The first series of Shipwrecked, presented by Kate Humble, took place in 2000, heralding the beginning of the UK reality television craze alongside Castaway (TV series) which was released at a similar time. In the series, a group of young British contestants were stranded in the Cook Islands. The format saw 16 18-25 year olds stranded on Moturakau for 68 days and 67 nights, when they were eventually picked up by a sailing boat.

The 16 contestents were Dan Woodrow, Elliot Dell, Jessica Perason, William Deed, Rachel, Meg, Mandy Dassa, Lisa, David, Jen, Ashna, Simon Babbage(Crusoe), Darrell (Paddy), Will (Ginger), Andy and Star. By the end there were only 7 contestants left on teh island, the others had departed to have fun on the main island of Aitutaki and Jess left in week 5 to sail round the South Pacific. Unlike the recent Shipwreckeds which have had gameshow formats, the original series relied on trial and error which gave it a very raw format. A pig was slaughtered in week 4, chickens were killed and fish, snails and clams were caught by hand in the open sea. There were expeditions to the reef to fish, night fishing and in week 3-4 the island was flash flooded by high tides. In weeks 5-6 it rained constant for 11 days and nights; this was serious survival, not a chance to look pretty on TV!

It was great I was hooked on it at the time.

Some of the events that I still remember almost 10 years later are

When a group of the boys stole Mandy's diary and found out she had a crush on one of the other boys there  (Simon who was lovley) and thought it would be amusing to pass it around camp. It was awfull the poor girl was humiliated.

Star and Mandy were always at logger head and the camp decided it would be a good idea to make them joint leaders for a week and all hell broke out.

About half way through they cut there rations and the only way for them to get food was to build a boat and travel to the main land to buy food once a week, though some ended up spending the money on drinking in the local bars.

Jess hitched a ride on a boat and went traveling.
A couple of the group took advantage of the weekly food trip to escape early from the island, by paying for a boat to go and collect their friends so only about 7 actually saw the journey through to the end.

And I remember one of the guys whose name escapes me was a bit of gym bunny loved himself and used to pluck his chest hair (that unsettling image has stayed with me )

i was 10 at the time and didnt know about the show unfortunately but i would like to watch them, does any1 know if they are on youtube?