Beadle's About

The story behind Jeremy Beadle's finest prank

The prank to end all pranks began as a bit of office banter. It was early 1996 and Jeremy Beadle was undisputed king of British light entertainment, with his riotous practical joke show Beadle's About regularly attracting 15 million viewers.

My undergarments certainly remained dry throughout the low jinks on this weekend's Beadle's About (ITV). Practical jokes have their place so long as the recipients are deservingly pompous and the perpetrator is disarmingly young but, if he persists for too long at the game, he'll inevitably reach the age when the whole process begins to seem undignified. Jeremy Beadle passed that point long ago, but he's still targeting sitting ducks for victims and playing televisual knock-down ginger in a show so puerile that it's rightly been consigned to a Saturday afternoon children's slot.

Nothing is worse than a joke that's gone on too long and, now that Granada (whose reputation rests on quality popular broadcasting) has taken over LWT, it's high time Beadle was no longer about.

But for really thorough bottom-of-the-barrel-scraping, you need look no further than Beadle's About (LWT, Friday) with its low-budget set, its no-budget titles, and a sig tune so crass that even Chas 'n' Dave would consider it a touch plebeian.

One day somebody is going to drop dead with a heart attack on Beadle's About (LWT) and with any luck it won't be the victim.