The Show

Facts

Over eight series of Gladiators the fastest ever time in which the gruesome Eliminator has been completed is just 48 seconds! That was set by Wesley 'Two Scoops' Berry in the 1994 final of the International series.

Contender Mark Everitt climbed to new heights in the 1996 Ashes tournament. He set the highest total scored by an individual, with a whopping 53 points.

The fastest time recorded for the Gladiators crew to set out the Eliminator course in nine and a half minutes!

Over 200 Contenders have taken part in the Domestic UK series over eight series on ITV.

Twelve cars and prizes totalling more than £45,000 were won over seven series of UK Gladiators on ITV.

Fourteen cameras capture the thrills and excitement of each show and their pictures are captured on eight recording machines.

The production team returned from the filming with a mountain of video tape - 6,840 minutes which adds up to 198 miles of video - enough to stretch from London to Liverpool!

The original Gladiators set, constructed at Birmingham's National Indoor Arena, weighed 836 tons. It took 24 trailers to transport the equipment from London toe Birmingham and when they got there, it was such a tight fit that the tyres on the trailers had to be let down before they could squeeze through the scenedock door!

The construction of the preliminary model for the Eliminator took three people three days to complete.

With safety the prime objective, it took 75 people two months to construct the equipment itself.

Three 18 hour working days were needed to install the set and lighting rig.

Two million screws were used.

The lighting rig consisted of 786 separate lanterns and 1,500 feet of tracking. A total of 30 tons of equipment was suspended from the cieling.

The British Gladiators have competed against Gladiators from Australia, South Africa, America, Germany, Finland and Russia. The show has been seen all over the world.

Of the original 12 Gladiators who burst onto British TV screens in 1992, only four remained until the final ITV series. They were Lightning, Cobra, Saracen and Wolf.

The Gladiators set weighed over 200 tons and was transported to Birmingham in 35 articulated lorries.

Since Gladiators began in 1992 nearly 100,000 people have applied to become Contenders on Gladiators.

The core production team comprised of just six people, but when making the show for television, the team swelled to over 200.

It took just five weeks of intensive recording to make 19 shows for television - 15 domestic shows, International specials and finally a Celebrity special.

The idea for Gladiators came from the original American Gladiators which was a big hit with late-night viewers in the UK.

An unseen UK Gladiator called Shark, real name Metin Hussein, was hired but never used in action. He was all set to be a new bad guy but for unknown reasons he was dropped just before the filming of the 1997 series. He was briefly featured in the background on the Gladiator Training Camp clips in Mauritus.

The final show, broadcast on January 1st 2000, was dedicated to Clayton Parker. He had worked at LWT for many years as a VT Editor. He was especially known for editing LWT's entertainment programmes and he was sadly killed in a car crash. His last piece of work before he was killed was editing Gladiators - The Final Showdown. LWT felt it would be fitting to put out the dedication at the end of this episode. It drew in 6.1 million viewers on New Years Day 2000.