What is this Mess?

Fiona Corke & Peter Vroom on Motormouth



A star-filled, Pantomime-themed quiz section of the -I think- second series of ITV's Saturday morning "Motormouth". Here we see Andy Crane, sneakily jumping ship from the BBC Broom Cupboard to CITV, dressed as a pirate, talking to Yvette Fielding, no it's not, it's Fiona Corke (you may know her as Gail Robinson, nee Lewis, main squeeze of Paul Robinson at the time, from Australian soap "Neighbours"). So Corke and "Home and Away" actor Peter Vroom (played Lance Smart) against Frank "That's a cracker!" Carson and yes it's a man in drag impersonating Margaret Thatcher, how distinctly accurate. That man was Steve Nallon, who voiced the Maggie Thatcher puppet in the adult political satire "Spitting Image" in it's 80s heyday. Gameshow "God" and "Krypton Factor" presenter Gordon Burns asking the questions. A quite anarchaic, good-humoured mallett-chugging quiz ensues between the main presenters of the show. The celebrities hit the presenter on the head with a mallett if they get the questions wrong, it seems. A little under-utilised on the celebrities behalf, and done much better by Timmy Mallett...Bleurgh.

The main presenters of the show we see participating are Gaby Roslin, who would go onto greater fame presenting with Chris Evans on Channel 4's "Big Breakfast", Steve Johnson and Neil Buchanan, who in the same year of 1989 piloted a little-known show called "Art Attack".

"Motormouth" was a successful ITV Saturday morning show which ran for 4 series, between 1988-1992. The show took it's name from the motorised large mouth, which featured on the set. Coming after the axed "No.73", it ran on a schedule from Autumn to Spring. It wasn't as set-in-the-stone as the BBC's "Going Live!" was in terms of format, as it evolved and improved in later series. It had however, a great set of American-made cartoons, the ones that bribe your parents to buy the toys, like "The Real Ghostbusters", "She-Ra: Princess of Power", 60s favourite "Scooby Doo" and the Japanese parody of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles "Samurai Pizza Cats".