I’m so glad Gladiators is back – but woke producers have ditched a key element, says original host Ulrika Jonsson
THE second the opening titles started rolling and the music began, I immediately welled up.
I had no idea it would affect me so profoundly, but the return of Gladiators — the show that made me and a bevy of outsized, muscle-bound beefcakes house- hold names — brought me to tears.
Memories of my time as host from 1992 to 2000 came flooding back.
I was quite prepared to hate it because at the end of the day, remakes are rarely as good as the real thing, and what we collectively created back in the Nineties was basically a sexy, family show.
Grandad is willing on Shane from Sheffield, Mum is eyeing up Saracen’s thighs and little Johnnie is booing at Wolf.
It really was the greatest show on Earth. Well, on British TV — at the time at least.
But I have to admit I am massively impressed by this new series.
I take my hat off to the producers because they’ve done the one thing they should do — which is leave the show alone. Just as when Bake Off moved to Channel 4, it stayed the same. With such a solid fanbase for Gladiators, I don’t think the public would accept anything else. If it ain’t broke and all that.
I’m glad they’ve kept the music the same too. Even the look and feel of the programme is nigh-on identical to what we made 30 years ago.
The Gladis are still in their skimpy Lycra. They have all adopted an identity around their names.
‘We need baddies’
I mean, with stars like Dynamite, Fury and Bionic, you can’t go wrong.
It feels to me as if they have all been choreographed to have their own distinct and individual move to symbolise who they are and to create some character around their name.
It looks really slick and they have clearly been told what to say when hosts Bradley Walsh and his son Barney throw the mic in their faces before and after a game.
In fact, from what I saw, many of them seem very nice — but we all need some baddies in there too.
We need a new Wolf figure, which I hope will come to the fore as the series goes along, because there has to be light and shade.
I appreciate that they’ve kept many of the original games. The series kicks off with Duel, an awesome battle of strength and balance — definitely not for the faint-hearted or anyone with a fear of heights.
The Wall was one of our favourite games. Despite his size, Hunter was the best back in the good old days — and not just because he and I got together. (Still can’t believe he was only 23 at the time. Yikes)
He was up there like a rat up a drain-pipe. The Wall, I mean!
I always did the interviews at the base of the wall and let my co-host John “Fash” Fashanu do the ones at the top because heights are definitely not my thing.
A lot of the new Gladis look really, really big.
I had the pleasure of meeting a few of them last week, and Phantom stretched his arms out to a wingspan of more than two metres. How is that even possible?
The show is going to need some characters because all muscle and no humour makes a Gladiator very dull. It’s not all perfect though.
Where are the cheerleaders? I think the public will be as perplexed as me about their disappearance.
I don’t know if this is some kind of woke rubbish but it’s disappointing.
Cheerleaders add another dimension to the programme and make it feel more layered. The cheerleaders also serve the purpose of entertaining the audience in the arena, too. They always had cheeky routines which put a big smile on people’s faces.
I wish the show well. It’s a big blast of fun for a Saturday night — like the good old days of family telly.
Because the key to the original’s huge success was that it was entertainment for the whole family.
When the premise was originally explained to me, my eyeballs nearly popped out in disbelief.
How on earth could two men dressed in nowt but leotards on raised podiums, beating each other with giant cotton buds, possibly be considered entertainment? But I took a punt.
‘It was spicy at times’
I couldn’t help but feel that I was part of something really special when we filmed the first series.
The Gladiators themselves were like excited school kids. This was their moment to shine — and let’s face it, you don’t get bodies like that by being shy and retiring.
Their vanity and yearning for the limelight knew no bounds so it was a battle of the egos backstage. But they were a really good bunch of ordinary people who were catapulted to stardom.
During filming in Sheffield, they were all housed on one floor of the hotel we all lived in, and at the beginning of that first series there was a lot of bed-hopping. It was bad enough for the producer and director to give them a reprimand.
For me, personally, it was a massive change from doing the weather but my training in live presenting stood me in good stead as the shows were recorded live.
I was initially made to wear a low-cut leotard, tight black leggings and heeled ankle boots. I hated the outfit because I felt exposed and vulnerable but in those days you weren’t really able to express an opinion, so I put up and shut up.
By the second series, the Gladiators themselves had become huge stars and household names.
Everyone knew that Wolf was the baddie, and Jet and Lightning had become the cartwheeling heroines of many young girls. And plenty of dads, too, I suspect.
I have really fond memories of all those years of filming.
The show saw me through a lot of personal highs and lows — it was as if each year brought a new and different version of me.
I was pregnant during the filming of the third series and I’d had to fight really hard to keep my role as presenter because they weren’t keen on taking the risk of having a pregnant woman on set.
In the end, the compromise was that they employed a midwife who accompanied me everywhere for the duration of the recording.
In 1998, it was time to record another series — a month after I’d been assaulted by Stan Collymore. The story had been all over the papers so there wasn’t anybody who didn’t know about it.
I was looking forward to the distraction of filming, and as I walked on to the arena floor on the first day of rehearsals, the producers played the Chumba-wamba song Tubthumping — which contains the lyrics: “I get knocked down, but I get up again.”
It was the perfect ice-breaker and meant that no one needed to pussy-foot around me or the subject over the coming weeks.
The show itself was good clean fun. The nastiest things got were some collective “boos” at Wolf or the male Gladiators looking intimidatingly down the lens as they squished another contender like a fly against the walls of The Gauntlet.
And it was also about fitness and competition, characters and humour.
It was spicy at times and very rock ’n’ roll at others. It was cheesy and silly and it brought so much joy into people’s lives.
It really was a unifying show that brought families together.
In fact, the cast and crew became my family over the years. You can’t say that about many shows.
And I think Bradley Walsh is a brilliant, safe pair of hands when it comes to hosting the new version.
He’s funny and cheeky and is perfect for the role. Barney also did a good job — although he did look a tad nervous in that first episode.
But then he has got huge shoes to fill . . .