Crackerjack is back!
It’s Friday... It’s five to five. ..and it’s...
FRIDAY teatime will be a feast of fun again as classic kids’ TV series Crackerjack returns to our screens.
The revamped 10-episode run of the madcap show, which originally ran from 1955 to 1984 on the BBC, will be fronted by Sam Nixon and Mark Rhodes.
They pick up 35 years after final host Stu Francis last delivered his “I could crush a grape!” catchphrase.
The pair are already well-known to CBBC viewers, having fronted Sam and Mark’s Big Friday Wind-up since 2011 and, before that, TMi from 2006.
BBC kids’ boss Cheryl Taylor said a new version of Crackerjack, for CBBC and iPlayer, was the “perfect vehicle” for Sam and Mark, adding it would “usher in a new era of frenetic family fun and whizzbang audience antics”.
Of the original 451 episodes, 303 are missing. But former viewers will remember how the live series, which was filmed in front of a studio audience, ushered in the weekend with the words: “It’s Friday, it’s five to five, it’s Crackerjack.”
Before Francis fronted from 1980 to 1984, the series was hosted by Ed “Stewpot” Stewart
TAKING HELM Sam and Mark will be new hosts (1975-79), Michael Aspel (1968-74), Leslie Crowther (1964-68) and Eamonn Andrews (1955-64). In the 70s, Stewpot was joined for part of the show by Bernie Clifton and his ostrich, while comedy duo The Krankies became regular performers alongside Francis in the 80s. The new version will get a Friday teatime slot when it starts next year. And while it will be made more interactive, it will retain favourite games including Double or Drop, in which kids from the audience take part in a quiz – winning prizes for correct answers and cabbages for wrong ones.
The winner got to pick a prize while the loser got a Crackerjack pencil. The pencil became so popular, a pair were given to the Queen in 1961 for children Charles and Anne.
Crackerjack was axed in 1984 amid an overhaul of children’s programming.
Stu Francis launched Crush a Grape on ITV in 1987 but it ran for only two series.
Meanwhile, BBC bosses are also reviving 90s children’s drama The Demon Headmaster – making him the “super-head” of an academy who controls his pupils using hypnotism.