Saturday Night Takeaway 2018

I thought he did brilliantly, especially under the understandably difficult circumstances.

The audience made the difference for me though, you could almost feel the support they were sending Dec's way.

Whatever has happened (and what happens going forward), that's what I'll take away from these final 2 episodes.

I'm amazed by the level of apparent surprise being expressed that Dec on his own was any good.

Yes it's a bit different without Ant, but the guy has nearly 25 years presenting experience under his belt, so I'm really not surprised that he put in a good performance.

Incidentally, I wonder if they continued with Saturday Knight Takeaway in Ant's absence rather then deferring it to the next series because there is a chance of the whole gag it's based on going pear shaped?

There is precedent for honours to be revoked following a conviction. So if - and I stress if - Ant was to be convicted of the offences he is accused of, and assuming ITV felt able to continue to employ him upon completion of his treatment, the underlying plot in those sketches wouldn't work if his OBE was revoked.

There is going to be a whole ten months before the next series returns, it is now like there will be an autumn series. By February 2019, if Ant has completed his treatment and he has avoided a jail sentence, then the programme producers will ensure the next serial will be very different story. The Who Shot Simon Cowell was not continued on, so the honoured will be rested.

Cue Dots are now not the preferred solution for ITV live shows AIUI. Invisidots or similar are preferred IF they survive the contribution chain. It's also acceptable to have Cue Dots on your reserve feed if you can only insert invisidot data on your main feed (i.e. you only have one invisidot chain)

However given that SNT was 59.94i originated and going via a standards converter to 50i, and I'm not sure I'd want to guarantee an invisidot path from a US truck all the way to Red Bee, I can see why in-vision cue dots were used.

It will not be revoked for a drink driving conviction, and ITV have shown nothing other than support for him.

P.S. Dec talked about the last couple of weeks and Ant to the crowd following the broadcast:

Plus ITV has to watch it self.... with its duty of care. Again why would he lose his OBE?

Tell some of the tabloids they're scripted, I saw them getting angry that Dec "attacked Ant" over his time in rehab on last year's series. Despite the fact it was clearly a scripted light hearted gag.

Ah this is nice to see, thanks for sharing.

He probably had to avoid addressing it during broadcast on advice of ITV ect. It's fair, it's an awkward situation where on-show it would invite people to tut and comment that anyone else would be raked over coals ect. Which is part understandable that nobody wants to condone actionsect but at the same time people feel compassion for the situation.

I think assuming Ant gets though this recovery period and properly sticks to it, he'll be okay and they won't lose OBE's. I want him to be okay - I grew up watching SM:TV and SNT. Would love for there to be a happy ending, but aware recovery from addiction is far from easy.

Also the tabloids always exaggerate statements, I can't count the times I've read a headline like "Xyz really popped off today on This Morning!" or "you won't believe what was said on Loose Women" and it's not even serious, just presenters messing about. Even last week they took some of Dec's comments as a dig, when in context it was more a general light commentary of the past few weeks.

Oh Matron...

If we're posting itv credits, I much prefer these...

I prefer the ones from 1999.


Anyways I wonder if In For A Penny will be on the ITV Summer Lineup.

Saturday Knight Takeaway was quite amusing, as was Mulhern on Rip Ride Rockit, the worst part about that ride is the slow vertical lift at the start! I would assume it took several goes round to capture enough footage too!

Why was a big point made about the singalong contestants receiving $705 rather than £500? At first I thought they would then surprise them with...'$705 is on the way...so you can spend it during your trip to Florida courtesy of Virgin Holidays!' It was quite an easy one too considering the press have basically mentioned the song about 100 times in the past week!

I bet the Win The Ads contestant got quite a bit of help from the audience and some fingers!

I didn't really see the point of Craig David, they might as well have used him as the guest announcer too, it was very weird not having the Saturdayyy sting for the advert breaks!