Enjoy!

Ryan: How did you start your career?

Pat: Through the help of my agent, I landed a slot on BBC Radio one at the age of twenty. That being said, it only lasted a week. Following that, I moved to work at Radio Luxembourg, which at the time, had a national broadcast to the UK. Once again, it was short - only two weeks. I moved onto a full time slot at Radio one for a year, 6-9 am on Sundays. Then I moved over to 'onTV', on the Sky Channel (although not the sky people know now) to do a pop music show for a few years.

After working for a while on local stations in the London area, I got my big break getting a slot in 1987 at Capital Radio of London. I ended up staying there for 10 years and now, as of 1997, I work at Heart 106.2 FM in London, and really enjoy the music that I play.

Ryan: The job on Fun House - how did that come about?

Pat: I was approached by the production company and landed the job.

Ryan: How did the taping for the show work out?

Pat: When we first started in 1988, we only taped one show a day. I understand that the US version did more than this; however we were using a smaller studio. Later on we moved to a 7 day shooting schedule: 2 shows a day for one week. This would give us our necessary 14 shows a season. We would tape one show in the morning and one show in the afternoon. It should be noted that it was a nice job to have as it only took one week a year to complete!

Ryan: Did you work on the show in any hands on capacity for the show (ie. creating stunts)?

Pat: No, I was just hired to do the presenting. Although when necessary I did help to clean up the mess that was made. The Scottish cleaning ladies didn't like us very much!

Ryan: Any bloopers you would like to share, whether they were aired or not?

Pat: Many! I remember one time that I had waved the flag to end the go-kart race and I was knocked down by one player. Also, we would have several children crying due to fatigue after the games were over.

Ryan: And I would imagine that there were some children that would have cried due to the fact that they didn't win?

Pat: Unfortunately the answer is yes! I would also have to re-edit some dialogue at certain points.

Ryan: Was any merchandise produced?

Pat: None at all. We had no merchandise, as that was the wishes of the production company. And some nice offers were made, but nothing worked out! In addition, we didn't do any publicity tours.

Ryan: Why do you think the program was cancelled?

Pat: I think that is due to the last year of the program being made we were constantly having sporadic air times as the Rugby World Cup was being played. Mind you, we had a nice run: twelve years we were screened Friday at 4:45 pm on ITV, and we were number one during that time.

Ryan: I'm guessing that a lot of the viewers are now college-aged. True?

Pat: Yes, for sure. I do regular gigs at universities around the area, and next year I am planning to do a mobile dance show and we will be doing Fun House type stunts. In addition, I think the twins maybe coming along...

Ryan: Do you do regular DJ work outside of Heart?

Pat: I have gigs twice a week in London. In addition, I have a production company and spend a lot of time working in that respect.

In talking to Pat, I also found out that there was an adult pilot made for Fun House. He told me that the host was a "page three sun girl" and the cheerleaders were replaced by two male bodybuilders. He said that it wasn't that good and as a result wasn't picked up.

I was also curious to know about "Banzai", which is a bizarre Japanese-style betting show that has become a hit on Channel 4 and its cable cousin, E4. Pat appeared during the first season, seeing whether he could hold his breath longer than a genuine German. Seriously!

"They called me up one day, and awhile later went and filmed it at a pool in the Lodon area. I got a nice sum of money to do it, and I then didn't think much about it. It aired first on E4, and then Channel four, and suddenly people are coming up to me and talking about it. And yes, I genuinely lost to a genuine German!"

I wish to at this point thank Pat for the time he spent with me. It was quite fun and I hope that everyone enjoys the first (of which I hope will be many) interviews with the cast and crew of "Fun House"!

NOTE: There exists a clip of the adult FH program that was seen during a program relating to the production of pilots that has previously aired on BBC, I'm told. If anyone has a copy of this, please contact me by email at fhfactory (at) lycos (dot) com.