Don't Forget Your Toothbrush - No Adventure But Suitcase-fuls of Excitement courtesy of @achrisevans

Saturday night TV is a tricky product to master. Sometimes producers get it right and a format comes along people remember for decades such as Gladiators or Noel's House Party. Then again sometimes they make Scavengers.

Over the years there's been a range of variety shows that have gathered audience participation, games, surprises and excitement in one weekly show to generate some fun on a Saturday night. Noel Edmonds invited us all to a House Party with a surprising amount of gunge and his big pink lodger. Ant and Dec have invited us to win the contents of ad breaks, prank celebrities and win holidays with dozens of other competition winners. Michael McIntyre has even been in on the act luring unsuspecting members of the public on stage, surprising his audience, and hijacking celebrity phones.

One show I rediscovered through the magic of Youtube, however, is Chris Evans' (not the Marvel one) first show post-Big Breakfast: Don't Forget Your Toothbrush.

Now it's a show I remembered, but not well. Aired in 1994 and 95, I would have been 6 when it finished. So what my parents were doing letting me stay up to watch it I'm not entirely sure. The hour long show aired at 10pm on a Saturday for series one and 9pm for series two, so it felt a bit like a later version of Noels House Party.

With a house band led by Jools Holland, formerly of Squeeze and laterly of Later With..., Chris Evans endeavoured to bring his brand of energetic entertainment, spontaneity and 60's TV themes to a show focused around a simple central premise: sending members of the audience on a holiday right after the show. Everyone in the audience would bring a case, bring a passport, bring permission to have the week off work (or not care about losing their job), and most importantly bring their toothbrush. By the end of the night two, and on some occasions more, would be whisked away direct from the studio as the credits rolled to head off on either a dream holiday or a dreary booby prize trip.

Before the big holiday giveaway, however, there was a lot more to get through. With Chris Evans helped by his co-hosts, Rachel Tatton-Brown in S1 and Jadene Doran in S2 (in both cases, Evans then girlfriend), he brought a fun, loud atmosphere to Saturday nights as he surprised audience members, gave them chances to win cash, and also extended that chance to the audience at home. It wasn't always the same however and the show often came up with varied ideas and games to keep the show fresh each week.

One week they could be offering a woman £1000 to drop her favourite drawing by her child in the river Thames from a helicopter, the next they could be asking people to run between some precariously stacked shelves after 30 seconds spinning in a chair, and then again they could just ask an audience members boyfriend to expose himself to the rest of the cheering crowd (it was the '90s).

There'd be a weekly musical guest singing with Jools Hollands band, such as Suggs or Barry White, who would then take on a superfan of theirs in a quiz on their career with each putting up a personal, money can't buy prize (one memorable example being Belinda Carlisle offering up an old bra). Again it was the 90's, money couldn't buy it then, now we've got eBay. There was one time where, just to do something different for the end of the series, Chris Evans was the superfan up against Kim Wilde and so Angus Deayton took over quizzing.

Series two brought an extra game to get the audience at home involved on camera. An outside broadcast would have a shot set up covering a street or estate and viewers could join in by flashing their lights if they recognised the area. A strobing property would be picked and, with Evans giving instructions through the TV, they'd have 2 minutes to get 10 specific items out the house in specific ways. Starting small with something along the lines of throwing the TV remote out the front door going up to throwing the ironing board out of the bedroom window. 10 items sent through the right doors/windows won that house £1000 cash thrown to them by the outside broadcast crew.

The final part of the show was the focus of the whole format, 'Light Your Lemon'. A randomly selected member of the baying audience would be asked a question on the next day's headlines and if correct, they and a partner would get a chance to play for a holiday. Two holidays were up for grabs, one to a desirable destination e.g. Barbados, and a losing prize with an alliterative name e.g. Bognor Regis. Each prize represented by an illuminated bit of set dressing. The desirable trip getting a cocktail with a lemon wedge, the wooden spoon prize a flake topped ice cream. It was was simply a best-of-9 bit of quizzing about the good holiday destination. 5 right answers sent them somewhere good, 5 wrong answers and they were off to somewhere that required raincoats.

Questions on the Australian version were surprisingly easy

In the spirit of surprising the audience there was one notable, and I'd assume budget-busting, game of Light Your Lemon which had the crowd roaring until the end. Not only were the randomly selected audience members playing for their own holiday, but if they won then the rest of the audience would be loaded into coaches for a week at Disneyland Paris. Not many shows could say they gave away 300 trips for their audience, although I think Ant and Dec come close taking as many as they can to an end of series special either on a cruise or in Florida or wherever they go next.

In the mid '90s, DFYT wasn't just a hit, it was a global smash. Versions cropped up in the Netherlands, Australia, France, on Comedy Central in America as well as many others. As the owner of the format and the production company behind it, Ginger Productions, it was DFYT that turned out to be lucratively beneficial. He amassed a large collection of Ferraris, he bought Virgin Radio, he became a media powerhouse.

Why am I talking about it then? This blog is meant for adventure game shows

It finished in 1995, and in the current climate of social divide and with Thomas Cook going down the pan, perhaps it's time for a one off special of surprises, spontaneity and sending people on holiday whether they've got time off work or not. One of Evans later ventures, TFI Friday, had a well-received return a few years ago, there's room to just have cheeky fun again on a Saturday night. There's been some talk of a revival this year, retitled "Don't Forget Your Suitcase" but here we are still waiting, I say we've waited enough. TV needs ironing boards launched through bedroom windows again. It needs people losing quizzes getting sent to Canvey Island. It needs whatever random idea they decide to do to an audience member only to surprise them with £1k afterwards. Whatever your opinion of him, there's no denying that when Chris Evans gets it right, he gets it very right.