THERE’S nothing quite like good Saturday teatime telly, says presenter Paddy McGuinness and Catchpoint - his latest primetime show - is just the antidote an audience needs.

The premise of the new game show couldn’t be simpler: don’t drop the ball!

The latest addition to BBC One’s Saturday night line-up requires brains as contestants required to answer the various questions asked and then players will need to think fast as they try to catch balls of various sizes, which will be dropped from the studio ceiling.

“It’s just answering a question and catching a ball. That’s the show,” McGuinness, 45, says.

“It wouldn’t suit me doing a show where I stand behind a podium with 10 questions - it’s just not me,” he said.

“I like the freedom of a show like this. I’m moving about on set like I do on Take Me Out, interacting with members of the public, having a bit of fun, having a laugh,” he reveals. “It’s not heavily scripted so it plays to my strengths.”

It seems his hand-eye co-ordination may need some work, however.

“I thought it was good, until I tried to catch the ball on my first day on set and failed miserably!” he admits. “It’s a strange thing; it’s like any TV show where you watch it and you sit at home going, ‘I can’t believe they’ve not caught that’.

“But the pressure of having an audience there and all the lights and the cameras, it affects them. It’s weird how nerves take over, so I try and make the contestants as relaxed as I can.

“You can bet if they’d have been catching that ball in their back garden at home, with no-one around, they’d have caught it 10 out of 10 times!”

As for the quiz element, Bolton-born McGuinness is hopeful audiences will opt to play along at home too.

“It’s just fun!” he notes. “Sit down with your family, have a laugh and play along.

“The questions are the kind of questions that when you’re sat at home, you can all have a little guess,” he tells. “But they’re not your traditional quiz show questions.

“We had one yesterday which was like, ‘Which of these dogs is the same weight as a shot put?’ And another about how far could you throw a Dachshund!” he quips. “That’s what you want at teatime on a Saturday night.

“I grew up watching telly on a Saturday with my mum, and loving it. And when people say to me they watch stuff that I do now, I really enjoy that.

“I like having that presence of family shows,” confides McGuinness, who has three children - twins Penelope and Leo, and Felicity - with his wife, model Christine.

“Because I do think there’s something special about watching telly, especially on a Saturday, with your family.

“That should remain,” he vows, adding his kids will watch it because “it’s a really good, fun, colourful show”.

And McGuinness, who landed his big break after starring in friend Peter Kay’s hits That Peter Kay Thing, Phoenix Nights and Max And Paddy’s Road To Nowhere, certainly knows what goes into making a small-screen hit.

A key player on ITV primetime, the comedian has earned his stripes as a panellist in numerous episodes of Keith Lemon’s Through The Keyhole and headed up The Keith And Paddy Picture Show with Lemon, among others.

Next, viewers will see him join forces with Andrew Flintoff and Chris Harris as the refreshed presenting trio of the 27th series of Top Gear; as well as having been recently announced as Fearne Cotton’s replacement on the award-winning Celebrity Juice.

But that’s not to say he won’t return to his best-known gig to date - as the ringmaster of Take Me Out.

Filming the next series as we speak, the host-matchmaker will return with an 11th run of the flirtatious dating show later this year. And he can’t wait!

“I’m lucky in a sense that it’s been on for so long and people enjoy it,” McGuinness confides.

“But it’s like putting on your favourite pair of shoes where you’re just comfortable,” he states. “I know it inside out, the audience knows it, the girls are totally across it, the lads coming in the lift are all up for it, and you can just enjoy it.”

Of its longevity, he says: “Dating shows, full stop, hadn’t worked since Blind Date.

“None had carried on coming back and we did Take Me Out and it created a big buzz and there was an influx of new dating shows again.

“Now you’ve got First Dates and Love Island - you can’t move for dating shows!”

“But we’re still there, doing our thing, and I think that’s because it’s not just a dating show. It’s an entertainment show as well. It ticks a lot of boxes.

“As long as they keep wheeling me out, I’ll keep doing it!”

n Catchpoint is on BBC One on Saturday, 6.50pm