout the previous forty two minutes, you could easily be mistaken for seeing the final track's title - "Something's Got To Give" - and thinking this is the knife against skin moment, the pressure point released and yet what follows is a charming, played straight big band showstopper with Marie again on lyrics and lead vocals. Its fun, simple and a much needed reminder of Kenickie's scampish playful side which despite the overall themes, still twinkles throughout the album.

A flop on release, it feels like "Get In"'s only real crime was being so different from the easier pleasures of their début, trapped between pop megastardom and underground cliché. And while the band members have gone on to much happier futures, the music remains and it is always good to know someone, at some point, was out there feeling as lost as you. Repay the favour and lose yourself in "Get In" today.