When it first returned to our screens, people said Gladiators was a tired format. They had clearly forgotten the joy of watching half-clad hulks with silly names go to battle, says superfan Helen Pidd as she heads backstage
W
hen Gladiators is filming at the Sheffield Arena, it feels as if everyone is in on the joke. The woman in the ticket office looks at me gravely. “Before I give you these,” she says, “I need to ask a question. These are very good tickets. You’re in the camera block, near the red contestant’s friends and family. So there’s something I need to know. If the camera is on you, are you going to duck and hide and get all embarrassed? Or are you going to go absolutely flipping mental?”
I’ve been up until the early hours painting portraits of my favourite Gladiators with the precise hope of making it on to the telly. Of course I’m going to go absolutely flipping mental! I’ve been waiting for this day since 1992.
That was when Gladiators muscled its way into the Saturday night viewing schedule of every kid in Britain, a copy of an American gameshow that pitted superhuman bodybuilders with silly names against fitness enthusiasts with ordinary jobs. You’d have Saracen using a pugil stick to batter Colin, a painter and decorator from Runcorn; or Lightning chasing Suzie, a dinner lady from Woking, up a climbing wall. It was an immediate playground sensation, spawning catchphrases that are etched indelibly on the memory of every 90s kid. Shout, “Contenders, ready!” in a Scottish accent to any of my contemporaries and they will reply, “Gladiators, ready!” quicker than they can remember their own children’s birthdays.
