SW
Yes, a bit of a flop, that, I know Denise later said she regretted doing it and what finally appeared on screen was quite far removed from the original idea. It was a bit like Totally Saturday that Graham Norton did a few years later in that, on paper, the show wasn't all that different from Saturday Night Takeaway and you could have probably have ported all the items across on to there and they would have fitted just fine, but it was the execution that seemed to go a bit wrong. Vaughan is always going to be an acquired taste and to try and package him as a Saturday night entertainer was always going to be a struggle.
The best bit was when they'd do an OB from somewhere and ask if you knew someone there to phone them up and get them to do something, which was quite a clever idea. They'd always have to wait for the first person to do it, and that would lead to a load of ad-libbing from Johnny and Denise which was quite amusing. But that was as near as they got to replicating the Big Breakfast magic, it was always going to be hard to translate their relationship from two hours a day, five days a week to 45 minutes a week.
Of course Johnny's BBC career went a bit wrong from the start when the first show he did for them was the useless sitcom Orrible. But I always thought Johnny Vaughan Tonight was quite a good show, probably the best of all the sub-Letterman chat shows we've had as they got some interesting guests on* and did some amusing things. That spun off into the show he did every night during the 2002 World Cup. Then there was Live at Johnnys on BBC3 which was probably the most Big Breakfast-esque of all his shows, not that anyone watched it. He did the Superstars revival, which I always enjoyed, he played it pretty straight and did a good job on it.
Yes, he did Mud Men on the History Channel, very much in the Time Team/Scrapheap Challenge school of factual shows. As mentioned, he did Space Cadets and I've said this before, but I remember Media Guardian going big on it because when the C4 schedule was released for that week it had TBAs every night at 9pm and they did a piece speculating as to whether it would be a new series of Celebrity Big Brother which was being kept a secret. It turned out it was that.
He was also team captain on Best of the Worst, a short-lived panel show on C4 in 2006, which was hosted by Xander Armstrong with David Mitchell, pre-WILTY, as the other captain. It was the most generic panel show imaginable, but thanks to the personnel it was all very amusing. I remember Vaughan won every episode and on the last one, when Mitchell was losing again, he said they should fix it so he would win or there'd be no jeopardy in the format and the audience would get bored. And he did lose again, and said "This is bad for the programme!".
* The best episode of Johnny Vaughan Tonight had Rob Brydon and Bob Crow of the RMT as guests, there'd just been a rail strike so Crow was in the news a lot. Clearly Rob had said to Johnny beforehand, "if things get a bit heated, come to me", and indeed the interview with Crow did start getting a bit bogged down in intricate detail and wasn't very entertaining, so Johnny said, "Rob, I understand you had a point you wanted to make about the railways?" and Rob said, "That's right, Johnny. I was on the train the other day and I saw Tom Conti, and we had a lovely chat!".
Yes he did - Johnny and Denise's Passport to Paradise.
Six episodes in the summer of 2004 was all it got, however.
Six episodes in the summer of 2004 was all it got, however.
Yes, a bit of a flop, that, I know Denise later said she regretted doing it and what finally appeared on screen was quite far removed from the original idea. It was a bit like Totally Saturday that Graham Norton did a few years later in that, on paper, the show wasn't all that different from Saturday Night Takeaway and you could have probably have ported all the items across on to there and they would have fitted just fine, but it was the execution that seemed to go a bit wrong. Vaughan is always going to be an acquired taste and to try and package him as a Saturday night entertainer was always going to be a struggle.
The best bit was when they'd do an OB from somewhere and ask if you knew someone there to phone them up and get them to do something, which was quite a clever idea. They'd always have to wait for the first person to do it, and that would lead to a load of ad-libbing from Johnny and Denise which was quite amusing. But that was as near as they got to replicating the Big Breakfast magic, it was always going to be hard to translate their relationship from two hours a day, five days a week to 45 minutes a week.
Of course Johnny's BBC career went a bit wrong from the start when the first show he did for them was the useless sitcom Orrible. But I always thought Johnny Vaughan Tonight was quite a good show, probably the best of all the sub-Letterman chat shows we've had as they got some interesting guests on* and did some amusing things. That spun off into the show he did every night during the 2002 World Cup. Then there was Live at Johnnys on BBC3 which was probably the most Big Breakfast-esque of all his shows, not that anyone watched it. He did the Superstars revival, which I always enjoyed, he played it pretty straight and did a good job on it.
He has done a bit for I think the History channel or Discovery too.
Yes, he did Mud Men on the History Channel, very much in the Time Team/Scrapheap Challenge school of factual shows. As mentioned, he did Space Cadets and I've said this before, but I remember Media Guardian going big on it because when the C4 schedule was released for that week it had TBAs every night at 9pm and they did a piece speculating as to whether it would be a new series of Celebrity Big Brother which was being kept a secret. It turned out it was that.
He was also team captain on Best of the Worst, a short-lived panel show on C4 in 2006, which was hosted by Xander Armstrong with David Mitchell, pre-WILTY, as the other captain. It was the most generic panel show imaginable, but thanks to the personnel it was all very amusing. I remember Vaughan won every episode and on the last one, when Mitchell was losing again, he said they should fix it so he would win or there'd be no jeopardy in the format and the audience would get bored. And he did lose again, and said "This is bad for the programme!".
* The best episode of Johnny Vaughan Tonight had Rob Brydon and Bob Crow of the RMT as guests, there'd just been a rail strike so Crow was in the news a lot. Clearly Rob had said to Johnny beforehand, "if things get a bit heated, come to me", and indeed the interview with Crow did start getting a bit bogged down in intricate detail and wasn't very entertaining, so Johnny said, "Rob, I understand you had a point you wanted to make about the railways?" and Rob said, "That's right, Johnny. I was on the train the other day and I saw Tom Conti, and we had a lovely chat!".