AS Gladiator Sharron Davies faced off her challenger in the infamous Tilt game, audiences at home held their breath .
While the former Olympic swimmer, who was Amazon in the 1990s ITV hit, looked cool, calm and collected, beneath the surface the peril felt all too real.
The dangerous tug-of-war - which took place 15ft above ground - took so long to put together, she had no time to try it out and she tells The Sun the first time she climbed on was when the cameras were rolling.
“They were more interested in making sure we had plenty of time for make-up and less time to practise on the games,” Sharron tells The Sun.
“We didn’t get enough time to practise on the equipment because there just wasn’t the time to get to the pieces in and out and to be able to do what I felt I needed to - practice on a particular piece of equipment.
“I remember doing Tilt, which is a game where the actual Gladiator starts at a disadvantage facing forward.
“The first time I did that was live on TV, which is a really strange thing considering when you have an athletic background, which is all about training and preparation, you aim to be the best you can be."
As the franchise enjoys a successful reboot on BBC, the 61-year-old athlete has lifted the lid on secrets of the show, including long gruelling hours that left her popping painkillers and the health and safety nightmares that left several Gladiators, including Sharron, with horrific injuries.
Sharron, who won an Olympic silver medal in swimming at just 17, needed nine operations on her knee after it snapped while tackling a contender on the show’s Pyramid game in 1995 and she was forced to quit.
But even before her injury she reveals the relentless filming schedule and punishing stunts pushed her body to the brink.
The series was filmed in a block over the summer, at the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham, with two or three shows being shot every day.
“It was a very long day,” she says. “We started in the morning and we would finish at ten o’clock at night.
“It was very intense in the summer and you could easily get injured.
“Everything we did involved either hanging, pulling or climbing and I remember getting horrendous pain in my forearms. I had to take Nurofen because they hurt so much.”
Between the tough challenges, the Gladiators were stood down while the equipment was hauled in and out of the arena.
“There was a tremendous amount of waiting around because there were huge pieces of equipment that had to be moved out, like great pyramids and huge mats," she says.
"It was a massive production. It was quite intense and frustrating from my perspective because the most important thing for me, because of my background as an athlete, was to improve my performance.”
She added: "One of the things that I think the BBC has done, which is a little bit of a shame, is that they removed the cheerleaders. I think we could’ve modernised cheerleaders.
"Part of the fun of the cheerleaders was to encourage the crowd, because there’s quite a lot of hanging about in between moving the sets. What you see on the TV has taken hours to film, you have to move all the equipment and that’s not quick.
"So, that was one of the things cheerleaders do to keep the audience entertained."
The former Olympian most enjoyed the team challenges, including the Power Ball, but says Gladiators didn’t get to choose which games they competed in.
“I’ve got quite a lot of endurance because of my swimming, so I used to love doing Sky Track where you have to keep going,” she says.
“But I didn’t really get asked to do that much because I was so tall. You didn’t necessarily get a choice in what you got asked to do.”
That tough work schedule brought the Gladiators together and Sharron has remained good pals with them over the past three decades.
Sharron reveals that they didn’t earn much money from appearing on the show and made far more from public appearances linked to them being Gladiators.
The three-times married writer, who also provides a training program, comments: “I don’t think anyone did the show just for the money, but there was a massive personal appearances thing that came back off it.
“While I was competing as a Gladiator, I was still working as Sharron Davies, for the BBC.
"But with ITV there was an appearance circuit and I went with fellow Gladiators and did personal appearances as Amazon. That side of it was very lucrative.”
The new batch of Gladiators - unveiled in the first show last Saturday - are reportedly undergoing random drug tests, after some of the original cast got caught up in drug scandals.
Shadow - Jefferson King - was axed from the show after testing positive for cocaine, in 1995, and axed star Flame - real name Kimbra Frazier – claimed she had found steroids in some Gladiators’ gym bags.
In May 1994, TV sleuth Roger Cook accused stars Wolf, Michael Van Wijk, and Panther, Helen O’Reilly – of steroid abuse.
Both Gladiators were cleared after programme maker LWT forced them to take a drug test but Hawk - Aleks Georgijev - admitted to Cook that he had taken the drug.
But Sharron says drug testing on the show was hit and miss.
“It was 30 years ago but I don’t think the drug testing first time around was particularly clever,” she says.
“I came from a sporting background so it was something I wouldn’t touch with a barge pole anyway whereas some of the Gladiators came from the weightlifting or bodybuilding background and, unfortunately, it is a big issue in that sport.
“There was drug testing and much of it I don’t really remember. It wasn’t on my radar.
“But I think it’s important that it's done now because we obviously don’t want to encourage anyone to be taking illegal substances which have pretty harmful side effects.”
Three decades on from her stint on the show, Sharron is pleasantly surprised that the BBC’s version is so similar to ITV’s original.
Sharron adds: “I’m just quite glad that they haven’t tried to mess around with the format.
“I think it’s good they tried to keep quite a few of the original games in there as well. What they’ve done, they've recreated it.”
She continues: “I think what happens sometimes is that we have seen the BBC tinker with programmes that have been very successful, something like Question of Sport is a real disaster. That programme has gone because they messed with it.”
Unfair Play by Sharron Davies is available in hardback now and paperback soon.
