They're back! →[More:]
I used to love the old Gladiators series in the 1990s (the UK one with Ulrika and Fash). No matter how much I told myself that it was trashy TV, once I started watching, I'd be hooked. I'd pick the contender I wanted to win (a guy usually) and would be right there with them to the end of the travelator. My favourite Gladiator was Rhino, it was that combination of dark skin and green eyes. And the body, too, of course ...

One of the women at the gym I attended at the time was accepted as a contender, so we hired a couple of minibuses and 20 of us went up to Birmingham for the day as part of her fan section. She was a teacher, so her whole class was there too.

It was a huge amount of fun. We had the big foam fingers, which I think even then cost £5 - a ridiculous amount of money, but they had a captive audience and you couldn't be the only one without the foam finger, could you?

One single show took six hours to film. That's because it was in just this one arena (which was much smaller than it looked on TV), so they had to set up each game after they'd filmed the previous one, so there was quite a lot of down time while the technicians took away and set up the equipment.

But it was a huge amount of fun too. I remember we were all coached in the correct hand signals to do with the foam fingers. "We Will Rock You" was clap-clap-point, clap-clap-point and "Another One Bites The Dust" (when someone had fallen off something) was two upward points followed by two downward points. (You can see this on the video in the Rhino link above.) The music of Queen really lent itself well to Gladiators.

Our contender didn't win, but that doesn't spoil the memory of what was an extremely interesting (seeing how the TV show is made) and enjoyable experience. I remember I couldn't speak for days afterwards, my throat was so hoarse from yelling.

So, Sunday night at 6pm, please note I will not be answering the phone. My time will be otherwise occupied.