Surprise Surprise was filmed in front of a studio audience. Its premise involved surprising members of the public with the fulfilment of long-held wishes, setting up tricks to fool members of the public, making
prank calls to people, and reuniting guests with long-lost loved ones. Original host Cilla Black was initially assisted by
Christopher Biggins, but more famously for eight series by
Bob Carolgees, famous for his
glove puppetry act
Spit the Dog (who previously appeared in the first series with a puppet
ferret), with
Gordon Burns and
Tessa Sanderson as roving reporters. Other featured acts were "Cilla-grams," where Black would perform a song in a musical sketch relevant to the surprise a person was receiving (for example, a soldier was celebrating his 21st birthday, so the featuring song Black sang was "
Celebration" by
Kool & The Gang). The concept of the first series had been to film surprising and often unusual moments similar to those previously seen on
Game for a Laugh. This included a phone game that used viewers numbers and answering questions to try and form a winning line. Others included dancing and sporting events, and there were surprise reunions between family members. The popularity of this element of the show led executive producer Alan Boyd to change the format slightly so that all items in subsequent series involved surprises, rather than just being surprising. Although including many pre-filmed inserts, the first series and some early episodes of the second series were televised live in their entirety, but thereafter all episodes were pre-recorded. From 1984 to 1988, the show was broadcast on Sunday evenings. From 1989 to 1992, the show moved to Fridays, before returning to the Sunday evening timeslot from 1993 to 1996. The final series of the original run in 1997 was broadcast on Friday evenings. Between 1998 and 2001, a one-off special episode was produced per year which aired on Mother's Day from 1998 until 2000, and then at Christmas for 2001. Over the years, the show had many special guests, some of whom appeared live, including
Neil Diamond. Many
variety acts were also featured on the show. The
Spice Girls made their live debut on an episode in 1996.
Revival In March 2012, it was announced that
Holly Willoughby would host a revamped one-off episode of
Surprise Surprise for ITV, although a full series was later announced. The series had six hour-long episodes, with episode 1 airing on 21 October 2012. A second series followed this in 2013, a third in 2014 and a fourth in 2015. In the show, Willoughby is joined by various locations reporters, these have included
Marvin Humes,
Mark Wright,
Dave Berry,
Peter Andre and
Matt Johnson. In one 2013 episode,
Cilla Black made a surprise appearance on the show, singing a bit of the original theme as the show went to commercials (after Willoughby made the comment that producers refused to let her sing the song).
Final episodes The last series hosted by
Holly Willoughby aired on
ITV1 between 21 June and 26 July 2015. On 17 June 2016, ITV announced that the show had been cancelled and would not return for 2017. Willoughby called for the show to return for another series, but this did not happen. A previously unbroadcast episode of the show, hosted by
Cilla Black that featured appearances from Irish boyband
Westlife and singer
Gareth Gates, which was originally produced in 2003 as a one-off special to celebrate the series' 20th anniversary, was broadcast on
ITV3 on 27 December 2015, four months after Black's death. It wasn't originally broadcast at the time due to Black's departure from ITV earlier that year. ==Theme songs==