Noel's House Party - Regular Features - The Gunge Tank

The Gunge Tank

Carried over from Noel's Saturday Roadshow, this was put to various uses, usually gunging celebrities or unpopular members of the public after a phone vote which was carried out during the duration of the show - the gunging usually being the final item before the closing credits. Celebrities include Anthea Turner, Jenny Hull, Carol Vorderman, Edwina Currie, Gloria Hunniford, Jeremy Clarkson, Samantha Janus, Anneka Rice (twice), Annabel Giles and Ulrika Jonsson.

The 'gunge' was in fact a food thickening agent called Natrasol, coloured with various food dyes. The gunge tank got progressively more sophisticated in subsequent series - the Series 1 version of the gunge tank was effectively the same as in Saturday Roadshow. However for Series 2, the tank also pumped foam from underneath the chair before the gunge was released. For Series 3, the chair holding the victim was on a conveyor device which would take the victim through revolving car wash brushes before the actual gunging. In Series 4 & 5, it was developed into the "Trip Around The Great House", where the victim would be placed on a miniature railway that journeyed through the studio set, finishing up in the Giant Fireplace where the gunge would finally be released.

For the final series, a selected member of the audience would be gunged by a tank lowered from the studio rafters or a retracting chair which would lower into the undercroft of the studio, gunge the victim and then elevate back up into the audience position. Edmonds was himself usually gunged once a series - usually in the final episode of the series.