They didn't actually quit SMTV until after Slap Bang, as I recall?
Yeah, that's right, as mentioned they took six weeks off to do Slap Bang. They left in December, I think a week before Pop Idol started doing its live shows.
One thing I always liked about SM:TV is you can tell many of the guests were there simply because they wanted to be there. As opposed to most Saturday morning shows when they were only really there to plug something, and quite often acted like they didn't want to be there. On SM:TV they were there to have a good time and often didn't even have anything to plug.
I remember when they won the viewer vote in the British Comedy Awards in 2000 - which was big news in itself given that it was up against a load of adult shows and the vote itself was after the watershed - in their speech Ant asked everyone in the audience to come on it. They used to have quite a lot of regulars when it was in its pomp, the hundredth show in July 2000, which was the show of the height of its brilliance, had a massive guest list, virtually everyone who'd ever been on it, just to appear in Chums.
There have been other examples of Saturday morning shows seeing people show up just because they were passing. There were a couple of occasions when French and Saunders were on Going Live when they hadn't been booked, they happened to be in TV Centre that day and they were mates with Saz so popped in and got on air. There's also clips on YouTube of Paul McCartney and Jeremy Beadle (another friend of Saz, I think) phoning up *, which illustrates further the wide appeal of that show, everyone watched it. Saz used to say a lot of people used to go on because their kids told them, I know Saz said her favourite bit ever was watching Sting looking really worried backstage and going through his lines because he didn't want to mess up going on with Trevor and Simon.
And of course Tiswas used to have people turning up through mates, Bob Carolgees first came to the studio after Frank Carson invited him on and Tarrant spotted him and put him on the telly, and on Swap Shop you'd have regulars like BA Robertson and Barry Took. I like this family feeling on telly. In fact there's a great line in one of the Swap Shop books, as in the intro they say that the book makes up for them not being able to invite us all to come to the show, because "our studio is tiny, and there's no room for all our friends". I love the way they refer to the viewers as their friends. I think that's the secret of a successful show.
* This is the clip where they say Beadle has phoned up, which is a great clip because the interview with Chris Rea is very entertaining, there's a great bit of silliness from Trevor and Simon and I love the way the show ends. The same day they launched the BBC1 globe, you'll note.
