Any transparent discussion about the new Sky One revival of classic ITV show Gladiators must be based on comparisons with the original. By the original, I mean series 1 to 5, hosted by John Fashanu and Ulrika Johnson. After that I didn’t care. Jeremy Guscott didn’t say AWOOGA!
Ian Wright is an irritating man, but was a good footballer, an Arsenal legend - he scored lots of goals and made me happy. He even kicked Peter Schmeichel in the face. That made me happy too. He was shafted by Graham Taylor, who inexplicably preferred to play David Hirst, or Nigel Clough, or Brian Deane, or even Paul Stewart ahead of him during his reign as England manager. He was also largely ignored by Terry Venables, and despite making various telling cameo appearances for Glen Hoddle’s England, unfortunately his international career was littered with what-might-have-beens. He then became a television pundit and a presenter and I hate him.
John Fashanu scored a few goals for Wimbledon, won the FA Cup, played twice for England and wrote the Fashanu Report about corruption in Nigeria. Then he became a television presenter. He smiled a lot, wore huge waistcoats, roundhouse-kicked the air and shouted AWOOGA!
Ulrika Johnson was a Swedish weather-girl-turned-slapper-tabloid-lady, who no longer retains any relevance in the public sphere. She is attracted to deviant television presenters, beefy steroid-boys, deviant footballers and balding football managers. She wasn’t a bad presenter, and I neither liked nor disliked her. Later, she was sometimes amusing, and often a useful butt of jokes on Shooting Stars with Reeves and Mortimer.
Kirsty Gallacher is the daughter of golfer, Bernard Gallacher. She is easy on the eye and the ear, and has never offended anybody in her entire life.
In an ideal world, John Fashanu and Kirsty Gallacher would present Gladiators.
Apart from the presenters, the rest of the show is largely the same. Some of the games have added fire and water, and the colour palette has been de-nintified. I don’t know if I will watch another episode, but it seems to have retained the harmless humour of the original, and I still find most of the games quite entertaining.
I haven’t seen enough of the actual Gladiators to compare them to their predecessors, but I think it’s safe to say that nobody can compare with Jet or Shadow, in terms of hotness or scariness, respectively. And I’m also pretty sure that a contender like Eunice Huthart will never be found again. The mouthy scouser dominated the show in 1994, and went on to be a stunt woman in many movies, and (scarcely believably) a body double for Angelina Jolie and Famke Janssen, amongst others.
So to conclude, here is a poster of one of the most fantastic collaborations of all time - Diane ‘Jet’ Youdale playing Dick Whittington opposite Ray ‘Alf Stewart’ Meagher. It’s got nothing to do with Gladiators, but it’s something else Sky One could revive, perhaps. Diane is pretty interesting, according to her own website. She used to hate her reflection, and her skills include:
- Teaching
- Writing
- Public Speaking
- Surfing
- Reflexology
- Motorbiking
- Wall Climbing
- Swinging from chains and catching people with her legs
- Hair flicking
- Pretending to know about computer games (anyone remember the Games Mistress?)
