Matthew started off as an actor, and as you're aware still treads the boards to this day. After appearing in a number of sitcoms, including the awful ROOM SERVICE and the slightly better HOLDING THE FORT, he was spotted by Alan Boyd to be one of the presenters of his new 'the people are the stars' show GAME FOR A LAUGH in 1981. Famously, while filming a parachute jump for the show, he broke his leg and as such had to present the first series with his leg in plaster. Matthew's shtick was to be the vaguely camp Northern one, and to illustrate this he wore daft hats and rainbow jumpers. Indeed, he even wore a rainbow jumper while at AN AUDIENCE WITH KENNETH WILLIAMS ("Oh, Matthew... Game For A Laugh? It is Matthew, isn't it?"). At the same time as GFAL, to give it its faintly pointless acronym, he also presented kids' series MADABOUT, and as such was chosen to be the first presenter of CHILDREN'S ITV, sitting in the shitty spaceship set from January 1983 - "Moomins and Madabout? Sounds like a double act!"

After three years Matthew decided he'd had enough of Game For A Laugh and jumped ship, and this dilution of the presenter line-up meant that both Sarah Kennedy and Henry Kelly decided to leave as well. Matthew instead went on to do the teatime sketch series KELLY'S EYE, and the documentary series, er, KELLY'S EYE. We spot a theme here. He also carried on with the acting, starring in RELATIVE STRANGERS which is, fact fans, the highest-rated sitcom in the history of Channel 4. Dull daytime quiz QUANDARIES followed, but then he returned to Saturday nights after taking over two big LE shows. He fronted YOU BET! from 1990 after Brucie had legged it to the Beeb, and then in 1993 took over STARS IN THEIR EYES - originally in a caretaker capacity after Leslie Crowther's car crash, but then full-time after Leslie was unable to return. Fortunately Kelly was the natural choice of presenter, excellently putting the contestants at ease and cranking the excitement up just right. Less memorable was 1992's pilot FRAME THE FAMILY, which gave two families video cameras to film themselves, and caused a minor controversy when children filmed their dad rolling in pissed, and 2000's HOTEL GETAWAY, which we're pretty sure never finished the series. He made a trumphant return to Children's ITV in January of 2003 to mark its twentieth anniversary, and he was loads better than the current presenters too.

See above, for a start. Sarah was the mumsy, matronly one sitting on the high stools and was plucked from regional news programmes for her big break. After Matthew left and that vital chemistry was broken up, she left and went off to join the exciting new current affairs show SIXTY MINUTES. Her contribution to the first show takes some beating - she sat in silence for 59 minutes, before announcing that for contractual reasons, she wasn't allowed to contribute, but just turned up to say hello. But surely speaking to camera counted as presenting in any case? By the time she was able to commit to the show full-time, it had already careered completely down the dumper and become a national laughing stock, and she was normally confined to the South East opt-out in any case, but still stuck with it right to the end. Indeed, even when the show was axed, the presenters still had to turn in for another three weeks to present the regional news for the London area, which must have been fun. Her next gig was dreary Thames afternoon talking shop DAYTIME, most famous for the appearance of a tiny David Beckham kicking a ball at some kid's face. Then it was onto CLASSMATES, the This Is Your Life knockoff set in a faux-schoolroom, and taking over from bland Julian Pettifer on BUSMAN'S HOLIDAY. She's now talking to the nation's milkmen on Radio 2, talking rubbish every morning about the congestion charge to a national audience that doesn't give a toss.

Robert first came to prominence as a smoothie Labour MP, before giving it up and starting a career as a smoothie TV presenter instead. Incredibly he's now been the entertainment for anyone throwing a sickie for nearly seventeen years, with his morning moanathon starting when BBC1 lauched their embryonic daytime schedules in 1986. Originally it was called DAY BY DAY, but the following year was renamed to KILORY - originally with an exclamation mark, which was later dropped - and bolted to its depressing post-9am slot forever. The only big change came in 1990 with the launch of DAYTIME UK, when it was shunted to 11.05am to provide "the meat in the sandwich", but it was shifted back to 9am within a couple of months. TV Cream still remembers the episode shown on the day Thatcher resigned, where the usual audience was replaced by a bunch of back-bench MPs.

Despite the Beeb's umpteen attempts at doing something with daytime, Kilroy was always there - seeing off Adrian Mills, Miriam Stoppard, Anne and Nick, Carol Smillie, Mike Reid and dozens of other presenters. Unfortunately he couldn't transfer his daytime dominance to peaktime - in 1994 he fronted the awful FAMILY WATCH, where he'd pitch up in some luckless family's kitchen and ask them who did the washing up, and in 2001 his quiz show SHAFTED was taken off by ITV after three weeks while they found a 'better' slot for it, and it's still not come back. But he's still there at 9am, irritating the nation's hangovers - he's on all year round now, too, although he doesn't say "See you in the morning!" anymore, alas. And maybe one day he'll work out what accent he's trying to do.

Ross' first break was when he was plucked from, apparently, hundreds of hopefuls to present Granada's Krypton Factor spinoff YOUNG KRYPTON - he was no Gordon Burns, no, but he did a decent enough job of it. Less assured was his first attempt into adult TV, joining Cheryl Baker for piss-poor one-series Jim'll Fix It copy MY SECRET DESIRE. In 1990 he legged it from Quay Street to Oxford Road and fronted the Beeb's summer Saturday morning show THE 8.15 FROM MANCHESTER. TV Cream is happy to admit that it really liked the first series, basically because it was presented from the BBC Manchester props store so it was all nicely shoestring and cosy. Alas the second series was transferred to a big huge studio with a live audience and, even worse, Dianne Oxberry, and it lost all its charm, and we're still pissed off about that to this day. Still, it was practically TV gold compared to his next project - THE ROSS KING SHOW! Said show was part of yet another half-arsed Beeb daytime line-up in 1992, and was blessed with a cracking theme tune that you could sing the name of the programme along to ("Ner-ner-ner Ross King! Ner-ner-ner-ner-ner-ner!"). Indeed, we remember on Children In Need day a group of schoolkids sung a song about CiN to the tune. Sadly, that was the best bit about the show, which lasted just fifteen minutes and consisted of a C-list celeb with something to plug doing a plug, then answering quiz questions with a caller to help them win a small cash prize. And that was it. He later did KING OF THE ROAD - just turning up at a different place and talking to anyone he met - and NEWSHOUND, which was just The Ross King Show again, without the celeb. After this he wisely decided to give up telly and become an actor instead. Still, we did love that theme tune.