How2's
Greatest Hits
Early in 1999 How Goes 2 appeared, a
short series of "best of" programmes linked by Fred and Gareth from locations
around the country.
How Goes to ...The Swimming Pool, How Goes To ...The Ghostly Graveyard,
How Goes to the Seaside etc., etc. In each programme the montage
of clips were loosely themed around one subject and featured Fred, Gareth,
Carol and Siân.
There were also two Best Of How 2s, shot with the original team of Fred, Gareth & Carol, the first a sell-through video linked from The How 2 studio, and another a few years later linked from the roof of the ITV Network Centre in London.
The Future
of How2
The rights to the name How 2 are currently owned by an Australian media
concern called Southern Star and is licensed to the Scottish Media Group
to make and broadcast the series on ITV in the UK.
A new series of How 2 is usually shot in February of each year with the episodes being broadcast a few months later on CiTV. Earlier series of How 2 can also be seen on the digital satellite channel WAM right across the USA.
The latest team of Gareth Jones, Fred Dinenage and Gail McKenna is regarded as the best How2 team ever. For the 15th series broadcast in 2006, the show introduced a new strand where part of How2 was shot on location at the Glasgow Science Centre.
There were loose plans for a special "live" edition of the show, and even a How2 Summer Special shot verrrrry expensively on location in the Caribbean. However series 15 appears to have been the final new series of How2 broadcast on ITV in the UK.
Cutbacks at ITV meant the channel would no longer commission any new children's factual programmes. So, there are currently no plans to make any new episodes of the still-popular show.
For now the story of How has come to the end of its second chapter, and it would appear that How2 is gone. However, the show came back from the dead once before when How2 took over the mantle from How, so it could yet re-appear one day, perhaps as How3?
But, as Gareth has said many times on air, for the time being ....
"That's How......................... for now."
