CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews last night’s TV: Moaning about a soaking on the flume? Don’t be so wet!
Inside Legoland: A World Of Wonder
Rolling In It
Rating: 
Royal watchers desperate for a glimpse of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in Windsor won’t get much joy if they hang around outside the couple’s erstwhile home, Frogmore Cottage.
But they might have better luck if they check into one of the hotels at nearby Legoland. Among the 2,000 models of pirates, dinosaurs, pop stars and exotic flowers, guests might find life-size replicas in one corridor of Kate, William, Charles and Harry — built from Lego.
At least, Harry’s model was there last year when Inside Legoland: A World Of Wonder (C5) was filmed. Perhaps, like the real-life Duke himself, it has since disappeared.
Among the 2,000 models of pirates, pop stars and exotic flowers at Legoland (above), guests might find life-size replicas of Kate, William, Charles and Harry
The alternative would be that a Lego Meghan has been added to the display, and I wouldn’t envy the model-maker who has to get that job right. Imagine the ducal indignation if Her Grace was depicted wearing the wrong tiara.
Working at the theme park is already stressful enough, to judge from this lighthearted series. Visitors rush the turnstiles at opening time, determined to squeeze every minute of fun from the price of their ticket, but once inside many of them seem to spend the day queuing at the customer services desk to have a rant.
One choice gripe was that there weren’t enough staff to handle all the complaints. Now, how would anyone know that, if they hadn’t joined the queue to have a moan in the first place? The most popular complaint was that people were getting too wet on the water ride, Pirate Falls. If you’ve ever been on a water ride, you’ll appreciate that half the fun is getting soaked.
Prince Harry certainly knows this. He and his big brother famously rode the log flume with their mother at Thorpe Park on a family day out in 1993, and got drenched.
What was considered safe for royals in the Nineties might be grounds for a health and safety case today, so the maintenance team hurried out to make sure the bigger hoses were pointing away from riders on Pirate Falls.
That left the tricky problem of what to do with the smaller squirters that spurted from Lego frogs. Should these be regarded as a hazard to public safety too?
Eventually, an engineer made an executive decision. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘I’m turning the frogs back on.’
This was as dramatic as the programme got. Elsewhere, a small boy fell and scraped his knee, and a little girl was supremely unbothered after getting separated from her parents: she sat and watched a video in the Lost Children booth until they collected her.
A charmingly British holiday atmosphere hung over it all. Like Lego itself, the park seemed imbued with nostalgia.
Presenter Stephen Mulhern was hoping to draw on the same magic with his game show Rolling In It (ITV) — a quiz based on the penny-rollers in seaside amusement arcades.
Three contestants, helped out by three actors from Coronation Street, aimed giant coins down a ramp and onto a conveyor belt. Their prizes were determined by where the coins landed, with thousands of pounds depending on a lucky roll.
It was all a bit laborious, slowed down further by 15 multiple-choice quiz questions. These were mostly about pop, telly and celebs, though that didn’t help the player who had to guess which TV comedy featured ‘Mrs Slocombe’s pussy’.
She’d never heard of Are You Being Served? — ‘I’m young,’ she wailed — so she plumped for Keeping Up Appearances.
I shudder to think what Hyacinth Bucket, the glorious snob from that sitcom, would have made of such a vulgar question. But then, ‘Mrs Bouquet’ would never have admitted to watching ITV.