How Nuts TV got started
Nuts TV and ‘Nuts’ magazine
Marsh: It was actually a loose link to the magazine. Lots of shows were very much guerrilla, coming off the back of things like TFI Friday and it had many of the same production team. I think they had ambitions to be more highbrow than the magazine. Tim Verrinder (series director): We were interested in the entertainment and music side, having fun. There were certain boxes that we had to tick editorially to not ostracise the Nuts readers – but we were trying to get in a whole new audience because obviously the magazine alienated half the population as it was just aimed at blokes.
The explosive launch of Nuts TV
Yapp: I said at 9PM on launch day, 300,000 young men are going to be sat in their living rooms with their trousers around their ankles thinking, ‘This is going to be the best night of television I've ever seen’ and they're not going to get what they were expecting because we didn't have any nudity. I thought, ‘God, we're gonna have to be so funny we laugh their trousers back on.’ This is the greatest entertainment challenge of all time.Bhatti: I remember Gareth [one of the bosses] getting on a rodeo and making us have a go. He was saying that we're going to get this blonde and brunette on here and get everyone to wager who would last longer with little bars on the screen moving about. We were coming up with ideas to see if they'd work and cover a couple of minutes.Rehearsals begin tomorrow, proper rehearsals of the whole four-hour long live show. Gareth [Collett, Director of Programmes for ETV] was showing some Turner [the TV conglomerate that launched Nuts TV] bosses around, men in suits. As Gareth talked earnestly about cost effectiveness and audience reach, they walked past a gigantic bucking bronco and the studio editor in his suite, cutting together footage of cars covered in baked beans. And then the disabled toilet door swung open and out came a man in a gorilla suit.
The most chaotic moments of Nuts TV
Borg: I presented with Lucy Pinder. We did a couple of shows with her. I remember her telling me just before we went live once that her hero was Margaret Thatcher. Then it was like, you’re live: “Welcome to Nuts TV!”Tim Verrinder: There was Bathe Your Banger, where you'd have the Nuts Girls ending up pouring baked beans over a car if you got a question wrong. it was that sort of manic after the pub entertainment show: music, cars, comedy, guests, chat, you name it.Davies: OJ ended up partying with Tarantino at the Mandarin Hotel.
Limited budgets and unlimited hours
Looking back at toxic ‘Nuts’ attitudes
Watson: It's probably the only job I've ever had, where I didn't feel incredibly uncomfortable because someone was perving. They were all amazing people. I don't think I had an issue with anyone, the only problem I personally had was other models getting jealous because I had a friendship with some of the people – I was a bridesmaid four years ago for one of the cameramen. It was one of the best jobs I've ever done.
From backstage to the green room
Rotten reviews for Nuts TV
What happened to Nuts TV? The beginning of the end
Marsh: Nuts TV had started off with about 20 people in a production meeting with everyone throwing ideas around. Within six weeks it was seven people and then four and then before you know it, you see certain parts of the scripts have been copied and pasted from the last week.Davies: I think it hit its peak around that sort of November, December, coming out Christmas. Everyone could tell it was starting to get worse. There was that general feeling that the novelty had worn off and we were running on fumes – what little fumes that were, anyway. It was meant to be tongue in cheek but there was a feedback loop of irony. There was a smugness about it, leaning into the fact that it was low rent, but it’s a joke that wears thin. I'd now describe it as pub fun – if you were round a table with your mates over four pints it would be funny at the moment – but not something you'd want to commit to videotape or indeed broadcast it.One segment that had grown in prominence in the last few weeks of 2007 had been the Secret Diary of a Nuts Girl. It was a little five minute package that followed a young model around a typical day, going to the gym, doing a little shopping and then going and taking their clothes off for money. We didn't show any nudity and it was all harmless fun…. In January this metamorphosized into Confessions of a Nuts Girl, when one of the Producer Directors would go to a photoshoot for the magazine and film a five minute interview with them talking about how they once had sex in a skip or whatever.
In mid January, I became dimly aware of a bit of a commotion at the end of the office nearest the greenroom studio. We were told we couldn't go down the corridor for a bit. Floor managers took guard at the doorway.
I went past and saw drapes being taken down in the green room along with a white background. What were they filming in there? I asked Francis, the floor manager. Oh, Confession of a Nuts Girl, said Francis. What? Yeah, that's why it had to be a closed set. What, you mean as in taking their clothes off? Yeah.
Line crossed, game over, moral bankruptcy. It felt really weird, sinister. Everyone was carrying on as normal, but it just felt weird. It was as if you knew an animal had died in that room. It had that kind of horrible miasma of post-wrongness to it, like the crowd filing out of the bullfight stadium.
In the office, whatever laddish jokes were cracked, however ludicrous the lines may have been, the intention was now there, and they [the CEOs] had the power. And they were starting to use it. It was time to go.
The demise of Nuts TV
Tim Verrinder: I was over in LA, not quite at a pool with a cocktail in my hand, but that sort of thing. I got a phone call from the head honchos saying it had been pulled and it was a bit of a shock.Watson: I remember the absolute last shot – we were all sitting on the big round sofa watching the memories on the screen – then it spins round to us and we're sitting there crying and I'm waving at the screen. We wrote on every single wall that was in there and I smashed Jake's face into a chocolate cake. Davies: The biggest irony is… they had the wrap leaving party on one of those moored boats on the Thames. It felt like the ship was finally sinking. I remember everyone getting absolutely [trashed]... It was debauched. It felt like the big release of everything, so many people being sick and passing out, it felt like an exorcism. Watson: One of the bosses was really drunk on the last night and said we should definitely stay in touch and if you come down I'll give you that big pink mirror from the Blonde Vs. Brunette corner. I made my mum drive all the way there – I didn't remind him or anything – I just turned up and got it and put it in my car. I only got rid of it about three years ago.@kylemacneillWe were told there would be an important meeting that evening and attendance was compulsory. Such were the variety of theories that I decided to become a bookie, taking bets from people on what the meeting was announcing: “Fanny on air: 3-1…Pay Rises for all: 600-1”. [The director of TV] – a burly guy who always looked like he'd come from a good lunch or a fight or both – had become prone to a little habitual sequence of nervous mannerisms every time he came into the office. He would come in with his motorbike helmet, run a hand through his hair, adjust his belt, adjust his balls, look at me and say “fuck”.
After doing the belts-balls-fuck he said he was so sorry and that Turner have rejected our proposals [to save the platform]. I made about seven quid on the sweepstake. No one was particularly devastated. "We had something special," he said. I wanted to laugh out loud that his stupid shit tits-but-no-tits TV channel had been put out of the nation's misery and he's actually upset.
“I know each and every one of you worked as hard as you could to make this the excellent show it is, but here's the thing, we want to go out with a bang so keep up that high standard to the end," his voice cracked. "It was a hell of a run." He walked out and brushed a tear from his eye. We looked at each other and shrugged.