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They don’t make kids TV liked they used to, just ask Dick and Dom.
Landing the coveted BBC Saturday morning slot in the early noughties with Dick and Dom in da Bungalow was a dream come true for the dynamic duo, aka Richard McCourt and Dominic Wood.
The show enjoyed a successful run over five series from 2002 to 2006, bringing anarchy and shrieks of “bogies!” to the streets of the UK.
While children idolised them, not everyone was as enamoured with clips recently resurfacing on TikTok featuring a number of disgruntled parents writing in to Points of View to lambast the show as “unspeakably awful” to a bemused-seeming Terry Wogan.
“The main thing we take from [In da Bungalow] was that it was there was always laughter,” Wood, 46, told the Standard.
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“Whether it was us, the production team, the crew, the kids, you know, everyone was laughing constantly for three hours which is what we wanted to achieve from it and luckily now, we hear from fans who are like 25 plus and they say all we did was laugh so we had the whole country laughing which is an amazing thing to remember.”
Another thing they can’t escape is the echo of “bogies, bogies, bogies” wherever they go, thanks to the pair’s game of shouting the word louder and louder in a public setting.
“You get it every day pretty much,” Wood laughs.
“You’re just in the supermarket minding your own business just about to buy some butter or something and someone shouts it in your ear and it actually shocks you because you kind of have to go ‘oh, yes, that!’ That game of course.’ And every time someone says it, you have to say that was the best and loudest you’d ever heard.”
Agreeing, McCourt, 47, adds: “In this day and age and the present time we’re living in, I think to have people still having good fun is a great thing, it is a force for good in that respect.”
Nostalgia certainly seems to bring people a lot of happiness and in addition to incorporating it into a segment called Memory Unlocked on their weekend Virgin Radio show, they have teamed up with the Crystal Maze LIVE Experience in London for a series of 90s-inspired events over the summer.
Speaking about their involvement, McCourt said: “Nostalgia is so big at the moment and Crystal Maze is something we used to watch when we were younger all the time, you know, Richard O’Brien.
“It was just a great programme, wasn’t it, a great game show that brings back so many great memories so when they got in touch we were like ‘oh yeah, fancy doing that!’ And when we went to do it, it was crazy because it was literally exactly the same as the TV show. All of the zones you remember, all of the games you remember and even the host felt like one of the presenters off the Crystal Maze, so it was great fun.”
Other TV icons of the decade getting involved in the fun include Denise Van Outen, original Gladiators Jet and Hunter, plus, chaos magnet Mr Blobby.“Bring back Mr Blobby we say, there’s nothing funnier really than watching a man in a big pink suit throwing himself around,” laughs McCourt.
“They showed us a door which apparently he broke in the Crystal Maze. They’ve repaired it now, but apparently he walked full-on into a door and knocked it off the hinges.”
Mr Blobby was even a guest on an episode of da Bungalow back in the day.
“I remember we used to have a lift at the back of the bungalow and he kind of as he did in true Blobby style, pushed his way through the lift doors and literally jumped on everyone, it was hilarious,” Wood recalled.
“The good thing about the suit of Mr Blobby is that it’s very padded and soft it’s quite bouncy so it doesn’t actually hurt when he jumps on you even though people might think it does. He was the best, just brilliant.”
