Get Your Own Back

Synopsis

For a while in the 1990s, Dave Benson Phillips felt the need to live a double life, a Jekyll-and-Hyde existence. By day, Nice Dave Benson was an utterly trustworthy father figure on Playdays; by night, Naughty Dave Benson was and still is the most unpredictable, crazy gungemeister since Stu Francis, (with the possible exception of Noel Edmonds). Peter Simon? Get out of town!

The show mutated through a few different formats but the principle has remained constant throughout, which comprises of a child and a parent/relative/teacher/celeb who has committed some dreadful crime such as being old, singing badly or insisting upon a tidy room.

The First Foray

The show's first format started with three teams, later cut down to two from the second series onwards, where in the first round Brain Box, they have to answer a series of questions and for every correct answer, they have to do a chore and then go through the mangle where they have to take the chore item from point A to point B and then repeat until the timer runs out, every correct answer is worth 10 points and every item that got through is worth and extra 5 points.

At this point in the first series, the adult with the highest score got the Key to Freedom and a Clever Clogs certificate.

The remaining two have to play the second round called the Chumps' Challenge where it would involve either an obstacle course or a physical challenge.

After that round, the adult that scored the lowest combined score would have to face the Gunk Dunk where the child has earned the right to Get Their Own Back upon their parentrelativeteacherceleb by dunking them into a 2'6" deep pool of colourful gunge (total immersions usual), but the p/r/t/cs also has a chance to pre-emptively get their own back upon the child. This was by means of answering questions that had very obvious answers beginning with a certain letter, but - and here was the rub - they could not give answers beginning with that letter, which would of course have been far too easy. (For example, a man who was not allowed to give answers beginning with 'B' was asked, "What's the opposite of 'forward?'" and he came up with the answer, "Reverse", which was duly accepted). If the adult managed to come up with 5 correct answers within the time limit, the child would be gunged from above (in true Crackerjack/Noel's House Party-style). However, "children are not permitted without an adult" so the adults inevitably got it in the end. Yay!

A fun, energetic and chaotic show that filled a quarter of an hour in the Children's BBC block for the first three series, which left us wanting more. And by more, the Beeb translated it as extend the show by ten minutes.

The format for the fourth series remained the same, but a couple of new additions were added now that the show ran for 25 minutes. The first addition was that the child contestants got the chance after rounds 1 and 2 to play a mini game called Knockdown Bonus where if the child that completes a task first, they get to take away 10 points from the adult's score. The second addition was a newly added third round called Puzzle Time where the adult now teams up with the child on the opposition team and they both have to help each other for the adult to gain points.

All Change

From the fifth series onwards, the format was given a change where it was now the kid who would have to gain points through a series of inflatable-dependent games in which the kid has to propel item A from location B to location C using implement D while their parent tries to prevent the same happening by use of implement E whilst randomly dressed up as a giant F and given miscellaneous handicap G. Points are awarded for each item A so propelled within a time limit.

After four rounds of games, the child who has gained most points has earned the right to dunk their grown up in the gunge tank. Above the grown up, there are three additional vats of goo filled with snot, custard and R.A.W. (Really Awful Waste) and the adult can avoid getting covered in them by answering questions, which is a multiple choice of two.

Key moments

Peter Simon often appearing on the celebrity episodes and randomly tripping up and falling into the gunge - even if he wasn't scheduled to be a contestant!

Dave himself ended up in the gunk dunk three times, the first time was during the 1992 Christmas special when Philippa Forrester pulled him in after she'd been dunked herself. The second time was the 1996 Christmas episode where Dave ended up as one of the contestants and Peter Simon took over as presenter for that edition. The final time was during the Christmas 1998 episode, which was presented in the style of a trial, with Dave as the convict (complete with prison outfit) and former contestants Kirsten O'Brien and Mr Blobby as the judges. Dave's questions were read out by Mr Blobby and were not translated in to English which led to the inevitable of Dave ending up in the gunge for a third time.

The final episode was a celebrity edition with Dick & Dom who just larked about the entire show and didn't take any of the games seriously.

Catchphrases

Dave - "What do we do?" Audience - "CRANK THEM UP!"

"Pull that lever and get your own back!"

"What's the connection between you two?"

"There are some very obvious answers to these questions beginning with the letter 'F' (or whatever), but unfortunately, your answers can't begin with that letter..."

"I'll have that".

"How do you feel?"

Dave also regularly referred to the adults' forthcoming gungebath as "a drop in the plop" and probably a number of other things in addition.

Inventor

Devised by Brian Marshall. Games devised by the Chatterbox Partnership.

Theme tune

Martin Cook (1991-95)

Steve Brown (1996-2000)

Matt Katz (2001-04)

Richard Webb (1998-2004)

Trivia

The show was sent lots of (presumably unsolicited) ideas for games by children - and why not? - so formally invited ideas from viewers, inviting lucky bugg... sorry, successful designers onto the set to see their game played for real. Or, rather, as close an approximation to the submitted game as could be fashioned from the BBC budget.

Do you, like us, lie awake at nights wondering whatever happened to Lisa Brockwell? Then rest easy, for the mystery is solved. As of May 2011, she's presenting on Watford Hospital Radio and also "fits in being a mum".

Christopher Smith, who played Robert Sugden in Emmerdale between 1989 and 2001, appeared as a contestant in 1993 (when he was eight years old) and managed to gunge the producer of Emmerdale at the time, Morag Bain.

In 1995, the programme courted controversy by introducing 'The Furnace'. In this tweak to the format, the child would have to bring along a prized possession, and if they were beaten in one of the games by their adult team mate, their possession would be placed into the furnace and duly burnt. The introduction of the furance resulted in numerous complaints to the BBC's Points of View programme, ranging from upset caused to children, to the needless destruction of objects. As a result, it was revealed that the items placed into the furnace were not in fact burnt, with their demise being recreated through computer trickery, and the child being given their possession back after filming. Nevertheless, the furnace section of the programme was edited out of all subsequent episodes, and did not return in the following series.

A live version of the programme, with a portable gunge booth, was performed during the 2015 Edinburgh Fringe, with Dave Benson Phillips reviving his hosting duties.

Web links

Wikipedia entry

Opening titles from 1991, 1992 and 1994 in the BBC Motion Graphics Archive

Pictures

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