Nigel Lythgoe, executive producer of the first series of Survivor, has said he doesn't think it was a flop.

"I think it's a fantastic format," he told Heat! magazine. "Survivor was sold very badly to the public. We had this 'reality' side to it, and I don't like the phrase Reality TV at the best of times, because as soon as you put a camera in front of someone, reality flies out of the window. It was a gameshow. That was it. There was no reality, in the sense that there was no way I was going to let anyone die out there. It's really bad press when people die on your show."

The tagline of the show also presented a problem, he admitted. "The tagline when I left for Borneo [location of first series] was 'Trust No One', which is great. Tongue in cheek, Agatha Christie - like Ten Little Indians, they're all going to bump each other off. When I got back it was, 'You don't win, you survive.' Well, you did win - you won a million pounds! And of course you survive, because we're not going to let you die.

"I think the whole scheduling of it was incorrect," he continued. "Somebody said it was going to get 12 million viewers. OK, it did really well in the States because it was the first 'reality' gameshow over there. But we'd already had Big Brother."

Catch Survivor: Panama each Wednesday at 9.45pm on ITV1.