Fun House

Image:Funhouse logo.jpg



Linda Lusardi (non-broadcast pilot)

Pat Sharp


Two cheerleading twins called Melanie and Martina Grant

Voiceover: Gary King


Scottish in association with Action Time for ITV, 24 February 1989 to to 29 December 1999 (149 episodes in 11 series)


Gunge = Good?


File:Funhouse gunge.jpgGunge, inevitably

Two teams of two play three gungy games to win points. After each game they are asked a question worth more points. After the third game it's the Fun Kart grand prix, a race around the studio where they can earn lots and lots of bonus points. This section would be good, were it not for the fact that the karts go at around 2mph, seemingly. (Maybe Health and Safety rules were kicking in rather too much even then - mind you, such rules were tightened up in the early 1990s anyway). Also, if there was any way of balancing the distance given that the red kart always had the inside lane all the way round other then a foot-and-a-half disadvantage at the start, we'd love to know what it was. At the end of this round, the losing contestants are eliminated, but they get a consolation prize or two each: these varied through the series, but were usually along the lines of a 'Fun House' backpack, watch and/or items of stationery.

File:Funhouse kartrace.jpgThe infamous kart race

Fun House = Fun?

At this point the winners go into the Funhouse, by far the best bit of the show, where they can win some fabulous prizes, which can include cameras, sports equipment, cinema passes, skateboards and mystery tours, among other things - and the contestants get one each in all cases, rightly so. They have two minutes in order to collect the fifteen prize tags hidden around the various obstacles. Each person can only collect three tags before they have to come out, tag the other player and they do the same. We don't believe that any teams actually managed to get all 15 tags, which would have been pretty nigh-impossible within the time-limits, given that they could only collect 3 tags at a time, not to mention getting past all the obstacles they had to cope with, some of which could slow them down considerably. Still, they nearly always managed to get a decent number of tags, and these quite often included the prizes that the contestants concerned had told Sharp beforehand that they really wanted.

File:Funhouse slide.jpgEverybody likes a slide

One of the prize tags is the Power Prize: the contestants know that they've got it if they hear a 'cock-a-doodle-do' sound. Picking the Power Prize means that Sharp asks the contestants a question which has multiple answers. They have up to 10 seconds to confer and give 3 correct answers, and he can only accept their first answers. If they're correct, they win a distinctly good prize, usually an action holiday, or alternatively something like a video camera or TV and video recorder. If not, at least they still have a goodly number of lesser prizes.



The kiddies confer by nearly headbutting.

Key moments



One jackpot question that seemed quite hard (at least for the contestants' age-group) was, "Name 3 American states beginning with M". Not surprisingly, the contestants did not win the jackpot in this case. Another tricky question asked was, "Apart from the UK, name 3 countries that have a king or a queen" - once again, the contestants concerned were unable to do so. In fairness, though, said jackpot was won on a number of occasions and the balance between those who won and those who didn't was pretty fair - after all, like all other shows, they couldn't very well have contestants win every time, no matter how much we, the viewers, would have loved that to happen.

Sharp would often make quite an entrance, usually on a bike, a scooter, a skateboard or a pair of rollerblades, or seemingly anything else that came to hand (or foot). And, of course, his hairstyle was always eye-catching - in most cases, it was the oh-so-80s mullet.


Pat Sharp: "Here's the Fun House!", "Good luck to all of our players on the Fun House today!", "Re-run the Fun!", "You're going in the Fun House!" and, to the audience, just before the endgame, "Come and join us!"





Theme music

By David Pringle and Bob Heatlie.

It's a real crazy show where anything can go.

The Fun House theme music.




It took 11 minutes for the production team to reset the Fun House for another show. Pretty quick, really, when you think of the considerable mess that the show normally created.


Web links

Wikipedia entry


File:Funhouse patsharp thumbsup.jpgDon't forget to give us the thumbs up.



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