Word, The

1 9 9 0 – 1 9 9 5 (UK)
107 x 60 minute episodes

An edgy, youth-driven Channel 4 show, The Word encompassed live music, chat and all sorts of bizarre features.

The main presenter, Terry Christian, floundered around spewing verbal diarrhoea in grating Mancunian tones while staring gormlessly at the camera and stumbling and stuttering through link after fluffed link.

Some entertaining and shocking things occurred – as might be expected from a late-night live TV show targeted at people arriving home from the pub – such as the lead singer of L7 flashing her triangle at the close of their performance.

But the worst of the lot was reserved for ‘The Hopefuls’, a segment in which people would do anything to get on TV – such as eating lard or drinking their own urine. This led to one particularly horrendous snippet of televisual history in which a young guy French-kissed an old granny.

Other presenters included Mark Lamarr, Katie Puckrik and Amanda De Cadenet (the female equivalent of Terry Christian, with a slightly less annoying accent).

New faces were brought in – such as Dani Behr who replaced Amanda as the tottering totty – but The Word accelerated rapidly downhill. The main claim to fame of the show was providing the first-ever TV exposure for Oasis.

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