Look! They're all women! Let's take a look at the runners and riders and take a look at their odds.
Sam and Amanda - Both at 25 (that's 24-1 in old money of course) right now, they're twins! They like the colour pink. Booed a bit on the way in.
Leslie - at 32 and in her sixties, a headhunter and apparently used to be a stand up comic. She got massive cheers from the crowd on her entrance.
Charley - unfancied at 50, she's an unemployed socialite. The crowd were chanting "get a job!" in her general direction as she went into the house. We'll be disappointed if Big Brother's Little Brother doesn't come up with a "Charley says..." parody at some point.
Tracey - 36 year old rave cleaner is currently third favourite at 17.5. 'AVE IT! Big cheers for Tracy. Her ideal housemate would be Bary Scott from the Cillit Bang ads. Zany!
Chanelle - At 24, she is a Victoria Beckham lookalike. She's also from Yorkshire and complained that that never usually have fun Yorkshire people in the house.
Shabnam - At 34, Davina thinks she looks like Amy Winehouse, she thinks she looks more like Dannii Minogue.
Emily - At 24, she's the house indie kid. She's a bit posh, and very upset that people don't take education seriously.
Laura - Welsh Laura is currently the favourite at 8.6. She prefers squash to alcohol.
Nicky - At 18.5, she's half Indian, half Irish, all miserable. Could be interesting though.
Carole - Second fave at 14.5, Carole is a protester, like Kitten bit with a bit more savvy and experience seeing as she's in her fifties.
And there you have it! One male is going into the house on Friday night. Rumours suggest that half the females are going to get kicked out in the next fortnight and replaced by males.
Check back later for details on Fantasy Big Brother 2007.
The £50,000 Can You Stop The Watch Exactly On 60 Seconds Challenge
No I haven't watched Big Brother yet, but I have just come back from The Clock Is Ticking - which has dropped its National Lottery connection. There are quite a lot of bits in it, but handily I thought to put a pen in my coat pocket aeons ago so I could get it all down from memory after the show.
When we got in, we were each given a Price Is Right style namebadge and our watches were taken from us so "we can't keep track of time".
The set. It's like the audience are facing head-on at the apex of two large tunnels in a V shape. On the left hand side of the stage, a big safe with a large display hanging over it. The right hand bit of the stage is the main stage which has a large circular screen. See if you can guess what it might be for.
Titles are a hi-tech computer graphical fly through the workings of a large clock. Title font is a bit modern James Bond-y, the K in "clock" is pointing at 1:25.
It's Dick and Dom!
The main premise of the show: inside the giant safe is £50,000. A 45 minute timer is on the large read-out above the safe. When the timer hits zero, the safe will unlock for precisely one second. One lucky member of the audience will get to try and open the safe at the end of the show, but there's fun to be had until that happens!
First game is Gone in 60 Seconds. Dom goes into the audience looking for people in relationships, ends up with planted contestant who is with boyf and other chum. They get to play a game. Dom will ask them questions to be answered in turn. The questions could be general knowledge or hilarious questions about the various relationships between girl and friend with hilarious consequences. For every right answer, Dick chucks £1,000 on to the table. Here's the catch - if the players don't hit the Big Red Button after 60 seconds, the trapdoor in the table opens dumping all the money with it. But it's no good going too early - for every second under 60, Dick will take £1,000 away. After they hit the button, they are given the opportunity to carry on if they think they've stopped too early - doesn't REALLY work I don't think, but it does let the audience shout "GAMBLE!!!" in the Bullseye stylee. "The Clock is Ticking... now!" iasn't a brilliant catchphrase, all told.
The Pod - the safe revolves to reveal a Mr and Mrs style non-soundproofed pod. Out comes a box with lots of familiar looking objects - it's the watches that were taken from everyone in the BBC foyer. Whoa-hoa! Dick and Dom pick a watch (this is a pilot show, so we suspect most the contestants are plants). They're going to play for £5,000. They're going to sit inside the pod and try and keep track of time - Dick and Dom will go back to them later in the show, and if they can guess what the giant countdown clock is at within a minute either side then they win. It's unclear how this is going to work properly with non-planted players given the amount of stop-start in recording.
Another audience surprise, two people are getting married. Aww. D and D are going to give them the chance to win the wedding dress. She is going to have to keep time, meanwhile he is going to have to withstand an ice cold shower. Ladies and homosexuals who are fond of short slightly furtive men will be pleased to know that Dom gets his kit off and tests the shower first to assure us that yes, it's cold. She has the big red button in front of her, if she waits sixty seconds before hitting it, and if he can withstand the shower, she wins the dress. Whatsmore, Dick throws in 20 bottles of champagne for the wedding, but says he will take one away for every second over sixty she made him withstand the pain. Unfortunately, she pressed after 80 seconds, but there you are.
Famous for 15 Seconds - in Manchester is a spectacular talent waiting to be performed. Dick and Dom will start a three minute clock and then cut back to Manchester for precisely 15 seconds. If the act has timed it right, then he will get to display his talent to the nation. Time it wrong, and we'll miss it or watch 15 seconds of them counting. This bit was pre-recorded as it happens.
Whilst those three minutes were counting we were treated to a VT insert where D and D take on some hard hairy bikers from Exeter. The challenge was for them to eat a doughnut without licking their lips for one minute, with hilarious consequences.
Sing When You're Winning - it's the Videoke round from That's Showbusiness. Act comes on singing a song, music goes off, hit big red button when they get to the chorus, Dick and Dom award cash depending on how good they are. Highlight: dour act being awarded a fiver but Dom asking if he had £2.50 change.
The Pod again.
Surprise Audience Game - this one genuinely did seem to come as a bit of a shock to one audience member. Dom goes up asking if they know someone who is always late for things. Well yes, a planted audience member has a mate with him who made them late for a trip to Greece once. Time for a game, stupid mate is strapped vertically to a wheel which spins round once a minute (Dick gives a demonstration). At 10 second points (with a second either side seemingly) there are "prize zones", and at 55-60 seconds there is a luxury Greek holiday. Blindfolded put-upon chum has to hit the big red button when he thinks his stupid mate's head is pointing to a prize zone. If he's correct they win prizes, if he's too early or late than stupid mate gets gunged by Dick and Dom.
Finally the all important end game. Replay of "security camera" of audience coming in is "randomly stopped". Whoever is in it has to count five seconds and then shput either Dick or Dom depending on who is their favourite ("Shout Dom if you like a bit of Dom and shout Dick if you like a bit of... well..."). If they shout exactly on five seconds they get to play the endgame, if not then they'll blow up another chair. Winning contestant gets to bring a partner with them.
When the countdown clock reaches zero, the safe will open for one second. The contestants can extend this brief period by answering three questions, each correct answer adds another second to the time the safe will remain unlocked. With about thirty seconds to go, the countdown clock disappears. They must push the big red button when they think the safe is unlocked. Audience encouraged to shout "push it!!!" when they think the time is up.
How do they do the reveal? Do they dramatically make the contestants try and open the safe door? No, they flash the word "locked" or "unlocked" up on the giant display, then they go for the door. Obviously.
Pleasingly at the end they start the clock again for next week's show in the Wanted stylee. This will lead to all sorts of letters on Points of View from people pointing out that the show would need to start a minute later each time for it to work properly, and that if the safe is locked for the week how is someone going to put the money in, eh?
A bonus bit was filmed involving children trying not to give into the temptation of a large pile of chocolate in front of them for 60 seconds for prizes.
So basically it's the same game tarted up various times for 45 minutes. Dick and Dom were decent and likable hosts but tended to play their inherent wackiness down a bit. We can see this possibly getting one series but no more than that.
Also, it took three and a half hours to film. Do you remember when Noel's House Party did everything live in 50 minutes? We do. If it takes more than three hours to film, it's probably not going to be a hit is my rule of thumb.
29th May 2007
The Clipton Factor: Big Brother US
Right! Big Brother 8 begins on Channel 4 tomorrow night, so for this week's Clipton Factor we're going to have a look at last year's Big Brother All-Stars from the States. In particular, what happens when big expensive endurance-based set-pieces go hilariously against the producers. On live television.
We're not going to be able to comment on the BB Launch until Thursday, because tomorrow we're going to be at the pilot recording for The National Lottery Dick and Dom's The Clock Is Ticking..., a recording report of which will appear here late Wednesday night.
But more exciting! We've got another MYSTERY INTERVIEW lined up, and for a hint as to who it is, let's just say that The Krypton Factor isn't the only show with a big birthday this year...
26th May 2007
Fort Boyard Fri... Saturday
It's the Machine Infernale again! But hold on! This is a different one! Edit: Actually we've just noticed it's referred to as the Terrible Machine, so it really is completely different!
Indeed, 2002's major innovation was having the last three adventures performed in relay fashion - nine minutes for the lot, but if you took longer than three minutes to complete one of them then one of the clues would blow up. Run out of time and all of them would blow up. Really it's a sort of proto-version of how you don't get to see your earnt clues until right at the end.
Quite a few new adventures were made for this year, The Escape Ladder is the first one shown here, then a reversioning of the old Tunnel of Rats which had been dropped a few years previous, and finally the Elastic Jump (except that's been around since 1990).
Perhaps you can see for yourself one of the inate problems of this bit...
In other Boyard stuff, you can download the modern theme from Paul Koulak's site. And not only Fort Boyard, but also La Piste de Xapatan as well! Apparently a British pilot (The Legend of Xapitan) was made for that, but it got laughed out of the office. If anyone has an episode of Xapitan, we'd love to see it having only read bits about it.
25th May 2007
Fort Boyard Friday tomorrow, I've had too much to drink this evening I'm afraid :(
24th May 2007
That will get the viewers in then
It's the Big Brother OFCOM report! What have we learnt?
It might be my working classness showing off here, but having read the transcription of the "shocking" "unbroadcastable" stuff, we still believe a mountain has been made out of a molehill of the whole racism debate. There's not really anything there that was more dodgy than the stuff they did show.
But there is an important point to be made, and that is the fact that Endemol/Channel 4 seemed perfectly happy to hide fact from people in the most blaise and arrogant fashion. They're saying mix-up in communication, we're not buying it and it is their own fault. Despite the fact that Big Brother has in many ways single-handedly made the public more media-savvy, they apparently seem insistant on treating the public like stupid idiots. Have you noticed how few public faces Big Brother has these days? It's like the people who make it are terrified to be associated with it.
So what are Channel 4 doing about it? Well OFCOM is forcing them to broadcast an apology before Wednesday's launch show, Thursday's repeat and Friday's eviction show. They are going to have a Channel 4 journalist and legal team covering the show. They're going to have a "senior welfare producer". And Channel 4 are bringing back a Right to Reply style show, and a commissioning a documentary into racism. Lovely.
And I'm sure it's a happy accident that opening night next Wednesday will get 1-2 million viewers than expected also. In fact there's a general feeling of outward grief, inward laughing their backsides off.
Still, Fantasy Big Brother begins next weekend.
Noel news is good news
Noel Edmonds is hosting the primetime version of Are You Smarter Than a Ten Year Old? on Sky One, but interestingly it is getting a different host for its weekdaily run. You can read more about the show here.
22nd May 2007
The Clipton Factor: Knightmare/The People Versus
It literally does not come any more trivial than this - it's the Knightmare/People Versus crossover you've ALL been waiting for! It concerns a guy named Michael Cule who played Brother Mace in the legendary Knightmare turning up as a civilian contestant on The People Versus with Kaye Adams ten years later. Our Knightmare Fan Club newsletters suggested he is/was an avid roleplayer and had to wear padding for the Brother Mace role. So there we are.
I'll let someone else decides where this goes on UKGameshows.com.
21st May 2007
Eurovisiontastic mate, not 'arf
Because it's about time I put a new comment box up, someone on the Popjustice messageboards has put up the chart positions of all the songs from last week's Eurovision that have made it into the UK Top 200. So let's have a chart rundown, shall we?
112: Maria ŠERIFOVIĆ - Molitva (Serbia - yeah, this truly deserved to win didn't it?)
121: The Ark - The Worrying Kind (Sweden)
122: Hanna Pakarinen - Leave Me Alone (Finland)
124: Sarbel - Yassou Maria (Greece)
144: Les Fatals Picards - L'Amour A La Francaise (France - the fact this disn't go top 40 is just mental)
170: Sopho - Visionary Dream (Georgia)
So there we are. That's not bad given a lack of physical media, isn't it? But no Comme Ci Comme Ca? Criminal.
18th May 2007
Fort Boyard Friday
Well, here's the original treasure room from 1990s Les Cles de Fort Boyard. More interestingly, it's the episode where a contestant doesn't make it out of the treasure room in time, the only time it's ever happened as far as we know.
We play sexy football
We asked TV's Glenn Hugill if there was a crisis of conscience after last Sunday's amazing episode of Deal or No Dealwhere PJ wasn't made a final cash offer, had the 1p box but was allowed to take home whatever was opened in the viewer's box. I think he's dodged the question, he thinks he's answered indirectly. MAKE UP YOUR OWN MINDS.
"Who'd be a football manager? Even if you're top of the league with record attendances, there will always be some fans who still think your tactics suck. Sometimes, these supporters will hang around in a bar and discuss how they would run the club. And who's to say it wouldn't be better under their rule? That's what makes football worth talking about.
We played the beautiful game last Sunday as it happens. It was a thriller in front of another extraordinary crowd. We were a goal up with just seconds to go. A unique passage of play led us to execute one of our famous one-offs; a risky new set piece. It could have sealed a glorious victory but in fact the ball ended up in the opposite net. Some fans reckon it was an own goal; others say it was just an unfortunate deflection - replays are unclear. A whistle blew. The 45 minutes were up.
We could settle for a draw or risk extra time. If we dared play on, there was only a 1 in 3 chance of the golden goal going our way and giving us the title. Failure was twice as likely.
The odds were against us.
But we went for it.
Because we play sexy football.
Glenn x
PS We've just been taken over by a millionaire too."
16th May 2007
No Limits
I won't bother repeating myself, there's a review of That's the Question up on UKGameshows.com.
I bet Challenge get Lingo by the end of the year, that's all I'm saying. And in a brilliant bit of foresight, it looks like they're going to try and launch Wanna Bet? over here as well off the back of the US Ant and Dec pilot, pretty much like I said they would.
In other news, Big Brother 8 begins May 30th. A Wednesday no less.
15th May 2007
The Clipton Factor: A Prendre ou a Laisser
In the week that the producers remembered that the reason the man in the street watches the show is because they like the tension, drama and excitement and not everyone walking away with a modest five-figure sum of money, here's the whole thing done with a lot more verve and panache in the original French show. Without bottling it at the end.
Previous to here, she turned down €5,000 and has just lost the blue and €250,000 boxes.
However, because we're not the sort of place to blithely ignore fact to pursue our own agenda, this tale comes with a twist: the French show was axed earlier this year after the US style revamp. So there you go.
Also in other news: both Pay Day and Win My Wage sound like they're going to be very dull.
13th May 2007
The UK didn't even give Andorra any points!
This country.
Anyway, that was quite a good Eurovision last night wasn't it? Certainly more songs worth acquiring than in recent years, to my mind anyway.
And now as is traditional, how does Europe stand up to the Bother's Bar jury and the Bother's Party jury? The scoring systems:
Eurovision - each of the 42 countries of the Eurovision has a phone vote and phones in their results, the top ten scoring points, one to eight for positions ten through three, and ten points and twelve for the second most popular and most popular song for each country.
The Bother's Bar jury each gives a mark out of ten and the mean average is taken.
The Bother's Party jury involves fifteen people, ten of whom give marks out of ten and a group of three and a group of two give a collective group mark (i.e. they turned up late - early songs were given a five point booster for each collective group not there). After the reprise, everybody decides on an individual favourite who wins five bonus points. The collectives are individuals for the bonus points.
The Eurovision Song Contest
Bother's Bar Jury
Bother's Party Jury
Serbia 268
Ukraine 235
Russia 207
Turkey 163
Bulgaria 157
Belarus 145
Greece 139
Armenia 138
Hungary 128
Moldova 109
Bosnia and Herzegovina 106
Georgia 97
Romania 84
FYR Macedonia 73
Slovenia 66
Latvia 54
Finland 53
Sweden 51
Germany 49
Spain 43
Lithuania 28
France 19
United Kingdom 19
Ireland 5
Germany 8.5
Finland 7.8
UK 7.5
Moldova 7.2
FYR Macedonia 7
Sweden 7
Latvia 6.6
France 6.4
Spain 6.4
Romania 6.2
Belarus 6
Hungary 6
Slovenia 6
Serbia 5.8
Greece 5.67
Russia 5.67
Bosnia and Herzegovina 5.6
Georgia 5.6
Ukraine 5.6
Turkey 5.5
Ireland 5
Lithuania 5
Bulgaria 4.8
Armenia 4.6
Russia 128
UK 103
Ukraine 101
Bulgaria 97
France 96
Greece 87
Moldova 74
FYR Macedonia 63
Georgia 62
Germany 62
Romania 62
Finland 62
Latvia 61
Slovenia 60
Serbia 59
Belarus 54
Spain 48
Ireland 45
Sweden 45
Bosnia and Herzegovina 38
Armenia 36
Hungary 35
Turkey 33
Lithuania 20
So basically it looks like we can't agree on anything. There was an above average level of homosexuality at the party last night which might explain some of our choices, but I absolutely stand by most of our top five - Russia was a absolutely brilliant slice of pop which really worked on the night (which reminds me of the Girls Aloud song "Money") and won six of the bonus votes out of fourteen (i.e. someone had to leave early). The UK was a grower. The Ukraine's techno dance beats would have won me over even without the wackiness, ditto Bulgaria ("MORTAL KOMBAT!") and I thought it was a massive shame France didn't do better seeing as it was their best and catchiest song in absolutely years.
Thanks to the commentary team who did a brilliant job as always, the scores and commentaries will be kept in the Eurovision 2007 page for posterity. And yes, I'll set up a Eurovision Dance Contest commentary if there's enough call for it.
Well done to Helsinki, you put on a brilliant show. Next year: To Belgrade!
***
Traditional Eurovision Round-up tomorrow (i.e. later during the day proper), in the meantime, here's how much Eurovision has cost me this year:
£25 total on this year's winners except for a technicality Andorra.
£12.50 on smaller bets, none of which came in.
£1 on the trad. sweepstake. Lost.
Couldn't find the cables for my printer to print out the sweepstake tickets this afternoon so in true impulsive Bother fashion, went out and bought a new printer for £50.
Find the old printer cables in a bag they couldn't POSSIBLY be in. So now I've an old Epson going spare.
But to temper that:
I won a tenner on the lottery! Crazy.
So by my reckoning, The Eurovision Song Contest has left me (does adding up) £78.50 worse for wear. And that's not counting food and drink for the party.
If we do Fantasy Big Brother this year (and I'm undecided on that), you'll understand if the prizes are a bit rubbish, won't you?
12th May 2007
In an exciting new twist, Haloscan is taking and accepting comments but not showing them for several hours. This is annoying, and if anyone has any ideas for comment-y software on the web so we can keep doing this in this fashion we'd like to know about it.
If you are writing things, I can see them on my admin page but they will take a while to show up. This means commentary is going to be a bit like playing Consequences for now :(
UPDATE! "One of the database servers fell out of sync and needs to catch up with the other databases so comment posting has been disabled temporarily to speed up the process.
This is the reason for the glitches you may be experiencing with the site (settings not saving, comment counts not updating, some new comments not appearing on comment pages even though they display in the "Manage comments" page, etc).
We'll have this sorted soon as possible and appreciate your patience in this matter."
Sorry Punters, let's hope they get it all sorted for eight.
Fort Boyard Friday Saturday Edition
One of my favourite adventures this, it's Parcours encombré - the encumbered course. A contestant is given 90 Boyards they have to hold in their hands and then make their way through an obstacle course (including the dreaded cage maze towards the end). In the opening room, six potential cluewords are written on jars for the contestant to remember, the contestant buys words from the clue seller at the end but only one of the six canisters contains the one true clueword. If they don't find it, hopefully they might be able to remember and eliminate the fake ones for when it comes to finding the codeword.
10th May 2007
What a bloody fix.
Fort Boyard Friday will be on Saturday this week.
9th May 2007
The Clock is Ticking
We may well be going to see the pilot of this, here is the exciting press release thing:
"The Clock Is Ticking is a brand new, fast-paced game show hosted by cheeky and irreverent duo Dick & Dom, where amazing prizes are on offer for just being able to tell the time! Easy! But of course there's a catch - because this show is all about judging time without being able to see a clock. On stage there is a safe. In the safe is £50,000. At the end of the show, the safe will open for precisely three seconds - but who will time it right to win the cash?
There are loads of other games, celebrity guests and a big surprise for someone in the audience. This is a great opportunity to come to the recording of the pilot of this exciting new Saturday night show for BBC One."
It's Don't Forget Your Alarm Clock then.
In other news, do you know what's going to kill For The Rest Of Your Life? It's the amount of explanation Nicky Campbell does before each reveal. He's actually not a bad host for this, but the game needs to move much faster than it currently does.
Adore-ah Andorrah!
If Andorra win the Eurovision this weekend, I stand to make quite a lot of money indeed. So vote vote early, vote often.
We're installed the commentary booth on the sidebar there, if you've nothing better to do then please join in, and we shall see how the Bother's Bar jury compares with the Bother's Party jury and ultimately and less importantly how it compares with what the rest of Europe thinks. Exciting stuff indeed.
Betfair's current top ten to qualify for the main final as of Wednesday 6pm are: Serbia, Belarus, Switzerland, Cyprus, Turkey, Bulgaria, FYR Macedonia, Andorra, Latvia and Slovenia. Make of that what you will. There will be 28 countries fighting for the ten places.
8th May 2007
The Clipton Factor: Gamesmaster
On the day that Patrick Moore suggested that women have ruined TV, and seeing as it's Summer (i.e. it's raining. But if you ever hear anyone hilariously go "tch, that's Summer over then," after the weather turns after a sunny day, you have the obligation as a Bother's Bar punter to PUNCH them in the FACE) here's Domink Diamond finding an excuse to be purile in the final Christmas episode of Gamesmaster from 1997.
For The Rest of Your Life
In an embarrassing climbdown, FTROYL (as all the cool kids are calling it) is actually... not as bad as I was expecting. Let's not pretend it's the best thing ever though, I went in with low expectations and they were exceeded. We went and saw the pilot being filmed last Summer (the rules are down the bottom of August 2006's page).
The intro had comedy close-up camera angles, which was actually very Watchdog. As was Nicky Campbell. Actually I can't work out why they decided to film lots of the show in such a zoo fashion.
The graphics are a vast improvement on the pilot.
Here's really the thing though, it's not unengaging, but at no point did I ever find it anything more than mildly interesting. I didn't really care, but I didn't feel the need to fast forward through any of it either.
And the thing is, nobody in their right minds is going to gamble past the ten year stage. This is going to be a problem. On Deal or No Deal, when the Banker remembers it's an entertainment show and not an economics lesson, the big money gamble should be and is a temptation. On this show, once you get past a certain point, the odds get so unfathomably against you for the comparatively little reward on offer that there's genuinely little point in going on. To win the money for the rest of your life, you'd have to hit the eleven white lights in the final on the trot without any of the four reds. Whatsmore, your partner would also have to brave that out. It's never going to happen!
The other thing is that it feels really complicated. Obviously it isn't (hit the whites! Avoid the reds!), yet they've still managed to give the impression that there's too much going on.
At least they seem to have sorted out the confusion with hitting reds at the beginning. You don't seem to go below zero (but there's a neat visual representation of the fact you can't get the maximum any more), but if you lose all your reds you're out. Four rungs up are required to get through to round two.
Overall, it's a shade of reddy-beige.
Still, at least Pyramid Game was better tonight, eh.
Doooo meee a favour! Plug me into a Sega!
A clever reference for all you older readers out there, here's the Big Brother 8 eye.
7th May 2007
Donny's Pyramid Show
Why do all the listings mags refer to it as The Pyramid Show With Donny Osmond? Anyway, we went and saw this being recorded. Does the end product reflect the recording?
No.
It's really odd, I gather they're not showing the episodes in sequence (except where contestants have rolled over), and if this is the case, why the bloody hell did they choose to show that one first?
Pyramid itself is actually a great game, but watching it being played consistantly badly as it was tonight is really, really frustrating. And it IS annoying, because the games I saw live generally were played quite well, and featured the celebs who played this evening.
I don't know what it is but something in the edit has completely sucked the life out of the show. Some of the cuts were really jarring!
The sound effects aren't too bad, except for the whoosh that brings the clock up which is really super-annoying.
And we mentioned this at the time and it looks even worse on screen - the judging is awful - slow in most cases, and this evening they dinged "Famous puppets" only to inexplicably decide it was disallowed at the end but without revealing why (it'll be because Phil Tufnell started trying to describe the word "famous" rather keep to the lists). It needs a judge with more balls to make a quick correct decision.
Overall, hugely disappointing and I really hope it improves because I'd quite like it to succeed. Although the phone-in competition to win a Donny Osmond robe and CD was quite funny.
And tomorrow it's For The Rest Of Your Life!
6th May 2007
In an interesting addenum to an earlier entry, the entire pilot episode of Steal is now avaliable for having a look at on UKGameshows.com, thanks to one of the co-creators.
5th May 2007
It's the question on everybody's lips, who is going to win The National Lottery Peopl... I mean The Eurovision Song Contest?
We've just spent the last three-and-a-bit hours listening to all 42 of the songs, and our inital and final reactions have been caught here for you. Who HAVE we put some actual real money on?
4th May 2007
Fort Boyard Friday
We went to Go Ape! In Thetford Forest today. It's probably the closest thing you're likely to get to doing Boyard-esque things without actually going on the show and we recommend it heartily.
With that in mind here's something more sedate, it's a task called "Piège du tigre" - Tiger Trap, and is the first example of a game that turned the central idea on its head a bit, by making the key easy but getting out hard (two years before our very own David B came up with the portcullis cog building game in The Crystal Maze as it turns out). It's from the first series in 1990, we apologize for the poor quality and the Polish commentary (as this comes from a Polish broadcast, back when countries that couldn't afford to make their own version just took the French one and added a local commentary).
Doubtless you'll also have noticed it forms the basis of one of the central aspects of the show from the next series onwards.
3rd May 2007
This is what we want!
An amazing three minute clip of the pilot show for 1980s hi-tech quiz Steal has gone up on UKGameshows.com. With Wayne Dobson! Unfortunately it's more "chat" rather than "game" but there we are. Interesting to see that it had a magic theme rather than a cat burglar theme.
Whatever happened to Wayne Dobson, eh?
And now The Great Big Quiz has given up the ghost! Where now for Russ from Scooch when Eurovision finishes? Surely, surelyGlitterball awaits?
2nd May 2007
It looks likely to be about as good as it has been the last two years.
What do you do when you've had eight pints of an alcoholic beverage quite quickly in an evening? Fall over? Vomit? E-mail TV producers thinking it would be a good idea to ask for an interview?
(We wrote this in the comment thread but I think it's interesting enough to draw wider attention)
Incidentally, I flicked across to The Great Big Quiz on FTN last night who have started implementing the new rules on showing your chances on getting through. There's a counter displaying how many calls were had been taken in the last fifteen minutes and updated every fifteen seconds and also what percentage of people were being put on hold (100% last night, so your odds on getting through at any particular time were about 1 in 300).
The rolling calls figure of the time I had a look suggested they were taking a rolling average of somewhere between 300 and 350 calls in any given fifteen minute period, that suggests (correct me if I'm wrong) 20-25 calls a minute which at a pound a go, let's say they get to keep 75p of that, suggesting turnover of £15-£18 a minute. Over three hours that's £2,700 - £3,200 in revenue. Very interesting. I look forward to seeing how Glitterball implements it, and if the figures go up or down.
Although I imagine when they're not putting 100% of people on hold the call number will go up quite a bit, obviously.
EDIT: Glitterball are putting their call stats up - but goodness they are trying to hide them by only flashing them up once a minute - and right now they're getting about 975 calls a minute. That's about £600 revenue a minute. Very interesting.
1st May 2007
The Clipton Factor: Wanted
Right, a bit self-indulgent this one as it involves an in-joke with excellent but obviously not as popular as Bother's Bar blog OTT, Paul Denchfield's new role as viral marketeer and his eyebrows. Here is a peculiar edit of the final ever episode of ahead-of-its-time adventure show Wanted from 1997. Also features a brief guest appearance of Charlotte from that clip of Win Lose or Draw a few weeks ago.
Doooo meee a favour! Plug me into a Sega!