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Forgotten Childhood – The Crystal Maze

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Who didn’t love this theme song I ask you! The Crystal Maze was a big deal in my house growing  up so the opportunity to take a trip down memory lane was something I just couldn’t pass up!
What is it?
Long before  Big Brother and the “I’m a Celebrity get me out of the X-factor on Britain’s got Talent” there was The Crystal Maze.
The Crystal Maze was a British TV game show, produced by Chatsworth Television and shown on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom between 1990 and 1995. Originally meant to be the British version of the French program Fort Boyard , British producer Malcolm Heyworth decided to reinvent the show due to a lack of actual forts in the middle of the sea.
The concept was simple, presenter Richard O’Brian (Riff-Raff himself of Rocky Horror Picture Show) would guide a bunch of unpromising business-types dressed like Power Ranger rejects through a series of zones in their delightful jump suits!
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Each zone represented a theme and while these changed over time such memorable themes included Aztez, Futuristic, Industril and Medieval. In each zone there were any number of games challenging mental ability, special skills, physical ability or lateral thinking. Each game was timed very carefully and if you didn’t get out you didn’t get out – and as a kid I honestly thought they never got out – well unless you had a crystal. And crystals were the name of the game!
Each crystal caught (shiny paperweights that we all really wanted) bought the team 5 seconds of time in the Crystal Dome. Once in the Dome, contestants would do all they could to grab sheets of aluminum foil as they blew everywhere. If you were lucky to grab more gold foil or rather spray-painted silver then you be rewarded with hot air balloon trips and more!
Why watch it?
I urge you to check out clips on YouTube for many reasons! While the show may seem cheap and dated you can’t get enough of zany and elegant O’Brien with his running commentary, elaborate dress sense, Mumsie and harmonica. And while Ed Tudor-Pole isn’t without his charm there’s nothing like Frank-N-Furter’s number 2.
O’Brien represented the real appeal of the show, watching people fall and be ridiculed. I mean U3??? Really?

U3 dude, U3!!!

O’Brian voiced all our thoughts and led the way with passive aggressive wit and sarcasm as each business type fell at the most simplest of tasks! Families and teammates shouted down the screen as Bob or Susan from accounts couldn’t figure out that there were holes in a bucket or that in order to solve the puzzle all they needed to do was walk around the table and look and the tiles again! Who can forget or wants to forget the persistent shouting and cries of “what do I have to do?” while families sussed out immediately what needed to be done.

And as if O’Brien could sense our thoughts while the second hand ghostbusters hyperventilated, O’Brien would take a break to go through the fourth wall and invite us into his thoughts.

Although he would occasionally lose demeanor:

It was truly the presenting skills of Richard O’Brien that made The Crystal Maze what it was. He knew viewers weren’t altogether interested in who was victorious so much as who lost in the most hilarious, ridiculous way. He played to that convincingly, making us believe we were all n on the joke, except for those competitors. Those poor, poor competitors who would compete their hearts out for our enjoyment and celebrate at the end. And we’d celebrate with them for their title of ‘not the silliest family of the week’.
And so we take our hats off and salute Mr O’Brien and his harmonica playing witty time warping mastery of captivation and thank him for years of service and sarcasm. We thank the contestants who gave us all a bit of hope for our own mental aptitude and we thank Ed Tudor-Pole who provided us with two more seasons, albeit not as memorable but he had tough shoes to fill.
crystal-richard

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