What we don’t want is a second-rate Bungalow rip-off, especially as you can see that kind of thing on ITV1. Dick and Dom had something special about them and it’s going to be hard to replicate that. What I’d like to see is something of a return to the “classic” Saturday morning format a la Swap Shop or Going Live. I’d like to see a heavyweight programme where Huw Edwards can be interviewed in a jumper, because I think every generation of kids deserves the chance to take part in something like that.

It doesn’t have to be a Saturday version of Blue Peter, there’s plenty of scope for fun and silliness in it, but it would be good, I think, to return to the format that served the BBC well for two decades or so. It only fell out of favour because the final series of Live and Kicking were poorly executed and the hosts didn’t work out. Well done, I think the kids would really take to it.

But no doubt we’ll end up with Barney and Jake in The Maisonette or something. And I’ll start getting up later.

Watching a much-loved television programme slowly go off the boil, slipping further into irrelevance with each passing week, is not just a singularly depressing experience. It’s also a hell of an exhausting one.

The amount of energy it takes to repeatedly tune in out of the belief things will improve, the quantity of emotion you invest in willing a revival of fortunes – these are considerable sums, upon which you rarely get any kind of return. Then there’s the number of hours from your life you’ll never get back.

Thankfully, where Dick and Dom in Da Bungalow is concerned, all such tribulations have been avoided. No, in this instance the much-loved programme in question turned turkey just like that. On the precise moment it returned for its present (and final) series, in fact. Having concluded business in blistering fashion last spring with Dick giving birth, live on air, to a dozen or so Muck Muck babies, the show took a long summer break only to resume in September a fading wisp of its former wholesome self.

Admittedly notice had been served that changes were afoot, principally the participation of a “celebrity” Bungalowhead in a programme that had been conceived – and always prided itself – as being a star-free zone. At the time no real reason was given for this decision; indeed no reason has ever been given for such a drastic inversion of the winning format. Still, at least the advance warning meant there was time to steel yourself for the sight of a decidedly new model Bungalow. What there wasn’t time to prepare for were all the other changes which only manifested themselves as the first show of the new series unfolded. And which, sadly, have continued to manifest themselves ever since.

All of the above would undoubtedly amount to far less had this writer not, 12 months ago, hailed Da Bungalow as “the best children’s show of all time.” Quite. But at the time it was, and the significance of such an unqualified declaration inevitably colours every sentence of this review. There’s no reason to deny otherwise. The closer you allow yourself to get tied up in something, the more friction there is when you want to move apart.

At the same time, it’s worth considering one of those television truisms that passes unchallenged through history but rarely seems to hit home. And that is, revamping a long-running programme only works if done with confidence and panache, and if the point of the overhaul is immediately and overwhelmingly obvious to the viewer.

While it still possesses a kind of panache, Da Bungalow is certainly no longer as confident as it once was. Moreover, the point of the overhaul wasn’t obvious then and it still isn’t now, other than to boil all it down solely to someone somewhere suddenly saying “get celebrities onto that show”. Which, given it didn’t need celebrities and never has done, was misguided in the extreme.

A number of factors came into play that first weekend of the new series. Jettisoning the show’s second hour on Sundays didn’t bode well, especially as that edition had always been more freewheeling and deserving of 120 minutes than its Saturday counterpart. As it’s turned out the Sunday show remains the stronger of the two, but more thanks to the inferior quality of Saturday’s efforts than any of its own wildly demented if strictly pre-recorded endeavours.

As for Saturday itself, it was really a case of change for change’s sake. The all-out free-for-all Muck Muck fight at the end was replaced with an unnecessarily fussy gameshow pastiche as if it had been decreed that “winning” Da Bungalow required some empirical evidence of competition rather than an amusingly arbitrary amount of slop. Given all the kids now had to do was commit themselves in the last 10 minutes, this virtually rendered redundant the need for anyone to gain points throughout the programme. Hence the basic structure of the whole thing building to a climax, went to pot.

On top of this came one too many games that were just that bit too disorganised and self-indulgent; the wrong characters given too much airtime (the Prize Idiot) while the right ones were reduced to cameos (the Cat); and less time given over to idle bantering with viewers via phone-in competitions.

The main bugbear, though, remains the involvement of celebrities, and not just because precious few of them have been any good. Having them present has reduced the Bungalowheads to mere supporting players behind the hosts and the guest. It’s limited the amount of interaction they get with Dick and Dom, and hence limited the amount we get to learn about them. Meanwhile Dick and Dom perhaps inevitably spend most of their time concentrating on doing business with the celebrity, thereby further overshadowing the kids. No wonder it takes so long on (the celebrity-free) Sunday to get things going and settle back into the old formula of the two hosts as irascible big brothers to their cheeky younger siblings.

Frankly, this litany of complaints hasn’t rendered Da Bungalow entirely unwatchable, though on a few occasions the mere introduction of the special guest (Paul Danan, Tony Christie) has prompted at least one viewer to switch off. Then again, if the show was entirely unwatchable at least we’d be spared the effort of sitting through it every weekend waiting for the flashes of inspiration and genius which assuredly do turn up. Eventually.

Above all, back before the days when celebrities were involved, it didn’t matter so much if a Bungalowhead played up or wouldn’t co-operate or didn’t “get it”, because Dom (invariably) could shout them down, tell them off and make a virtue out of reasserting his authority. But neither he nor Dick can treat disobliging personalities the same way, so when one of them turns up that’s more or less it for the entire show. A write-off.

None of this probably counts much to people who’ve only just started tuning in. Indeed, it probably counts for even less now Da Bungalow is on BBC2 on Saturdays, where it will stay until the end of its life, unlikely to attract any new viewers or garner any more troublesome headlines. It’s the latter that probably means most to the present CBBC mafia. “Next week we’re on BBC3, then BBC4, then probably all the way to BBC10, then that’s it, finished,” cracked Dom on this morning’s show. “We’re not bitter!”

This time last year OTT speculated that Dick and Dom’s profile “could very easily now go one of two ways: either flourish into that of multi-talented entertainment personalities or evolve into that of two tiresomely ubiquitous celebrities.” In fact neither has happened, the failure of Ask the Family effectively removing any fear of “handing the pair a joyless omnipresence” but also conspiring to reveal them as just as fallible as the next kids presenters trying their luck at mainstream telly.

Come Easter they, and Da Bungalow, will be gone forever, and this writer will probably be missing them terribly. For now though, it’s hard not to conclude the series is ending at the right time. Just not in the right way.

It’s only a trial, only for three months (presumably until Da Bungalow finishes), and will probably do the ratings no harm at all. Indeed, it’d make perfect sense, if there were going to be more of those “events” to which the article refers demanding airtime on BBC1 on Saturdays. But there aren’t likely to be any between now and Easter, which kind of renders the experiment self-defeating. Why not try it during the summer when, as the article points out, the World Cup will be on?

A viewer gets to ring in and sneeze over the presenters; projectile liquid snot is subsequently expelled repeatedly around the studio. Another has to estimate which of two bewigged pensioners will cough their toupee onto the floor first. Later, in the “All-Electric Granny Snog Quiz”, motorized crones terrorise kids with the threat of a lipstick-engorged smacker. All the while a hirsute Geordie detective threatens to coat someone in garlic mayonnaise, in a running joke lost on anyone who hasn’t been watching since September.

Although it was all on tape, Dick and Dom in Da Bungalow soldiered on right through the festive holiday, even appearing on 25 December itself. There was no obvious reason why the show shouldn’t have taken a break. After all, most long-running schedule fixtures hibernate for a week or two over Christmas and nobody thinks anything of it. The fact it didn’t, and we got service as usual regardless of the season, says a lot about why the programme remains as good as it’s ever been, and is still one of the best things on TV.

The core reason why Da Bungalow works, as both a shamelessly exhilarating and insolent kids show and addictive entertainment for those of somewhat older age, is the fact that everybody on it is having the time of their life. This has always been the case, right from when it began on the CBBC channel back in 2002. The palpable enthusiasm its two hosts have for putting themselves through invariably physical, usually messy and always demented escapades twice a week for six months a time is as much in evidence on screen here in 2005 as it was three years ago.

It’s clear why they, and the production team, are willing to pre-record enough shows to maintain normal transmission during Christmas, and it makes for one of the most wonderful things to watch: a group of people struggling to contain themselves at the sheer pleasure of being back on TV again, even though it’s only been a week since their last appearance. A group who positively relish rather than regret the need to make a show for Christmas Day, and one for Boxing Day, and one for New Year’s Day, and so on. A bunch of folk who all feel the same way about their work, and who demonstrate, most pertinently by the way they giggle and corpse and shriek at the drop of a hat, it’s one of the best jobs in the world.

There hasn’t been this kind of ludicrously high turnover of ace ideas and unforgettable features on TV since the early days of The Big Breakfast, a programme that started showing its age and running out of steam after only 18 months. Sure, The Big Breakfast was on every weekday, but Da Bungalow‘s undoubtedly already been through just as many items and gimmicks and then some. It even, bravely, continues to discard features before they threaten to become too familiar or predictable. “Bogies”, for instance, Da Bungalow‘s most well-known ingredient, is now being rested, a mere week after it received its biggest plug yet as one of C4′s Top 100 TV Treats of 2004. Its replacement, the equally fantastic “Eeny Meeny Mackeracka Paridominacka Shickappa Dickywhopper Rom Pom Stick”, in turn served an apprenticeship on the CBBC-only Sunday edition of Da Bungalow. There are also numerous strands and gags confined solely to CBBC which make that version of the show largely impenetrable (but fascinatingly so) to those who only ever watch on BBC1.

And so it goes on, with old favourites like the “Bungalow World Record Attempt” dusted down for a revival after a year’s absence, while much of what made the programme so unmissable from the outset – “Make Dick Sick”, “Little Bob Peep”, “Tricky Training” – hasn’t been glimpsed for ages, and quite possibly will never return. All this endless change and upheaval could threaten the show’s quality and turn it into a shoddy patchwork of mismatched items, but that’s avoided thanks to the consistency of originality that’s always behind whatever games and bits of business take place. This first programme of 2005 saw several new features such as the typically-convoluted “Grasping Rasping Wrinklies” and “Wiggy Coffin Dodgers”, all of which fitted seamlessly into the parade of usual characters and chicanery. Meanwhile the traditional closing fusillade of mess, “Creamy Muck Muck”, continued its recent run of spoofing other contemporary BBC efforts, in this case The World’s Strongest Man.

What distinguishes a truly classic edition of Da Bungalow from a merely great one has always been the behaviour of the Bungalowheads, the six children invited to “spend the weekend” in the eponymous residence, whose occasional apathy can drive both Dick and Dom into a spitting rage (fine viewing) but who can also from time to time attempt to upstage the hosts and petulantly run amok (woeful viewing). There’s little worse than having to watch kids throwing a strop in Da Bungalow (why did they want to take part in the first place?), and fortunately it hasn’t happened very often, although this particular show suffered slightly from simply not giving the Bungalowheads that much to do. They were spectators for much of the time, and although what they were watching was assuredly first class – Dom’s persecution with garlic mayonnaise, the next door neighbour’s cat’s video diary of a trip to Uckfield, Dick attempting to eat lemons – their protracted standing about began to call attention to itself towards the end, thereby distracting everything from the business in hand. Thankfully, though, this is usually the exception rather than the rule, the Bungalowheads often manufacturing the funniest bits of the whole programme (“That’s its booby!”)

Overall, despite Da Bungalow itself showing precious little concern in its ever increasing outside interest and criticism, you get the sense that by contrast 2005 is going to be a pretty decisive year for its hosts. Richard McCourt and Dominic Wood have worked in children’s television for almost 10 years, and its admirable that they’ve yet to turn their friendship into an Ant and Dec-esque commodity parcelled out to the highest bidder. But while up till the autumn of last year they hadn’t garnered that much attention or publicity, the last few months saw their names turning up more and more in the press, two BAFTA awards, and then the plug from Channel 4.

You feel their profile could very easily now go one of two ways: either flourish into that of multi-talented entertainment personalities (aided via their planned revival of Ask the Family, or a rumoured spin-off for Comic Relief), or evolve into that of two tiresomely ubiquitous celebrities. Past evidence suggests it should be the former (a TV apprenticeship of a decade is about as good a grounding you can get), and that Da Bungalow should still be here in 12 months. You can’t bank on the turn of events, though, and there’s always the outside danger of over-exposure accidentally handing the pair a joyless omnipresence.

If it is too soon to name the best programme of 2005, then, let’s settle for Dick and Dom in Da Bungalow as the best children’s show of all time.

In April 1999, Zoë Ball and Jamie Theakston left Live & Kicking, and since then the BBC have resolutely failed to find a winning format for a timeslot they used to dominate. First there was the ill-advised promotion of the unknowns Emma Ledden and Steve Wilson, who withered in the face of a rampant ITV. Then there was the useless team headed by Katy Hill who attempted to simply duplicate SM:TV Live, but without any of the wit and charm. 12 months later, Dani Behr and Joe Mace aimed at the older audience, but failed to convince. Hence they were swiftly replaced by Fearne Cotton and Simon Grant, a more likeable and professional pair than in previous years, with a better show, but it was still hardly the ratings behemoth it once was.

This all means that September 2003 is the fifth consecutive September to see a relaunch of the BBC’s Saturday morning output. Yet the new programme is rather different to its immediate predecessors – or indeed virtually every programme that’s ever been shown between 9am and lunchtime. No more do we get pop bands showing up, or the cast of the latest CBBC sitcom promoting their show. There’s also no sofas, no studio audience, and no female presenter looking forward to their first FHM photoshoot.

At first glance, Dick and Dom in Da Bungalow is simply a pile of cartoons with some cheap gunge-related games to pad them out and allow it to be counted as original programming. In lesser hands, that may well have been the case. But those of us who saw the show on it’s original home of the CBBC channel know that there’s something more to it. It relies almost entirely on the personalities of the hosts, Richard McCourt and Dominic Wood, and their relationship with the kids in the studio, the viewers at home, and each other.

The “concept” of the show – if it has anything as complex as that – is that each week six kids get to spend the weekend in the titular bungalow, and play games with Dick and Dom that earn them points (which Dick and Dom happily dish out and remove at their discretion) which, at the end of the weekend – there’s another programme on Sundays on the CBBC channel alone – will see some of them win prizes ranging from a TV to, this week, some wheeltrims off a Nissan Bluebird. The whole appeal for the kids in the studio is that it’s akin to a sleepover with two big kids in charge.

Most of the games are cheap and cheerful fun – take the latest addition, where two vases are smeared in dog food, and the winner is the kid who convinces “their” puppy to lick the most off. OK, it’s not very cerebral, but it’s undoubtedly amusing. The high point is “Creamy Muck Muck”, played at the end of the show, where the kids are split into two teams and attempt to, simply, cover each other in gunge – with Dick and Dom often getting more involved than the kids themselves. Compared to some of the games on Live & Kicking and The Saturday Show, which often had more complicated rules than Real Tennis, this is just arsing about, and is all the more fun for it.

It doesn’t even matter if the games don’t really work. Take the new game where the kids had to pick as much lice as they could off a tramp – it wasn’t until the game was over that Dick and Dom realised that all of them had collected dozens, and it’d take ages to count them all up. Even then it managed to end with a tie, until an improvising Dick announced that “First to slap Dom around the chops is the winner!” – something that was clearly news to Dom. Another new game, where two of the bungalow-heads were challenged to stick sweets on their faces, was also less than successful, but Dick simply threw a load of sweets around the bungalow instead. Another great moment was when neither Dick nor Dom could remember the new phone number, so Dom launched himself into the prize basket for the hell of it.

The kids all play their part in the show, as they’re always encouraged to talk back to Dick and Dom, and they all clearly have great fun while they’re there. But Dick and Dom are of course the real stars, and their rapport with each other is a treat to see. One new slot is presented by Dom as Little Bob Peep, a bearded milkmaid from Yorkshire, for no real purpose. What really made the item so funny, as well as Dom’s fantastic accent, was the fact that Dick was in absolute hysterics alongside him. You get the feeling that Dick and Dom both love doing the programme – refreshing compared to many of their predecessors in this slot, who often appeared to be simply pitching for a better job on adult TV.

If anything illustrates the greatness of the programme, it’s “Bogies”, a feature that was one of the high points of the original series. Like the rest of the show, there seems little to it – Dick and Dom go to a public place and take it in turns to say “bogies” with increasing volume, before one of them bottles out or can’t go any louder. What’s great about it is that the pair both squirm with embarrassment throughout, and it’s accompanied by a fantastic droll commentary (from the show’s producer, former CITV voice artist Steve Ryde). It’s perhaps not a million miles away from the sort of thing you might see on The People’s Book of Records or other adult comedy shows – but it’s rarely done with this sort of panache.

As you may be able to tell, Dick and Dom in Da Bungalow is not the most cerebral or improving of programmes. However, it is simply very funny, putting many adult programmes to shame with the level of wit and imagination put into it. For a number of years now, Saturday mornings on BBC1 has seen rather lazy by-the-numbers series, simply attempting to ape the ITV opposition. This is something completely different, and indeed it’s perhaps the first show of its kind that doesn’t have the shadow of Swap Shop hanging over it.

Best of all, it’s an unashamed children’s programme. It’s not pretending to be anything like adult TV, and the presenters are not trying to come across like Jonathan Ross. Ironically, it’s the fact that it’s just knockabout fun that will probably help it appeal to a much wider audience than most other programmes in this slot. It’s perhaps a message for everyone working in children’s TV – there’s no need to try and engineer “watercooler moments”, or hype up expensive cartoons, just get some witty, appealing presenters and the rest will take care of itself.

And I guarantee the nation will be playing Bogies before the year is out.