Children In Need 2004

Following 2003's revival of the programme, 2004 saw a fully-crewed, multi-set and most importantly fully-planned programme, produced by Dave Baker and Jen Ayerst. it was hosted by Pete Nichols and Sarah Richards, who had impressed with a stint on the show the previous year and also The Music Show.

There were three sets - the main links set, a MasterMind set and a "pie" set.

Features

There were a number of elements to the programme:

• MasterMind - another faithful YSTV ripoff of an existing programme! In this Kat Sutton hosted as around a dozen different YSTV members were quizzed on their chosen specialist subject. Particularly notable were the spot-on answers Richard Ash gave to some very difficult technical questions and Jonathan Bufton's knowledge of crap 90s pop music. The set was simply black drapes to make it look like the real show, although YSTV has quite a history of using black drapes anyway...

• YSTV Week Extra - an x-rated version of the usual show, with double entendres and the like. Presented by Kat Sutton and Sarah Leese and recorded straight after a regular edition one Thursday night.

• In Bed With Jen - a number of interviews were recorded with Jen Ayerst presenting from her "boudoir" - actually a lot of pink smoke, a duvet and the giant purple curtain as a backdrop! She interviewed James Alexander, then SU President, Owen Murphy, then URY Station Manager, and Rowan de Pomerai, YSTV's Station Director, who was wearing a towel for some reason.

• Bucket-shaking - as with 2003 crew members were sent out onto campus with cameras to collect money, although this year a competitive element was added as two teams were sent out at the same time. There was a plan to have live links ups with the crews as they collected but this never materialised due to technical problems. Rob Humphrey did spent an evening on the balcony of Central Hall trying to get it working though!

• Custard pieing - the shaving foam was back, and the loser of the MasterMind quiz (Rowan de Pomerai after displaying shockingly little knowledge of the society he was in charge of) was put up against each person who had taken part in the quiz to answer a question on their specialist subject. If he got it right, they were pied, if not, he got the cream. As you can probably guess Rowan ended up very messy. The pie set was just some old YSTV set boards that we could get messy - I think these dated back to Sound Space in the late 90s!

Success

Despite some difficulties directing so many elements in such a small space, the programme was a success and a broadly similar format was followed in 2005. Following the broadcast most of the crew and presenters went to Vanbrugh's Children In Need night, hosted by RAG.

The success of the Master Mind segment led briefly to an idea called "FasterMinds" being planned as a spin-off programme, where contestants would attend lectures of a different subject to the one they studied, and then be quizzed in the usual Master Mind fashion. However as with many new programme ideas this was never made.