British 90s nostalgia and shite

I still think about SMTV Live. It was probably the greatest Saturday morning children's TV show in history, although Live & Kicking comes a close second.

I wanted to be one of the children in the audience. To actually BE there, instead of looking in, through a screen.

But how could you be in the audience? I never found out. I imagine it was something only kids in London got to do, along with visiting the British Museum on a regular basis, eating cucumber sandwiches in Hyde Park with swans, and seeing minor members of the Royal family going around doing daily business. Being in the audience of SMTV Live wasn't possible for kids from Birmingham.

(Only once have I been in the audience of a TV show. The TV show was Fantasy Football League, a comedy programme about football hosted by David Baddiel and Frank Skinner. I didn't even like football. I was only pretending to like football so I could make friends at school. Despite this, I procured audience tickets for myself and my dad for the show on the internet, and, on the day of the shoot, my dad and I went down to the BBC studios in London to see the episode filmed live. The producer took one look at us — specifically me, I imagine — decided we weren't front row material, and put us right at the back, out of shot of the cameras. The rest of the audience was made up of blokes — bald, fat men, all donned in the football shirts of their local teams. They'd probably gotten a bit tipsy from a couple of pints at the pub before the show, and now they were laughing raucously at all Baddiel and Skinner's jokes. Probably they'd go home after the show and have sex with their wives and then fall asleep, satisfied and snoring. Anyway, at school, I told my friends to look out for me on the episode, but when the episode came on, you couldn't see me or my dad, and so the next day everyone came in laughing about how I'd made up being on Fantasy Football League, as if that was something anyone would even make up. Sorry, I digress. Back to SMTV Live.)

So the show came on at 9:25 am every Saturday morning (that's what the SM stood for — Saturday morning). My brother would turn on the TV and we'd watch it together, me from the top of the bunk bed and he from the bottom bunk. I'd be looking down at the TV, through two of the wooden side rails of the bunk bed. The main draw of SMTV Live for my brother was Pokemon. (At the age of seven, he knew the names of all 151 Pokemon. But he didn't know the alphabet, so he couldn't have been that smart.)

By the way, I had my first ever panic attack one Saturday morning while waking up from a dream. My heart was beating hard and fast. Everything was moving too quickly. I was terrified to even move because my own movements seemed far too fast. So I just lay there, as still as a brick, with my mind racing. It was, and still is, the worst experience of my life. I had no idea what was happening.

But my brother turned on the TV and SMTV Live came on. And it was by watching SMTV Live that I calmed down and the panic attack went away. So thanks, SMTV Live.

(As a side note, when I feel a panic attack coming on nowadays, I just sing "Call Me Maybe" in my head and the panic attack goes away.)

Songs

Viewers would send in home-made songs and Ant and Dec would play them. It all started during an edition of Mr Postman, where Ant, Dec and Cat read letters sent in by viewers. This week one viewer had sent in a home-made song about SMTV, and Dec played it, live on air. After that, viewers sent in their own songs every week. Ant, Dec, Cat and the entire audience would sing along and sometimes there was a dance involved.

We All Love Cat Deeley

Most of the songs were shit but there was one called "We All Love Cat Deeley" and it went:

We all love Cat Deeley
She smiles on our TV
She smiles on our TV

According to Wikipedia, a student band called Sparky created the song:

While most of the songs were crafted by young kids, one song, "We All Love Cat Deeley", was done by an amateur student band and they were brought in to play it live in one week. This band were called "Sparky" and based in Stockport.

Incidentally, Cat Deeley went to my school, Bishop Vesey Grammar School:

I am not sure if that is interesting. To be honest I lost all perspective on what is interesting long ago.

I Like It Because It Is Good

The other song I remember went like this:

SMTV Live
I like it because it's good
I like it because it's best

Those were the entire lyrics: I like SMTV "because it's good" and "because it's best". The song repeated these lyrics ad infinitum.

The lyrics are so bad that they're good, like early internet websites or the voice acting in the first Resident Evil game.

Medley

I can find no evidence of this online, but I am sure that in one episode, Ant, Dec, Cat and the whole audience sang both songs combined in medley. It went something like this:

SMTV Live
I like it because it's good
I like it because it's best
We all love Cat Deeley
She smiles on our TV
She smiles on our TV

I was born too late to witness the birth of The Beatles but this was perhaps the next best thing, or better. It was like "Hey Jude" but on Saturday morning 1990s television and sung by two Geordies and a Brummy.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I like SMTV Live. I like it because it's good. I like it because it's best.