Stuart Millard
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Night Fever's Millennium Eve Party
🕑 Added 2024-12-03 20:24:37 +0000 UTC
The final few hours of December 31st 1999 was likely television's most consistent night of weirdness, with everyone gone mad at the satisfying rounding of some numbers, and each main channel hurling itself into full celebration. While doom-sayers huddled in their duvet forts from Y2K raining jumbo jets onto their heads, telly was going full Caligula. Perhaps the most fitting; the most real New Year's revelry could be found on Channel 5, where an army of drunks in glittery cowboy hats endured a four hour karaoke marathon. You 'eard – four hours. The total runtime of this rip is 3hrs 51m.
Night Fever was at the heart of Channel 5's early original programming, its first episode airing the very week the transponder got switched on. It's a simple premise, with two teams of celebrities belting out pop standards in a karaoke battle hosted by Suggs off Madness, and the first series wholesale pinched their captains from Robot Wars, with Craig Charles and Phillippa Forrester behind the desks. These two are gone by Millennium Eve, with an era-defining array of revolving famous faces in their stead. In tackling such a mammoth task, we have to do things differently, and the best way to approach this is in a purely linear sense; for you to ingest it just as I had to, so this will be a more freeform, stream of consciousness prose than the tightly-woven Pulitzer-worthy paragraphs you're used to.
It's 9pm, and the tape begins with a continuity announcement for what'll be first on your screens at the dawn of a new thousand years; Emmanuelle – “perhaps the most celebrated erotic film ever made...” Start the millennium as you mean to go on, with a lonely, piteous wank. This is one of those classically late-90s nightmare settings, everyone rowdy and half-cut, cheering and clapping in time to the music, audience segregated like a school disco into girls and guys, in sweaty moshpits of crop tops and enormous dress shirts, gelled hair shining under the lights. Co-presentor Will Mellor's in a vest, big crucifix hanging round his neck; Sarah Cawood with a half-shirt tied around her boobs. Suggs will be holding it all together, thankfully recovered enough from his clinical insanity to be anchoring television.
Suggs has a silent assistant named the Pop Monkey, a little person in a Fez-wearing monkey suit, who cues the songs with a card. Though nobody actually, literally says the words, thus escaping a Trades Description breech, the show's played as a live broadcast, with a countdown clock in the corner telling us how much of the wretched century that gave us Michael Barrymore's My Kind of Music and the wedge haircut remains, But if it's live, how can they trail upcoming guests with clips which haven't happened yet? Did Suggs spend all that Baggy Trousers money building a working Chronovisor? The whole thing was probably filmed next door to the Hootenanny with cast and crew exchanging Easter Eggs between takes.
Song number one is fittingly Robbie Williams' Millennium, sung by Lenny Beige, as a giant caption orders us SING UP AT HOME. I will not. Not even as the lyrics come up onscreen. I once got told off by a clown for not clapping along at the circus, so Suggs has got no chance. The cameras cut to everyone swaying; Tony Blackburn in a sequinned Union Jack vest like Ginger Spice's grandad; Lionel Blair, having a ball. I've compared things to a hen/stag do before, but here it's never been more true. The whole thing's predicated on Girls v. Boys tribalism, and should the two groups get within ten yards of each other, it's going to get unbroadcastable very fast.
Suggs and Pop Monkey step hand-in-hand through dry ice into a time machine, taking us back to pop's glory days of 1959. Suggs dressed like a teddy boy. Audience in Beatle wigs. Blackburn in leather vest and cap like the daddy of a gay biker gang, Rebel Flag patch across the back suggesting his crew are specifically white supremacist. Celebrity figureheads captain the Lads vs. Lasses battle, bellowing scripted panto banter at each other across the studio. “The girls are promising singers,” says Blackburn, “they should promise not to sing any more!” His team consists of Lionel, Barry off EastEnders, Bruce Jones off Corrie, and Pete Conway; saving me a Google by identifying him as Robbie Williams' dad. Opposing them is a team of Nell McAndrew, Heartbeat's Tricia Penrose, impressionist Francine Lewis (a good 14 years before she went on BGT and anyone knew who she was) who's dressed as a playgirl bunny, stand-up Jackie Clune, and “crazy crazy Cleo Rocos.” If anything can drag me through a four-hour runtime, it's the presence of Cleo.
'Elvis' doles out points to the teams for who karaoked Millennium the best, with Blackburn and Blair rushing to assault him after a low score. I'm already getting motion-sick from the constant cuts to audience members losing their damn-fool minds, camera not lingering on anything for more than a second, everyone in off-the-rack-at-Tesco fancy dress. A mere 8 minutes in, I'm confronted with, what Suggs informs us is “the official tribute to the Blues Brothers.” Can you guess what song they're doing? CAN YOU (You! You!)?! If I'd have been watching live on NY Eve, this would've been my Ian Curtis Stroszek moment. Life's hardest dilemma is, given a time machine, a bullet and access to baby Dan Ackroyd, would you rid the world of Everybody Needs Somebody, knowing there'd be no Ghostbusters? Regardless, the crowd go mad, Blair, Blackburn and Barry on the desk can-canning, Robbie's dad (in a 1966 England kit) looking unsteady up there.
Cawood picks blokes out of the crowd to go onstage for Born to be Wild, in the kind of performance you'd let go on behind you while you carried on a conversation in the pub. Here though, front and centre on our fifth terrestrial channel on the biggest night of the last thousand years. One man is deemed the best by Robbie's dad, adorned with a cardboard crown by Pop Monkey. Will Mellor in a mod jacket making moped noises with his mouth pretends to headbutt Cawood, as he is playing 'a cockney'. The pace feels like those Japanese shows Clive James took the piss out of. I feel confused and old. Though I know it didn't, I'm praying Y2K kicks in and puts an end to it, monitors fizzing, Barry off EastEnders flattened to liquid by an Airbus A330. I'd feel sad, but at least this would be over.
Sarah talks to a man dressed as Austin Powers, who insists Tricia Penrose “looks just like a fembot. Do you have machine gun jubblies? Go on, let me see!” Onscreen captions in giant font are overly matey; NICE ONE, PARTY ON, WICKED, GO GO DADDYO. During a deranged Delilah, Lionel, Tony and Barry's faces are contorted in rage; Lionel between Francine Lewis's thighs as though he's being crushed to death. Returning from a break, he's dance-wrestled her onto her back, serenading from side mount. Live in the studio, the Supremes do a turn of Baby Love, one of half a dozen songs on the cassette my childhood neighbours would play relentlessly, inciting flashbacks to the sound of “OLAY, OLAY OLAY OLAY!” coming through the floor in the three years following Italia 90, and of finding a used condom filled with cold spunk in our garden, slung from their bedroom window.
Will Mellor picks some ladies out of the audience to sing, all a bit giddy to be talking to Jambo off Hollyoaks, and Mellor giving it lots of “g'wan, girl!” In archive Night Fever clips, Reg Presley's doing Wild Thing, and sadly not talking about crop circles; Desmond Dekker Israelites, Love Affair Everlasting Love. I say 'do', but they get one verse each at most, the show unable to cling to any scene for longer than thirty seconds, even with four hours to fill, and I'm staring at the countdown like I used to the old classroom clock, trying to Uri Geller the numbers round with my mind. Barry's dressed as a “peace man!” hippie, looking exactly like Sid James at the end of Carry on Camping when they're chasing off The Flowerbuds, and does a raucous I Feel Good. These days, he runs his own, very successful Barry-oke nights.
Daydream Believer has everyone on the desks like Dead Poet's Society, alongside pre-taped footage from a sea of people at a nightclub and church choir joining in to sell that it's live. Marmalade do Ob-La-Di, dangerously clad in kilts on a stage where a camera roves underneath, risking us seeing out the century with a glimpse of 60-year-old knackers. Every time it cuts to Lionel, he's having the time of his life. Lipstick on Your Collar from the girls team doing annoying Grease voices, Blackburn's Boys pointedly turning their backs on them and sat theatrically yawning, before their turn with Great Balls of Fire. CRAZZZY declares an onscreen caption. Do you know how much runtime's left? Three hours, motherfucker.
I wonder who's inside that monkey? I bet it's him off Pigsty. I've looked it up, it's a chap called Kevin Hudson who played WAGBO in all those skits on TV Burp. The Supremes are back for Can't Hurry Love, with onscreen lyrics which aren't in time and have spelling mistakes. We cut back to a man in an Elvis wig as scrolling text informs us 'FILL YOUR GLASSES, S CLUB 7 ARE IN THE BUILDING'. I'll have what he's having! (that Bosnian war criminal who drank poison at his trial) This is the worst thing Bruce Jones has ever been a part of, and I'm including finding the horribly mutilated body of one of Peter Sutcliffe's victims.
We're told Lionel was the first ever person in Britain to do The Twist, as the intro to him performing that very song, with the kind of aggression not usually seen outside of somebody murdering their captor. Alright, I'll twist, I'll twist! Just don't hurt me! No doubt afraid of the consequences should he fail to do so, Blackburn twists so violently, it's like he's trying to start a fire with his legs. The camera visits, in short order, bouncing boobs, a woman holding a chihuahua, a Blues Brother. Lisa Rogers' co-host gobs down himself in a trailer for their C5 movie show.
Finally, a change in time periods, putting us into the 80s. As going for the whole show would result in deaths from exhaustion, there's been substitutions, a new ladies team made up of Josie d'Arby, Lucy Alexander dressed as a gender-swapped Boy George, Bernadette Foley from Brookside, CBBC's Ana Boulter as Madonna, and Sarah Maltravers (who Mellor helpfully informs us is from Mad About Pets) as famously-80's figure Ginger Spice. The fellas are Junior Simpson as a Run DMC style rapper, Neighbours' Philip Martin (Ian Rawlins) as Crocodile Dundee, the bloke who played Bernadette Foley's husband in Brookie as an Oasis, Steve Wilson from grave-era Live and Kicking as Adam Ant, and Paul Hendy as Rod Stewart. Hendy takes the banter too far by immediately announcing Josie's nickname is Radio Luxemburg – “easy to pick up, but you stand a better chance late at night,” which she looks a bit shocked by. Will Mellor is dressed as a cowboy.
Sugg's slip of the tongue “pop monkey, what's tonight's first number” suggests each time period was filmed on a different day, and I cling to the logistics of television production like that kid in IT who recites the names of birds when Pennywise is giving chase. They are pretty laissez-faire with the decades, in the 80's but straight in with Wake Up Boo, which is so inherently 90's, it's basically the soundtrack to Chris Evans shouting “wahey!” as he pushes his flaccid penis into a rolled up FHM while the Tango Man watches. A Michael Jackson impersonator gives out scores, saying nothing but “oww!” (a direct quote from Michael roasting in Hell's cauldron)
S Club are here, all seven of them, still full of youthful exuberance and life, giving the maudlin quality of finding a photo from a family birthday twenty years ago and pointing out the ones who've since died or been really racist on Big Brother. I've just realised Will's not a cowboy, he's Indiana Jones. The neckerchief threw me. He slaps the thigh of a woman in leather trousers – “cracker!” She's a bit tipsy, and he wafts the air to infer she stinks of booze. Will patronisingly tells the ladies they've no excuse, “as this woman, she's 60, and she's been giving it the large ones,” as an intro to Tina Turner. Clips from old episodes show Buster Bloodvessel, and Chaka Demus all by himself. Only joking; of course Pliers is there! Ah, the 90s, when a bra was a top. Mr. Boombastic by famous funny comedian Junior Simpson is captioned GETTIN' JIGGY WID IT. A Britney impersonator gives him 10, then all the celebs are up to do a Vic Reeves style Dizzy. I miss Cleo and Lionel. And the period before I was born when it was just darkness and nothing.
An ad for Blockbuster makes me check the remaining time and realise I could leave to go watch Megalopolis and still be back before Suggs says goodnight. Girls doing Lauper. Boys doing Wham. Beige with a lounge version of Madness. Who'd win if him and Bob Downe had a wrestling match? Is Sarah Cawood dressed as Princess Leia? She pulls out a man with a deflated blow-up saxophone and shoves him onstage with another Boy George (an unenthused bloke called Gary) and a Beastie Boy, and their conversation goes like this:
CAWOOD: Ad-Rock!
BEASTIE BOY (confused, has no idea who Ad-Rock is): Lee.
They do Wonderwall, and I glance away for a moment to hear yer man from Neighbours declare a contestant the winner because “his blow-up saxophone went down, and I'd hate that to happen to my cock.” Furiously running it back, I am distraught to learn I misheard, as he waves around a green inflatable crocodile. But then there's a split second cameo by Scorpio off Gladiators dancing in an archive clip of Alexander O'Neal. Life is balance. Then Cheggers doing the Tragedy dance to Steps. Balance.
Josie gets a solo number, with a surprisingly awful voice, like biting into a beautiful perfect ripe peach to discover someone's done a shit inside. She sits on Brookside Man's lap but quickly jumps off as all you can hear are his loud sex moans of excitement. Rambo gives her full marks, and the studio's women react as if they just won the FA Cup. I'm not even halfway through. Nowhere close. A big group Come On Eileen and I'm sat here counting off the minutes like someone 15 years into a 40 year stretch for stepping on a policeman's foot, Will Mellor shouting over the top “come on, boys, have it large!”
More S Club. For every crowd shot, they've definitely borrowed those special Boob Detector cameras from TFI Friday. SORTED says a caption, as the girls do It's Raining Men. It's really hitting me here the sheer number of songs I never want to hear again, none of which I've ever consciously chosen to sit down and listen to. Culture really grinds everything half decent into the dirt until there's nothing left. There's not a song in this whole show I wouldn't wish death on someone for if they put it on a jukebox. Sick of it. Suggs is bullied into performing It Must Be Love, before a trailer for The Worst Air Crashes of All Time. I wish I was in one, as we return mid-Disco 2000, where nobody knows the words even though they're onscreen. Hope the time machine takes us back to the Dark Ages, before they invented tinsel wigs.
Sadly, it's the 1970s, full of both great music, and songs you've heard a billion fucking times. Guess which ones they'll be doing, to the audience now in giant afros. At least I've finally crossed the half-way point. The teams have changed again. Chegwin, dressed in 70's gear but accidentally looking exactly like Peter Stringfellow. Jonathan Morris off Bread and many Childrens Royals with spiky hair and black lipstick as a punk. Having cut off those beautiful locks and put the eyeliner on, Morris is in his Metallica Load era. Alvin Stardust as... himself? Danny John Jules and Trevor and Simon. Business is picking up! Especially with London's Burning era Heather Peace sending me all faint. With her are Mellor's fellow Hollyoaker Natasha Symms, Charlie Maloney from Play Your Cards Right, Jocelyn Brown, and Australian musical comedy double act Supergirly (ironically, the pairing who filled Trevor and Simon's slot during the dying days of Live and Kicking).
Points are given out by a Queen lookalike, but not Jeanette Charles, recategorising this lady as a Jeanette Charles impersonator. But I said things were picking up; Chas 'n' Dave are in the house! Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit! They missed a huge payday not selling that for an ad with Lovehoney. “With your incessant wanking...” Mellor's also dressed as a punk, with as good an impression of one as Keith Harris – “yeah sorted, wicked, wicked, sorted innit.” Punk twink Jonathan Morris sings Pretty Vacant, which is something I can tick off my bucket list. This is my generation's 'Tom Holland lip synching Umbrella. Morris skips around, shaking his exposed midriff and putting much more vibrato than is necessary into a Pistols song, in a performance so camp, it makes Danny La Rue look like GWAR. Still more punk than Danny Boyle's thing though. An onscreen graphic congratulates with NICE ONE, and he's given 9 by a Benny Hill impersonator, who a still in-character Morris pretends to headbutt before shoving the camera aside.
Save All Your Kisses For Me. I'll put them aside in a jar, Heather. Come round and collect any time. Ad breaks where a first class train ticket is £32, and Julian Clarey's in a shopping centre comparing women's whites for Daz; a spokesmanship I'd completely forgotten. Everyone's doing ABBA, with Cheggers up on the table risking another Davro in the stocks incident. Jonathan Morris is just a nuisance at this point, possessed by the (still living) spirit of Johnny Rotten, arms flailing, yelling in people's faces, heaving Heather up on his shoulder and running her round the set. He'd have been a good The Crow. Tony and Cherie Blair lookalikes enjoyed it anyway, giving out big scores.
Cawood picks out a fellow from the audience with a fake Mod Squad tash who introduces himself as Mick Mucksbridge, his Tiger Feet leaving Cheggers headbanging (and probably making that weird hiccup noise). These archive clips are just a roll-call of celebrities I fancied as a teenager, as after Scorpio there's Davina Taylor from Hollyoaks twirling to Disco Inferno with big Darren Boyd – God, they'd have made beautiful and very tall children. In another clip, Rose Royce performs Car Wash while Rod Hull wraps Emu around Cheggers' leg and tries to wrestle him from atop the desk.
Jocelyn Brown shows everyone how it's done, bringing the house down with a thunderous I Will Survive, but has to stop for a giggle break due to the antics of Jonathan Morris. A Clinton lookalike who can't do an American accent gives her 10. Look out, Morris has got a live mic again, climbing on the girls' desk for Cum on Feel the Noize. Cut to a depressing advert for a chatline, at twenty minutes to midnight Millennium Eve, followed by an ad for Yahoo, presumably to help you find a Geocities site with instructions for the best method to off yourself with the least mess.
Leo Sayer's there to do When I Need You, blissfully unaware in a few short years, he'll become so angry on Big Brother because they won't give him clean underpants, he'll accidentally give a thumbs up to camera instead of a middle finger, and when he finally dies, the outburst will be noted in every single obituary at the expense of albums he spent ages working on. As the girls perform a saucy Lady Marmalade, everyone seems to have forgotten the countdown; just ten minutes of the year remain, some of which will be taken up by Jonathan Morris going berserk again, to Deeper and Down, sweat flying, Danny John Jules leaping from the desk.
The only thing you're waiting for with New Year television is the countdown. To, say, skip that bit and jump straight into next year would be like hearing the words “that was some nice sex we just had, wasn't it?” but the last thing you remember is exiting Paul Blart 2 at the cinema together. 2hrs 54m in, with the NYE countdown clock down to five minutes, the tape suddenly cuts to a studio filled with streamers and the excitement of a fresh millennium, balloons falling from the ceiling, everyone in fancy dress like schoolgirls or Batman or burglars, all cheering and waving. NICE ONE. We've no idea who shared New Year kisses with who. Suggs takes a seat behind his desk, dressed like an old-timey convict.
This final act actually feels live-live; you can't fake excitement like that! Another 'Christ, not this one again' as we kick off with YMCA, and New Year, new teams. Sam 'Linda Lusardi's husband' Kane dressed as Louis XIV, Leo Sayer as a 1920's gangster with little pencil tash, Handy Andy 'no relation to Sam' Kane the builder as a pearly king, Limahl as Limahl, and Steven Houghton from London's Burning dressed like a toy soldier. All the fancy dress outfits remind me of the costume ball in Saved by the Bell, where they couldn't use any trademarked characters, and the only black extras were 'convict' and 'maid'. Though here there's at least a Ghostface and Crow (sadly not Jonathan Morris). And also a couple of Arabs.
Final ladies team is Anna Ryder Richardson, CITV's Danielle Nicholls (best remembered by me for pretending to get off with her own glamour model sister outside a nightclub to get in the papers), Kate Charman from ITV's Record Breakers rip-off Guinness World Records, Esther McVey, former presenter now horrible Tory, who's fittingly dressed as Marie-Antoinette, and friend of the Patreon Michaela Strachan as herself in a lovely dress. Some dancers outfitted as the full Village People run everyone through the world's most tedious party song. Yes, I hate fun, what of it? If I want to “get myself clean” and “have a good meal,” I'll sit in the bath eating pickled onions like Albert Steptoe.
Chic do Le Freak (which is how Yvette would describe Rene Artois in bed), with a distressing cut to the audience where a woman in her forties dressed like a baby is drinking from a baby's bottle. A few minutes later, she's seen behind Suggs sucking a dummy, when he has to shout over the sound of 'merry' ladies yell-singing the theme to Banana Splits. The screen demands GO MAD, LADS, as Sam Kane in his big powdered wig does the world's billionth performance of New York, New York. “If I can make it there (by being married to Linda Lusardi), I'll make it anywhere...” Plus-size Batman high kicks with a pirate, an Anglican priest, and Austin Powers
Mellor's dressed as a cowboy (for real this time), shirtless under a fringed waistcoat, as Danielle Nicholls' (sexy cavewoman) Like a Virgin sees her doing her very best to be raunchy and get that big Gail Porter money as Suggs wipes his brow. Then some Lenny Beige Chumbawumba, with lyrics changed to the more polite “kissing the night away” even though it's past midnight. Cowards! We all urinate! Ads by this time of night are a relentless string of £1 a minute chatlines; “the gay bar is open for business right now!” and Mr. Bean shilling Fujifilm for still cameras, which feel like they must be from day one of the very first millennium instead. What next, an ad for the wheel? In a commercial for the Samaritans, Max off EastEnders is stared at by workmates for sobbing at the office. “Society ridicules a man who shows his emotions. Well it's about time society grew up. A man who cries is still a man.” What if they're crying because it's 2024 and you have to sit through Night Fever's Millennium Eve special?
I've half a mind to call the number when Black Lace show up for Agadoo (miming, which isn't really in the spirit of things), but there's just 35 minutes left. I can do it, especially with Michaela's Stand by Your Man, the man in question almost certainly the Stamp Bug. She ends the song on Mellor's lap, holding the kind of note which wilts flowers and planting one on him. MMMMM, reacts a large, lusty caption. I'm not particularly patriotic, but sometimes one sees an image and knows they would happily die to defend any foul word said against glorious Mother England.
God Save the King! 'Handy' Andy from Changing Rooms' rendition of Tie a Yellow Ribbon is crippled by his need to stick to the character and always do the most Essex voice possible – “rahnd the old oak tree...” Close-up on a Joker as the whole studio breaks into Three Lions. It's mental they didn't do this when Robbie's dad was there in the full kit. Suggs suggests Knowing Me, Knowing You as the next ABBA song. Sam Kane shouts “aha!” and doesn't get much of a laugh. Covers band FABBA do Dancing Queen, their words mocking me, as I now sit three and a half hours in – “having the time of your life...”
“Celebrate good times, come on!” Disconcerting close-up of a man in a quite realistic Queen Amidala costume. Leo Sayer stood stock still on the desk like a Golem. “That's the way, uh huh, uh huh, I like it!” Women in the audience make sex-thrust motions. A dancing man dressed as a vicar waves a bible at the camera. Limahl has a union jack sticking out of his pirate headband, singing at McVey who's probably thinking about how much she loves poverty. Black Lace make everyone do the conga, a terrible risk with all the booze and pent up sexual tension, now men and women are finally allowed to touch. The studio fills with a writhing flesh-snake, hundreds of feet long, Batman and schoolgirls and nuns and nurses and sheiks and policewomen and Handy Andy, all daisy-chaining across the floor
Sure enough, the erotic touch paper has been lit, and there's no turning back. The boys are up on the desk, thrusting away to You Sexy Thing; Esther McVey and all the girls, gyrating as they sing Horny Horny Horny; quite a sight for Really Wild Show viewers. Will peeks up over Michaela's shoulder, devil horns on his head, suggestively waving a little plastic trident. How many children were conceived there that night? Only when they're tracked down and put to an end with The Seven Sacred Daggers of Tel Megiddo will we be safe. But out of nowhere, very suddenly, it's over. Lenny Beige playing us out with Hi Ho Silver Lining. I feel like I ran twenty marathons. Thank Christ this only happens once every thousand years.
Comments
George White
Steve Wilson I am always reminded of because there's an Irish local politician named Cormac Devlin who has the same sorta quasi-Richard McCourt features
Andrea Gaul
I've been hoping you'd cover this one, not because I'm a sadist, well maybe a little but, but because I know I wouldn't be disappointed with your take on it.
