RODDY PIPER ON PAUL O'GRADY SHOW REPORT by Ian Hamilton @ 1:20:00 PM on 4/22/2005
Roddy Piper on ITV1's "The Paul O'Grady Show" Friday April 22
Roddy Piper appeared on ITV's "Paul O'Grady Show" on Friday evening to promote the new Celebrity Wrestling series, which starts this weekend in the UK. Piper had been promoted for the show earlier in the week, but wasn't included in the title sequence for the show. About five minutes in, when Paul O'Grady ran through tonight's guests, Piper did get a name-check - and was labelled a "wrestling legend".
Actor Nigel Havers was brought on first (and to keep us all interested, I won't run through what happened here), while an on-screen graphic promoted "coming up: Kate Thornton and Rowdy Roddy".
Piper, and Celebrity Wrestling co-host Kate Thornton, came onto the show just after 5.30pm. Piper was introduced as a 'wrestling hall-of-famer", and tried sweet-talking O'Grady with some really bad chat-up lines.
O'Grady confessed that he was a wrestling fan, before asking what the show was about. Piper put over that it was made by UK people, and involved UK celebrities - and shilled the show as "the greatest show you'll ever see" and "the greatest wrestling show in the entire world". Thornton explained the format a bit more, explaining that all 12 celebrities had "over the top" characters and costumes.
O'Grady brought back his memories of Saturday afternoon wrestling on ITV (the World of Sport stuff that's showing on The Wrestling Channel now), before Thornton plugged D'Lo Brown and Joe Legend as the trainers.
They then aired a clip of the show, with Thornton and Piper introducing the show, and a portion of the "Sumo Slam" game. From the clip, it looks a LOT like the old Gladiators/American Gladiators show, with the wrestling merely a sideshow.
O'Grady asked if anyone was injured - and Thornton admitted that they'd lost count of the number of trips to hospital they'd made with injuries, saying that the women seemed to get injured more from the catfights.
O'Grady mentioned that wrestlers trash-talk before the bouts. That led to him and Bert (the show's producer) trading insults, with Piper feeding lines to O'Grady.
Afterwards, O'Grady asked about the origins of the "Rowdy" Roddy Piper name, and he came up with the story of wrestling his first match for $25, as he was played into the ring by a pipe band.
Going back to the trash-talking, Thornton brought up a story of how she had to be seen to by doctors after D'Lo Brown and Joe Legend went too far in their trash-talking, before she ended up getting caught in it all, resulting in some back spasms for the host of the show.
O'Grady wrapped up their segment after ten minutes, but the pair stayed on a few more minutes, helping out in the "Guess The Tune" game (with O'Grady miming along to some famous tune being played badly on a church-organ-like instrument).
All in all, Piper came across well on the show (even if he did look drunk/over-enthusiastic), and the host had done his homework on wrestling and the show as well.
- Celebrity Wrestling airs on ITV1 in the UK on Saturday April 23 at 6.30pm. A separate show, also called also called Celebrity Wrestling, will air on ITV2 at the end of the main programme. It's hosted by Jack Osbourne (Ozzy's son) and children's TV presenter Holly Willoughby. The "extra" show lasts for an hour every week, and will be giving a "behind the scenes" look into the programme.
-- "Buster: No mother, I can blow myself. You've interfered for the last time." - Buster Bluth
