Back in the '90s, there was this show about video games, and it was kind of amazing.
It had reviews of games, obviously, but that wasn't really the point.
You see, this is Patrick Moore, who was Britain's greatest astronomer.
But a certain section of the population are more likely to remember him like this.
Patrick lived in a church at first, then an oil rig, then...
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It's kind of complicated. Basically they used to destroy the set at the end of every series and set it somewhere else. Here are all the intros: you try and make sense of it.
He was ably assisted by this man, Dominik Diamond, a man he only ever met once, on the last day of filming.
Anyway, Patrick Moore was the Gamesmaster. People would flock to him for advice about games they were stuck on.
And he'd hold video game challenges, which people would enter to try to win a GOLDEN JOYSTICK.
Sometimes the participants were celebrities. This was funny because hardly any of them actually liked video games. Here's Andy Cole being very bemused by a football game.
And here's Anita from 2 Unlimited looking really focussed before she beats up her band mate.
And here's Mr Motivator playing some racing bike game.
Here's Ulrika Johnson talking about how she's going to kill this child with a sword.
And here are Shadow and Jet from Gladiators playing the Gladiators game and inadvertently creating the most '90s moment of all time.
With the possible exception of Tony Slattery playing a lightgun game.
Sometimes the challengers were "professional gamers". One was the swaggering "Games Animal" Dave Perry. Here he is failing at Mario 64.
And here he is having a massive tantrum about it live on air.
Basically, this show had all the human drama you could wish for. And if that doesn't convince you that Gamesmaster was brilliant, here's Simon Amstell appearing on it in 1993.
