Thursday 6th April 2006
TX: Channel 4 Monday-Saturday, 4.15pm
To say that Noel Edmonds has a few strings to his bow is a bit like suggesting Osama Bin Laden has a slight image problem – it’s something of an understatement. Anyone who thinks his contribution to British culture is limited to some dodgy knitwear and Mr Blobby is doing him a disservice. Even the vaguest perusal of the Edmonds CV reveals he’s presented hit radio shows and groundbreaking TV series, and started an enormously successful production company. He’s built a business empire that has the turnover of a small country, including forays into event production, talent management, new media, video communications, recruitment and motoring. He’s involved with a number of children’s charities and other campaigns, and is even President of the British Horse Society. Put it this way: since he last appeared on our TV screens five years ago, he’s not exactly been sitting in a string vest watching 'Tricia' and picking fluff out of his belly button.
With this in mind, the announcement that he is to return to presenting, with the new Channel 4 game show 'Deal or No Deal', took observers by surprise. It turns out that Edmonds was one of them. “I didn’t have an appetite to come back to television,” he reveals, “so when I was approached a couple of months ago, I declined the offer.” In the end, though, some persistent wooing from senior executives and a fascination with a new game show format that has taken the world by storm persuaded him to change his mind. “They won me over,” he admits. “I feel very honoured to be given this opportunity, to be honest. I’m slightly embarrassed that I actually declined it originally. As it’s unfolded over the last few weeks, it’s become very, very exciting. It’s simple, it’s honest and it’s gripping.” Just ask the audiences in over 40 countries where the format has been a hit.
Noel Edmonds’ career began 37 years ago when he became, rather improbably, a newsreader on Radio Luxembourg. Within a year he’d moved to BBC Radio One, and begun what turned out to be a pretty rapid assault on the nation’s consciousness. “I had a pretty meteoric start at Radio One. I joined the station in 1969 and almost immediately got on-air opportunities with the Breakfast Show and weekend shows [as the station’s youngest ever DJ]. I then got invited to be one of the hosts of Top of the Pops.”
During this period, he also released a pop record, joined a motor racing team, presented 'Come Dancing', and started his own record store on the Kings Road. But if things had happened quickly until now, his rise was about to accelerate with the arrival of a show called 'Multi-Coloured Swap Shop'.
“It was the big break, in career terms. The BBC were looking for someone to host a Saturday morning show. It was pioneering television, because before then BBC1 didn’t start until about 10am, and then they showed old black and white repeats of 'The Lone Ranger', 'Buck Rogers', that sort of thing. So this was a groundbreaking opportunity, and I was very, very fortunate that I was selected to present it. In many ways, it was regarded as the format that created Saturday’s children’s television.
“'Swap Shop' was very satisfying, and it led on to so many opportunities for me. It gave me the chance to do things like Top Gear and aviation shows for the BBC. That period was particularly happy, working with John Craven and Cheggers [Keith Chegwin]. It was a very happy period in my life. Likewise, the first five years of [Noel’s] 'House Party', in the early 90s, was extraordinarily satisfying.”
Ah yes, the weekly visit to Crinkley Bottom for an hourly helping of wholesome family fun, with a sprinkle of celebrity and a side order of anarchy, washed down with several gallons of gunge. It was a recipe that certainly proved popular with viewers. “We were getting huge audiences, at a time when BBC1 had been getting beaten by ITV. 'House Party' reversed that dramatically.”
The show had a chaotic feel about it, though in fact it was planned with almost military precision. “Boy did we work hard on that show! There were a lot of things the viewer saw as unplanned incidents that were actually carefully organised. But yeah, things did go wrong. On one show, we were meant to have Oliver Reed. Dear old Oliver came on 'House Party' drunk as a skunk in rehearsals, and never turned up for the show. He went off down the pub or something. We filled the time with something else.”
At other times, the producers had surprises in store for their unwitting host. “They always liked playing tricks on me at the end of a series. I remember the excruciating embarrassment of having to sing with the Spice Girls. During a VT I was grabbed and dragged out behind the set, and literally had my clothes torn off me. I was put into this stupid little skirt and crop-top and then had to sing with the Spice Girls. It was mind-numbingly embarrassing.
“At the end of another series, the famous doorbell went, and I answered it to Tom Jones. I had to sing 'It’s Not Unusual' in a duet with him. The only thing that went my way was that he forgot the words. At least I had a cue card to read them off.”
'House Party' ran for eight years, until 1998. In the same year, 'Telly Addicts', Edmonds’ TV trivia quiz show, ended after 13 years. And suddenly, Noel Edmonds had disappeared from the nation’s TV screens as abruptly as he’d arrived on them. What made him turn his back on the limelight?
“I had a fantastic run with the BBC: 30 years in radio and television, with a breadth of opportunities very few people are given. I will always be hugely grateful to the BBC for that. But by the end of the 1990s I’d run out of steam, if I’m being frank. I was doing nearly 50 shows a year, and I’d probably burnt myself out.”
But after five years away from the glare of the studio lights, he’s raring to get involved once again. “One of the things I’ve always loved about TV is the team play. We had it with 'Swap Shop', we had it with 'House Party', where the production team were just fantastic. And I think that the 'Deal or No Deal' production team is superb. It’s been one of the key elements that swayed me into making this return.”
The most key element of all, of course, is the format of the show. With over 30 years of experience as a presenter and producer, he says it’s one of the most exciting ideas he’s seen. In the show, one contestant gambles against fate for the chance to win anything from a solitary penny to £250,000, with the final amount of prize money not being revealed until the very end of the show. The resulting tension is unbearable, as Edmonds himself testifies.
“It’s incredibly infectious. I played it the other evening with three of my four daughters. We played for real money. Not for £250,000 though; we did scale it down! We’re in France at the moment, so the top prize was 250 euros. And my 15-year-old daughter, Olivia, won it. I must have played the game over 30 or 40 times in the last few weeks, and we’d never got to £250,000; we got to £100,000, but never to a quarter of a million pounds. But she won it. And at the end she said: ‘Dad, I’m absolutely exhausted’. And this is a 15-year-old girl who has so much sparkle it’s not true, and is not the sort of person to admit that she’s found something tiring or stressful. She said ‘I’m drained. This show is going to be a big hit’. It was just as well, because on the current exchange rate I was £170 worse off.”
With a hectic filming schedule underway, he’s had to ‘reorganise things somewhat’ in terms of his myriad businesses and commitments, though his work with the NSPCC, particularly their ‘Caring for Children in Court’ campaign, remains a priority. The aim is to ensure that every one of the 30,000-odd children who have to testify in court, often as victims and in extremely harrowing circumstances, are given professional support. At the moment, just four per cent receive any such support. It is, says Edmonds, a travesty, and one that he hopes to see corrected.
Apart from that, he has just one ambition in the foreseeable future: to make a success of 'Deal or No Deal'. “I have no idea how this is going to go, but I have a sneaking suspicion the format is going to capture the public imagination. It’s a huge challenge, but I’m hopeful that the result will be one of the highlights of my career.”
The chances are he’s right. But if not, it’s just about possible he’ll find something else to keep him busy.
David Jensen Photography:
https://www.davidjensen.co.uk/
