I’ve just discovered that coding wizard, Bother’s Bar ex-regular and star of both internet Star Wars weather forecasts and Treasure Hunt a while ago Tom Scott is one of the contestants on Only Connect this evening, as one of the Hitchhikers.
This is great, because it gives us something to update with on a slow day. Let us hope he knows who Vivienne Westwood is by now.
In other news, I’m definitely not going to see The Cube US because they’re full up, but I may very well try to go and see ITV1’s The Whole 19 Yards, which Applause Store are currently taking interest for. I didn’t think all that much to the Spanish version I’ve seen, but we’ll see.
That might just be the least flattering biography ever written, Brig 🙂 That Vivienne Westwood clue still haunts me, y’know. Night terrors and everything.
Cheers though! If anyone’s thinking about applying when the next series rolls round and isn’t sure whether to – you really should. The show’s crew took really good care of us, and we had a fantastic time.
(And “ex-regular”? Just because the comments are few and far between…!)
Ha ha ha, I think it means you’ve moved on to bigger and better things 🙂
Is it me, or have things been a bit tough so far this year? I like the extended end round, but I think my intelligence must have dipped quite a bit as I’m doing much worse on the first three rounds.
Also, does this mean I can stop my PhD and claim incapacity benefits?
I think it’s been easier so far (as you’d expect from round one matches) or certainly less esoteric. I’d suggest the longer missing vowels round is because people are getting through the other sections quicker than usual so there’s more time for it.
Actually that’s interesting, I wonder if any teams who were quite hot on connections and less hot on missing vowels have deliberately ate up the clock to reduce the time for the round?
I’ve only seen one team do that on one question on one show, and not very successfully either. The grid rounds have a larger effect on the “stretch and squeeze”.
I’m surprised if that’s the overall opinion. This series is intended to be at least as easy as series 1, though it does vary a little from show to show. Weren’t there some sitters in tonight’s show?
Yeah, did the best I’ve ever done in an OC show last night…..!
“Scott’s Porage Oats”, surely? That they spell it in a strange way is a bit of trivia that never ever comes up in quizzes, and which it therefore benefits nobody to know.
Yes, why is that missing? I will go and change it.
A piece of US news- CBS has picked up Survivor for 2 more seasons (21 and 22- no word on if Jeff Probst will be back as host yet, as his contract is up after this upcoming 20th season), and The amazing Race has been picked up for one more season (Season 17).
Lost in TV must be desperate for people to attend Saudi Cube, they are now offering non-Arabic speakers to attend.
(In my head I hear the booming vocalcords of Colin McFarland)
“So, Saudi Arabian TV production team, making a game show is easy, but when you make it in North London, it becomes very difficult…
This challenge for a ratings sucess appears at first simple. All you have to do is fill the seats in Studio A, but with few speaking the language….
Can you fill it with people who want to watch a recording of THE CUBE..?”
(Sound Effect) Whoooossssshhhhh…
I’ve thought it was a big ask to fill a studio of around 150-200 Arabic speakers ten times in Feburary in the glittering desert oasis of err… Wembley.
Not even the mild carrot of £25 notes dangling suggestively in front of prospective punters noses was working (as I saw last week), and now anyone can attend. I wonder now that ‘the local natives’ are to be let in, there will be a form of translation provided?
Whilst it’s good for the local facilities that overseas versions of UK programmes are being made in the UK, rather than send the set construction manual on a DVD or uploaded on a FTP server, it does add an extra headache for the production team.
I remember reading on-line that Gallowgate/Diverse productions had to do a similar thing to pack out the audience for Beat The Star series one in Colgone. First, stimpulate that the audience had to have a working grasp of English, but they were by the fact that that area of Germany had a good ex-pat community and (I think) a sizeable RAF/NATO air base not far down the road…oh, and a lucky seat number draw offering a cash prize of around 100 euros per recording.
Still, I suppose the Ibis Hotel around the corner by the stadium or the Premier Inn by Wembley Park tube station won’t mind the extra business drumbed by all these tv companies lining up to throw their locals in the big perspex box of stress.
Survivor has been picked up for 2 more seasons (though Jeff Probst hasn’t signed on for them yet- his contract is up after this upcoming season), and The Amazing Race has been picked up for one more season….
http://www.thrfeed.com/2010/01/cbs-renews-survivor-race.html
Sorry David, this was flagged up as spam for whatever reason. I do go through the Spam folder fairly regularly, so it owuld have shown up eventually.
Well done Tom, it’s a shame about the Wall but I think you deserved the win based on the strong showing in previous rounds.
However, this was one of my favourite eps for two small reasons:
1) Having been a bit off the pace and looking a bit uncomfortable throughout, the hilarious way the Philosophers’ faces lit up when ‘Undo’ comes up as the first bit of a sequence. It’s brilliant when something as small as that can tell us quite a lot about the players.
2) I’m pretty sure I heard David B chuckling away in the background at the conclusion of the Olympic Rings question.
Cheers, Brig. I reckon we’d have done better on the other wall, but it’s easy to say that in hindsight! Can’t complain though.
(Incidentally, perhaps David B can confirm, but I’m fairly sure that the audience at home see the missing vowels questions a little before the teams do. Either that, or it really is more difficult under the studio lights…)
Well the answers seem to come up partway through the contestant responding!
Due to a computer graphics rendering delay, they wind the timeline back a couple of seconds in ths edit so that it’s a lot snappier.
Re: 2, no it isn’t me. I’m quite a long way back behind the cameras and behind a black curtain. You might hear me in a semi, however…
Yep – very good episode, and well done, Tom!
My wife – who answered more questions correctly than I did, as usual – opines that Ms. Coren’s clothing is rather more flattering than many of her outfits from the previous series, but that “she still needs to get a better bra”. (Aforementioned better half has just asked whether VIctoria Coren will see this or not. She doesn’t want to insult VC to her face, virtually speaking, but if it were to happen and she were to get a better bra as a result…)
Brig’s point 2) Ah, the joys of Sky+. I suspect I’ve heard people other than the seven on-screen laughing on the show in the past, but I’m not sure I can place any of those laughs as David’s on this occasion.
Technical question: just how quickly are the teams reacting to the Mssng Vwls qstns and do the viewers at home get to see them a second or two before the players in the studio? (Alternatively, is there an appreciable delay between the players buzzing in and the buzzer sounding on tape?)
Damn, just spotted that I’ve deleted the episode before seeing whose questions they were! Ah well, there’s always a repeat, just so I can see the first minute or two of the show that Sky+ didn’t catch (because it was recording the end of Uni Chal – and, while Sky+ can record two shows at once when you’re not watching anything, we were watching the Food Network at the same time as well) and then watch the closing credits…
Could you not just skip to the end of iPlayer?
Good idea. Wish I’d thought of it…
Incidentally, is there any data to suggest whether Only Connect is overperforming to the same extent on IPlayer as it is on televisual broadcasting?
Mmm, that is an interesting question, especially as this is the first series (I believe) that appears to be avaliable in its entirety until the end of the series. I wonder if the show has a long tail?
I don’t know but it comes a poor third to the main broadcasts on Mon and Thurs.
IAin Weaver, Justin Scroggie and Smylers. So there we are.
I also wonder whether the Brasenose team knew each other before they met at university? (This may be my lack of having seen the first couple of minutes showing, and I still haven’t looked it up on IPlayer.) It does seem a pretty forward thing for a group of freshers to do as fast friends.
The most popular game shows in the world: http://www.tvweek.com/blogs/tvbizwire/2010/01/with-the-opening-of-the.php
1st – Millionaire
2nd – Deal or No Deal
3rd – Wipeout
4th – Wheel of Fortune
5th – Family Feud/Family Fortunes
And in 10th place a Dutch format “I Love My Country” – anyone know anything about it?
Yes.
Dutch quiz about Dutch culture, basically.
Very surprised not to see The Price Is Right / Le Prix Juste / repeats of Joe Pasquale etc. not make the top ten, more or less on its US strength alone. I would also expect Survivor and Big Brother to be up there, but if people will distinguish between some game shows and others to which the label “reality” happens to be applied…
“Hole in the Wall / Fox (US)”
Oh nooooo it wasn’t…
Well done Tom – turns out I think we met at a pilot hosted by DB in 2006. So, hello again.
Er, now *I’m* confused…
It was in a community hall in Norbiton, if I remember rightly…
Good to – er – talk to you again, Dan!
Blimey, don’t remember the Peake there at all. Still, since it was before his Acc! success there’s no reason I should. Incidentally, that show got made by the BBC as a pilot with Eamonn Holmes but didn’t get picked up.
Ta DB – I did wonder whether RoF was piloted or not. (That should confirm I was there!). If it helps I think I won the first game…. fluke, I assure you.
A taster tape is online – just search for “reversal of fortune” “eamonn holmes”.
So, am I wrong in thinking that this week the connection between the two teams was “The meaning of life?”
I always wondered why I seemed to get the answers to the missing vowels questions a second or two before the contestants. Now I know that I probably wasn’t.
Anyone know the ratings for OC last night?
No, Ben Shepard, no. The Krypton Factor has no ‘fun bit’.
Also the Mental Agility test seemed a bit easy, no?
Bring back the day before the day after two days before three days after tomorrow.
Or something.
I thought the one last week was actually pretty tricky.
…Yes, but note that the one last week was a visual version of the sort of one they’d play in the original, just with a moving start time rather than a fixed one…
…And was a repeat from last year.
(Plus, and this is the key thing, I wasn’t actually being serious in my comment. Though, yeah, if you’re a word sort of person, this weeks was easier than most Mental Agilities… If you’re a number sort of person, mind…)
Oddly enough I’m a number sort of person. And I knew you were being facetious, yeah. Also I didn’t remember that one from last year. So I did miss one somewhere.
I did do something of a double take while watching OC on my break at work today. “Is that THE Tom Scott, of cooking food with various random items fame?” I thought.
Bother’s Bar Only Connect question of the day.
For five points, what comes fourth in this sequence?
Max Bygraves
Is it Lulu?
Vernon Kay?
My answer would be Vernon Kay, except Brig beat me to it.
Although if the sequence is what we reckon it is, the answer is actually Ant and Dec on a technicality.
A very good point, that.
I’ll give you that. I’m not sure which it is myself.
The answer I was looking for was Andy Collins, but it’s not fair for me to expect you to answer the question I should have asked, rather than the question I actually did ask.
File under “Being any good”, “not” subdivision.
Who did it between Les Dennis and Andy Collins?
Nobody, but I had intended to start the list at, you know, the beginning. The correct response at this point is XEep-oorp!
*hopes this works, cannot preview this to see whether h1 tags are respected or not*
Nuts, it didn’t. How about “big” tags?
X
Not that either. I’ll shut up now.