Hey everyone, welcome to podcast number seven.

I’ve just completed my first proper week back in January, my first sort of normal-ish week after Christmas and wow I was tired by Monday night to be fair.

It’s amazing how quickly you slip out of your routine and working a normal day job and then trying to do everything you want to in the evening.

This week I thought I’d talk about a couple of very different subjects.

So the first one’s going to be a bit of nostalgia.

I was born in the 80s and grew up in the 90s.

One of the iconic TV shows of my childhood was Gladiators and it was a show where you would go up against these extreme athletes and play various different games, a few of which we’ll discuss in a minute, and basically you had to try and beat the gladiators and then you’d progress through various different rounds, make it to the final and I guess you’d become the ultimate winner.

And back in the early 90s when this became a thing everyone watched it.

It was a family show, you’d sit down on a Saturday, there was merchandise, there was toys, you could go meet the gladiators occasionally.

I was very lucky as a child to go and meet at least two or three which was amazing and it was just an iconic part of British TV when I was growing up.

In 2008 they did try and reboot it.

I’ll be honest I don’t remember what happened in 2008 or even if I watched it which doesn’t really say very much.

So something happened in 2008 for Gladiators but I couldn’t tell you what that was.

We move on to today.

Yesterday, Saturday evening they brought Gladiators back again for another reboot and actually they got remarkably close from my point of view to what the show used to be like.

The same intro, the same kind of style and even some of the same games.

So there was things like Duel where you’ve got a gladiator and a contestant on a high up stand.

They’ve got a stick, I can’t remember the right name.

I want to say pugil or something like that, a pugil stick, feels right but I could be wrong.

But basically a giant cotton bud and they try and knock each other off these stands.

Classic game was around in 1992 and they brought it back.

They’ve also got Hang Tough, another old one where you hang for some rings and you have to try and get to the opponent’s platform or basically knock that person off, pull that person down from those rings for them to lose the game or if you get the gladiator down you win the game.

Another classic one was called Gauntlet.

I think it’s four gladiators and you as the contestant have to run from one end to the other and they’ve got various devices, buttons, big big boxing pad sort of things and they’re trying to stop you from getting from one end to the other and the eliminator which is the final round is basically an obstacle course where you just as contestants try and beat the other contestant and whoever gets through to the last obstacle first and rips through the bit of paper at the end they win and then they move on to the next round.

That was exactly the same as it was in the 90s with a couple of tweaks.

I think there was a couple of things that had changed.

I think it evolved back in the 90s anyway so I couldn’t tell you exactly what it was meant to look like.

There’s a couple of new games as well one round called the ring where there’s two contestants in the ring and there’s two gladiators and in the center of the ring is a button and each contestant has to try and press that button but the other two gladiators are obviously preventing them from doing that which was pretty good fun and then the other one I can’t remember which one was called and I should watch it back from yesterday.

They were on a bridge they had to run from one end to and then deposit their colored ball red or blue into a net at the end and then the gladiators were like swinging themselves across this bridge to try and knock the contestant off and prevent them from doing it.

I’m pretty sure they used to do that in the old days but instead of swinging themselves they would swing giant balls and use that giant ball to rip a person off but I could be getting that confused with other game shows because it’s been very similar concepts before in the UK things like Wipeout UK, Ninja Warrior etc they’re kind of very very similar concepts.

With gladiators I would consider the original and definitely the best.

With a brand new series of gladiators the original gladiators that were around back in the day some of them very well known names like Jet, Wolf and Hunter all very familiar names to those of us that grew up with it.

They’re all getting on a little bit to be fair most of them are in their mid 50s some of them are older than that obviously even though one of them Wolf said he was more than fit enough to do it again at 71 obviously they’re not going to be doing it again to be fair.

So a brand new cohort of gladiators what do you call a bunch of gladiators?

Gladiati?

I’m not even sure let’s say cohort gladiators.

A brand new cohort of gladiators has been brought in I feel like they’re much fitter stronger than they ever used to be back in the 90s but then I think fitness in general and extreme fitness probably more mainstream these days than it was back in the day.

So a few highlights from the male side you’ve got Giant as you can guess he’s huge you’ve got Legend and you’ve got Viper.

Now Viper is the angry one the one that you’re never very happy trying to get into a bit of trouble already he’s clearly the new Wolf.

So for those of you that watched it back in the day Wolf was the same troublemaker trying to break the rules obviously it’s all for TV it’s all planned he’s not really a bad guy he’s just there to make it a bit more exciting for those that are watching.

On the female side you’ve got Saber, Diamond and Fire and the rumors are that Diamond is the new Jet.

For those of you that watched back in the 90s Jet was probably one of the most well known and they’re now saying that Diamond could be the same this series but it’s only one episode I haven’t decided yet I can’t remember all their names there’s more gladiators to see there’s more new events to see as well which would be good and it’s on every Saturday night approximately 6 o’clock BBC One if you haven’t watched it go back on iPlayer give it a watch and hopefully enjoy it.

So that was gladiators I’m gonna change subject now to a subject that I’ve never really blogged about podcasted about before in person I’m very open and honest about it but I just thought I’d start putting this stuff in see how well it goes down I’m going to talk about wheelchair shopping now I’m not going to go into a huge amount of detail in this one but I may do a more detailed podcast in the future but essentially I see a wheelchair as a pair of shoes it is the thing that I use when I’m outside it is the thing that helps me get from A to B it’s a pair of shoes so with all pairs of shoes you outgrow them you want a new pair there’s a new cool design out that you want to get as well or a new colorway for example you change them fairly regularly or most people change their shoes fairly regularly the same sort of applies to wheelchairs although perhaps not as frequently because they are more expensive than a new pair of shoes but equally you outgrow it you want to change it you want a new design there’s a new technology coming out you want they get lighter they get more agile they look cooler or your old one might be worn out so you might want to change it for that reason so I’m actually quite bad at changing my wheelchairs if you go with the right brand and you get the right wheelchair they will last you for a while so generally I’m in my chairs for sort of 5 to 10 years actually just crossed the 10 year mark in my current chair and there’s new technology out now my wheelchair frame is made from titanium which is pretty light very durable it’s a nice material to use but now there’s carbon fiber which is even lighter it should be as durable and it looks really cool as well so there’s consideration for me around which option I go down I haven’t decided yet I need to demo a few chairs there’s pros and cons to each material I need to make that decision first and then after that you get into exactly the same problems that you get with footwear and trainers etc you can now customize a wheelchair as much as you like or as little as you want you can change the color you can change the add-ons you can change the brakes the wheels each spoke can be a different color you can change the material that the seats are made from honestly the list goes on the combinations go on and it takes forever to decide so I’ve got to go through that in the next couple of weeks and actually decide what I want at the moment my wheelchair is primarily a silver titanium frame it’s got black upholstery on the seats and then it’s got some hints of blue the spokes are blue and the little bits around the front wheels are blue it’s pretty much it the question is though do I do similar do I go completely black do I go more blue do I go for a mix of blue and orange which is quite appealing for me as well I don’t know yet my feelings are either completely black because that’ll work really well with carbon fiber or stick with similar to what I’ve got today just update the chair to the newer model the new design decide between titanium or carbon fiber and then go from there so I’m really looking forward to it like I say I may go into more details in the future in terms of how the whole process works some of the options that are available to people some of the different paths you can go down more information in terms of how to do that when I first got into one of these type of chairs approximately 20 years ago now I didn’t know that existed I was still on the old-fashioned type ones that fold up they’re very heavy they’re very boxy they don’t really fit you very well I didn’t know that even these chairs were available so I feel like I should spread that message and help others understand that there are better options out there so we’ll see it may become a podcast series of its own thank you once again for listening and we will catch up soon