Make-do mercenaries, the A-Team, have once again gone underground following their calamitous appearance on a special edition of the BBC’s dinner-from-a-bag show Ready Steady Cook.
‘On paper, it seemed like a great idea.’ lamented Linda Clifford, the show’s executive producer. ‘I knew they were big in the States and they came highly recommended by the makers of Scrapheap Challenge.’ she added.
‘I should have known something was up there and then really, as our two shows have never got on. They’re always sending us dirty exhausts and such in the post, you know; junk mail. ‘But we couldn’t turn down a potential scoop like this, so we went with it.’
It wasn’t long, however, before the initial suspicions, that Linda had ignored, were proved correct as what she’d hoped would be a light-hearted celebrity special, soon descended into chaos.
‘I could see right from the off that Ainsley didn’t feel comfortable around that Mr T, and from his reaction to Ainsley’s nervous ‘Ooh, you’re a big boy aren’t you?’ remark, the feeling appeared to be mutual.’ said Linda.
She also says the ‘team’ clearly had no intentions of adhering to the show’s rules. ‘I know Antony Worrall Thompson can work wonders in the kitchen, but the 'ingredients' they’d brought seemed more suited to armour-plating a transit van, which, after throwing Antony through the set, is exactly what they then set about doing.’
‘To be fair to them though,’ she continued, ‘they were adamant it’d all cost less than a fiver.’
Ploughing on with the show regardless, the worst was yet to come. ‘We tried to make the best of it and got the audience involved to judge their efforts, but Mr T and Murdoch (the green peppers) saw red when their contraption lost and started unloading machine-gun rounds into the crowd.’
‘I can't believe they didn't hit anyone. Seriously, they should be in some kind of maximum security stockade.’
Responding to accusations that they had indeed ‘set up’ Ready Steady Cook, Scrapheap Challenge’s own executive producer claimed he knows nothing of the two shows' supposed rivalry.
‘They’re making a meal out of it, as usual. Besides, I don’t know what they’re talking about, everyone here loves the show. It’s so impressive the stuff they can conjure up with just some eggs and a bit of milk. We all love it when a flan comes together.’
