''Get Your Own Back'' was a British

children's television Children's television series (or children's television shows) are television programs designed for children, normally scheduled for broadcast during the morning and afternoon when children are awake. They can sometimes run during the early evenin ...

game show A game show is a genre of broadcast viewing entertainment (radio, television, internet, stage or other) where contestants compete for a reward. These programs can either be participatory or demonstrative and are typically directed by a host, ...

created by Brian Marshall. Each episode staged a contest between teams of children – attempting to score as many points as possible – and their respective adults – attempting to make tasks as difficult as possible for their child contestants – playing a variety of games. The winning child earns a right to get revenge on the adult by ejecting them into a tank of gunge; adult contestants in the show are somewhat embarrassing, for a variety of reasons, to their child counterparts. Airing on

BBC One BBC One is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's flagship network and is known for broadcasting mainstream programming, which includes BBC News television bulletins, ...

's children's television block, it ran from 26 September 1991 to 1 January 2004, and was hosted by

Dave Benson Phillips Dave Benson Phillips (born 3 February 1965) is a British entertainer, comic, children's television presenter and wrestler, best known for his work presenting ''Playhouse Disney'' (1998–2006) and '' The Fun Song Factory'' (1994–1999). He ...

. Lisa Brockwell also presented the final three series of the show alongside Phillips, and Peter Simon served the role of voice over in 1995.

Format

The show consisted of two teams (the first series had three), each comprising one child contestant and a parent/relative/older sibling/teacher/celebrity (aged 16 to around 70) who in the child's eyes had committed some sort of crime that they wanted to seek revenge for. These 'crimes' were usually trivial, such as singing badly or asking the child to tidy their room. Dave and the audience always showed bias against the adults by

booing Booing is an act of publicly showing displeasure for someone or something, such as an entertainer or an athlete, by loudly yelling "Boo!" and sustaining the "oo" sound by holding it out. People may also make hand signs such as the thumbs down sig ...

them as much as possible.

Main Game

Throughout the show, the teams must compete in several games, with the adults trying to hinder their child to score while wearing inflatable or otherwise comical costumes. A list of games include: *Poke 'em Out - Both team members stand on a stool, the child wearing a knight armor with a spear and the adult a dragon costume covered in balloons. The object of the game is for the child to pop as many balloons as possible with the spear, with the one on the tail being worth more than the ones on the body. *Royal Flush - On an inflatable castle, the parents are on top, sitting on thrones and having gunge ready. On the signal, the childs must bring six nuggets down into a tub. Managing to collect all six nuggets within the alloted time will result in the adult being gunged, in addition to their throne deflating.

Final Round: The Gunk Dunk

Throughout every series the final round was called the "Gunk Dunk", where the losing adult was always thrown into a pool of colourful, messy gunge. A later series introduced a 'forfeit' whereby the losing child had to place their favourite toy in an incinerator; although the toy was not actually destroyed, the concept was later dropped.

Series 1

Both the parent and the child sit above a pool of gunge. The parent has to answer five question correctly within 45 seconds, but they are not allowed to give answers beginning with a specific letter. Failing to do this will result in them getting dropped into the pool, but if they do succeed, their child will get dropped in instead.

Transmissions

References

External links

*
''Get Your Own Back''
at BFI *{{UKGameshow, Get_Your_Own_Back 1991 British television series debuts 2004 British television series endings 1990s British children's television series 2000s British children's television series BBC children's television shows British children's game shows 1990s British game shows 2000s British game shows English-language television shows Television series about children Television series featuring gunge