‘Fun House’ host Pat Sharp doesn’t think its enduring success can ever be replicated again.
The 58-year-old star hosted the popular ITV children’s television classic from 1989 to 1999, and over two decades after the show was last on screen, people still have fond memories of gathering round to watch it.
He exclusively told BANG Showbiz: "I get people who say to me – big lorry drivers, 25 stone blokes come up to me, and say ‘You made my childhood!’ And I go, ‘Well, that’s just as well considering the size of you!’
"But that’s such a nice thing to hear. I don’t think anybody who is now 11 or 12 years old watching the massive amounts of kids TV they can watch on YouTube, or any of the TV channels or whatever, are ever going to remember those shows in 20 or 30 years time!
"These people have remembered ‘Fun House’, so I’m quite lucky to have come from that generation because it’s never going to happen again!"
The whole television industry has changed almost unrecognisably from the days of ‘Fun House’ being on air, with streaming platforms and catch-up TV meaning there isn’t always the same buzz with everyone tuning in at the same time.
Pat explained: "There’s no watercooler moments anymore, so the next day people don’t stand around the watercooler going, ‘Wow, did you see that?’
"People have hundreds have channels to choose from – when ‘Fun House’ started there was only four.
"There was a certain amount of children’s TV, and if you got home on a Friday afternoon by five to five, chuck your bag down, you couldn’t look at your mobile phone, you couldn’t check Facebook, you couldn’t do any of these things.
"You just put the telly on and that was what you had."
For the DJ, the era of ‘appointment viewing’ is a big reason such shows are still remembered decades later.
He said: "That’s why today, the cult status of something like that – from being around at the time is was around – means that everyone of a certain generation remembers me and it because it was from their childhood."
Pat Sharp doesn’t think kids shows have lasting popularity
