Bob Shields: Ant and Diddie's Saturday fright.

Byline: Bob Shields

AFTER a summer of sun-tanned slappers on Celebrity Love Island and throbbing wine bottles on Big Brother, I pledged I would stick pins in my nipples before watching another bout of egomaniacs and halfwits making diddies of themselves.

So I flicked the telly on at random on Saturday night and caught the first in a new series of Generation X.

Hold my T-shirt and pass the pins, please.

I'd forgotten that this show raises egomaniacs and halfwits making diddies of themselves to a level you couldn't reach in the Empire State Building's elevator.

I haven't cringed behind the couch at this hour on a Saturday since Dr Who saved the world from robots armed with sink plungers.

Can TV really get any worse, I asked myself.

Yesterday I got my answer. Yes, it certainly can.

ITV revealed their plans for our winter schedules include remakes of Bullseye, The Price is Right and Sale of the Century. They call them "classic game shows". And they'll be fronted by those cheeky chaps, Ant and Dec.

I call it a load of old cobblers. And if Ant and Dec had any sense they wouldn't touch this with a barge pole that had Simon Cowell on the end of it.

Bullseye, if my memory serves me correctly, was born on the back of the boom in televised darts.

It was hosted by Jim Bowen, chosen because he made a living out of going to places where people played darts - and making them laugh.

Leslie Crowther hosted The Price is Right. He invited you to "come on down" and guess how much you'd pay for that three-piece leather suite you saw in Arnott's window.

And then there was Sale of the Century, where a smarmy Nicholas Parsons asked a host of scantily clad tottie to open fridge doors or the boot of a car.

Classic game shows? Well, they were good for their time. But it seems to have escaped ITV that time has moved on. It will be interesting to see what they'll offer as prizes, because a hostess trolley that keeps your plates warm isn't going to cut it any more.

This is the age of the pounds 77 million lotto win. People can retire to Spain if a correctly numbered ping-pong ball pops up at the bingo hall.

If the local Scouts haven't a new car as first prize in their Christmas raffle, then someone needs their woggle chugged. Even GMTV hand out a daily ten grand just for lifting the phone and telling them that Sangria comes from Spain.

Just ask Bruce Forsyth how far a cuddly toy and a canteen of cutlery eventually took him.

And even Who Wants To Be A Millionaire is starting to creak.

None of these "classic shows" employed the cash-generating tactic of the "phone-in". You didn't have to dial a pounds 1.50-a-minute number 20 times for Leslie Crowther to say: "Come on down!"

And unless ITV want us to spend Saturday night throwing more dough at our mobiles than we do already, I can't see how it's going to work.

Most disappointing of all is that the collective brains of the ITN can't come up with anything better.

Shoving "hot" presenters Ant and Dec in front of stale game show formats isn't what is required.

There's a bright new idea out there somewhere.

Someone's going to come up with a Saturday night show so exciting that people won't call that taxi to the pub until it has finished.

Remember those days? I do too. Just stick a pin in my nipple when they're backb.shields@ dailyrecord.co.uk CHEEKYAnt and Dec