Gunge

Gunge, or slime, as it is known in America, is a thick, gooey, runny substance similar in consistency to paint. It is often seen on game shows and has been a feature on many children’s programmes (especially in the 1980s and 1990s) around the world. In most cases, the gunging occurs in a gunge tank, a transparent booth with a mechanism for storing and releasing the gunge. In addition to being featured on TV, it can also be used as a fundraising tool for charities and various groups, Comic Relief and Children In Need have used gunge for this purpose. In many cases gunge is used as a forfeit, where being gunged not only makes a mess but also causes embarrassment.

History of gunge on TV

Gunge has been around on TV since the 1960's and have been used in fundraising events for a long time. The following sections detail how gunge has been used in decades past and future.

1960s

In Britain the popular BBC show Not Only... But Also featured a closing sketch called "Poet's Corner" in which that week's guest would be challenged to an improvisational poetry contest against Peter Cook, with Dudley Moore acting as referee. Each contestant would sit at the corner of a square tank of "BBC Gunge" on a rigged seat that could be triggered so as to catapult the occupant into the tank. The referee would sit at one of the other corners in a similar chair. Any use of repetition, hesitation or deviation from the challenge theme would precipitate the offender into the tank. The sketch always ended with all three personalities in the tank, chest deep in slime and spouting poetry.

1970s

The UK Saturday morning children's show Tiswas used the concept of gunge in abundance. Having already established messy slapstick humour through custard pies and buckets of water being thrown over presenters and guests, Tiswas had taken to locking up adult volunteers into a cage. Once inside the cage, the inhabitants would normally be soaked with buckets of water at random points in the show. Where gunge became involved, was thanks to the tin bath perched on top the Cage. Through a handle, this tub could be tilted, dropping its messy contents onto the people below, While famous for its custard pie humour, it would not be unusual for Tiswas to have buckets of food and imitation mud/horse manure poured over people. Custard and baked beans were popular choices.

1980s

In North America, You Can't Do That on Television, a Canadian children's show popular on Nickelodeon, routinely subjected its characters to gunge when they said, "I don't know.", or any other phrase related to slime, the colour, or pies. It became a staple of the show where other actors would try and encourage their peers to say a phrase to get them "slimed". This aspect of the cult show later became iconized in Nickelodeon's slime logo, and live events where kids would be offered the chance to get "slimed" or publicly humiliated. There was also a character called "Gunge" on the Jim Henson Puppet show of "Fraggle Rock", a rat that would take care of the All-Knowing Trash heap.

In Britain and Europe, in the early 1980s, children's gunge-based game shows were the norm. Particularly shows like How Dare You! on ITV and Crackerjack on the BBC ensured that the gunging element featured on shows for the decade to come. On How Dare You!, one of the main games was 'Teach Them a Lesson', where children got the opportunity to drench their teacher or representative from their school in gunge whilst sitting above a knee deep filled gunge tank. After this game the teachers were sometimes knocked off their perch by one of show's presenters and into the gunge tank.

Later in the 1980s, the BBC launched Double Dare, based on the US style format, but much sloppier than its US counterpart. Also, gunge started to appear on mainstream shows such as Game for a Laugh on ITV and Noel Edmond's Saturday Roadshow on the BBC. Other countries in Europe also started to have gunge elements on mainstream shows. Un Dos Tres on TVE in Spain often had contestants throwing buckets of gunge at each other. Also, Donnerlippchen, a TV show in Germany, had many messy games; the climax of the show was dunking the team's suited boss in a dunk tank and pouring custard down inside every team members pair of boxer shorts.

New Zealand children's show What Now has used gunge over the years since its launch in 1981. As of 2009 the show is still broadcasting on channel TV2. Various segments of the show using gunge include, tank of terror, gunge on the run, flushed away, frog in the bog and brain freeze.

1990s

In Noel's House Party, the public often voted to determine which celebrities on the TV show would be gunged in the Gunge Tank. In later years, the Gunge Tank became the Gunge Train, and celebrities were forced to take a ride on the train and were covered in gunge throughout their journey. Celebrities usually returned with their suits ruined and faces unrecognizable. Sometimes audience members were gunged on the show for reasons of revenge by family members or friends.

The entertainment factor attached to the process of gunging was realised by the producers of the charity event Comic Relief, who held an event, in cooperation with the Guinness World Records at the National Exhibition Centre, Birmingham where an attempt to set a record for the Most People Gunged Simultaneously took place on March 12, 1999. 184 gallons of gunge was splattered over 731 people. All across Europe TV producers were ordering more gunge segments to be fitted into mainstream TV shows due to its popularity with viewers. In Germany, on SAT1, Halli galli [1], Glücksritter (RTL)[2], Glücksspirale [3], plus the German version of NHP - Gottschalk's Haus-Party, all involved a high dose of gunge. Halli Galli had audience members plucked out of their seats and sent down a messy gunge slide and into a pool. Likewise, Glücksspirale and Glücksritter had contestents plucked out of the audience and gunged in the most spectacular ways. Towards the end of the 1990s, with the demise of Noel's House Party and the dwindling audience figures for other European shows, the gunge segment in many mainstream shows started to fade.

Throughout the 1990s, gunge became a focal feature in many children's TV shows. Teenagers and celebrity guests are often seen competing in quizzes on Live & Kicking, and are gunged if they lose. Pop stars Lee Ryan, Ben Adams, Katy Hill, Lesley Waters, Katherine Merry, Heather Suttie and Victoria Hawkins were gunged on this show. Many other shows used gunge throughout - Fun House, Get Your Own Back, Run the Risk and Double Dare.

2000s

In 2000 a children's game show called Insides Out featured gunge throughout the programme, most notably a tug of war involving intestine-like ropes over a pit of gunge, and the final game, which consisted of an inflatable assault course representing the digestive system, during which gunge would drop at unexpected points whilst the contestants were going back and forth to pick up body pieces. The most regularly watched show containing a gunging was the Saturday Show, in which a child and an adult, normally Simon Grant, would compete. If the grownup lost they got gunged and they would remain in the gunge tank the following week, whilst the child took home prizes, however if the child lost they got gunged instead and took home with them a certificate stating "I Got GUNGED On The Saturday Show".

Other kids' programmes such as Xchange, Best of Friends and Diggin it also featured gunge or messy activities from time to time. Dick and Dom in the Bungalow and Holly & Stephen's Saturday Showdown (previously Ministry of Mayhem) featured messy segments throughout the programmes, but more recently Toonattik featured a gunge quiz known as "make em squirm". In 2006, S4C introduced a kids' show called Waaa!!! where kids are sat on a chair that moved along rails over tanks of gunge and foam and failing to answer a question correctly resulted in then being dropped into the gunge or foam. In 2007 there was a programme on CITV called Scratch and Sniffs den of doom featuring gunge, where children fall in to a vat of gunge similar to the Gunk Dunk on Get Your Own Back. Gunged has also appeared on Prank Patrol and Globo Loco. Throughout the second season of the CBBC show Hider in the House, in order to claim prizes, the adult who had been tricked in that episode must have gunge dumped on them. This was known as Push the Pedal.

The 2008 remake of Swap Shop (Basil's Swap Shop) features gungey games. "Question Line", a game where children ask the celebrity guest questions and if the celebrity chooses to answer it the child doesn't get gunged. If however, the celebrity chooses not to answer the question the child asking the question slides in to the gunge tank (a pool of gunge similar to the one on Waaa!!!). The children move as they are sitting in or lying across a rubber ring on a ramp with their legs hanging out on the "gungeulator" a red and white travelator. If the child does slide into the gunge tank then they have to move over and sit in the gunge tank until the game is over. Another game called Dunk Beds, is where there are 3 teams of 2 children, 1 is on a bed attached to a platform and the other child is off the bed. The child off the bed pushes the bed off along the platform , where along the platform are scoring zones. Up to a point, the points are negative then past a certain point, the points become positive until finally off the scale. If the bed goes off the scale the child on the end of the bed slides into a tank of green coloured water. 0 points are awarded if the child gets dunked. Each child from each team is on the bed once during the duration of the game. In the final Game, the final two children, left over from the previous game, play on a moving platform called the gungeulator collecting objects, avoiding obstacles, to get them back to the start of the "gungeulator". If a child falls then he or she is automatically gunged and the child that is left continues the game. However if the child left wins then prizes are awarded to both the children but if both children are gunged the game is over and no prized are awarded. Whilst playing these games the children are barefoot except the final game where the children are dressed in fat suits wearing trainers on a moving platform. These gungey games meant the return of gunge to Saturday morning children's TV in the UK. In the second series, broadcast early 2009, The "question line" and "gungeulator" segments no longer featured. The "Gunge Gallery" along with a tweaked "dunk beds" featured instead. The "Gunge Gallery" is five gunge tanks in a row in which children(members of a karate club, football team etc) sit in and after a swap has been completed a child is gunged. The gunge used was either very watered-down gunge or custard.

New Zealand children's show 'What Now has retained a gunging element over the years. Modern day games involving gunge involves "Flushed Away" and "brain freeze" where two children sit barefoot under a giant gunged filled brain and every time a child gets a question wrong they are gunged. Recently there has been "Frog In The Bog" where a child wearing a wetsuit and flippers enters a pool of gunge with a frog spewing out gunge in to the pool. whilst in the pool the child has to collect items in the pool whilst being timed and deposit them into a nearby bucket. The idea is to collect as many items as possible before the time is up. "Brain Freeze" succeeded "Frog in the Bog" where two children sit under a giant brain and are paired up with a caller answering questions - for each wrong answer a child under the brain is gunged. The children are barefoot when sitting under the brain.

The end of August 2009 saw a new guney gameshow on CBBC on BBC One. Wait for it..! sees four children trying to avoid being dropped in to the goo portal - a large orange pool of gunge. The idea is similar to ITV's Scratch and Sniffs Den of Doom. The twist is that the longer the children take to answer the questions, the more points are awarded. The person with the least number of points in the first round, “wait” is dropped from a “dropzone” into the goo portal. The second round, “watch and wait” sees the children the player is given a category and the player has to estimate many seconds of clue is needed to be said to be able to answer. Again, the more time, the more points will be won. If the player loses, another player can win the points if they can work out the answer with more of the clue being said. Another player falls into the goo portal via their dropzone if they have the least points. The third round, “wait and see” a head to head round an the player has to guess when the oppolment will come in with their answer. The player has a selection of times to choose from and a point is rewarded is the oppolment answers within the predicted time. Again the player with the least points enters the goo portal via their dropzone. The final round, “wait a minute” sees the remaining contestant try to win prizes on offer by trying to cross the goo portal in less than a minute. The player is asked questions which are descriptions of an object and for each correct answer the player is able to step across smaller dropzones. If the player makes it to the end within the 60 seconds – he/she wins the prizes (a star prize is awarded if the player crosses within 40 seconds) – if not the player falls into the goo portal when the platform which the player is standing on collapses. The first three rounds the player falls into the goo portal wearing socks - except for the final game, and for extra grip whilst the player is leaping between dropzones – the player is barefoot.

In Autumn 2009, three new CBBC shows called Planet Ajay, Keep Your Enimies Close and School of Silence launched with gungey segments.

2010's

See also

• Slime
• Saliromania
• Wet and messy fetishism