Why smarmy charmer Osman really is a winning quizmaster

Here’s a confession. When I’m not watching telly to review and I ought really to be doing something constructive, like clearing the gutters or fixing the sink, I’ve been binge-watching old series of Richard Osman’s House Of Games (BBC2).

Of all the teatime quizzes, it’s the flimsiest. It lacks the rigorous general knowledge questions of eggheads or the mounting panic of The Chase.

It certainly doesn’t have the baffling complexity of the Beeb’s new afternoon quiz game with rob Beckett, Head Hunter, on BBC1, which couldn’t be more complicated if it came with subtitles in Croatian.

In fact, getting the answers right on House Of Games barely matters at all. Asked on Monday’s show to guess the height of the tallest sandcastle ever built, former X Factor presenter Kate Thornton suggested three kilometres — more than a mile and three-quarters.

That’s what makes the game so relaxing to watch. Playing along at home, you can’t possibly do worse than the celebrity guests.

Actor Ade edmondson, one of the contestants as the series returned this week, started so badly that even punk rocker Vyvyan, his character from The Young Ones, would be ashamed of him. Most of the conundrums demand wild guesswork or a gift for tongue-twisters. every day the contest ends with a round called Answer smash, which involves a picture of someone famous and a trivia question: to score a point, you have to take both answers and squish them into one.

For example, a photo of the second man on the Moon, plus the question: ‘Name the most famous dog in silent movies.’ The answers are ‘Buzz Aldrin’ and ‘rin Tin Tin’, so you win by saying: ‘ Buzz Aldrin-tin-tin.’

It’s practically impossible, but not in the way that the fiendishly intellectual Only Connect is impossible. This is more of a party game — in fact, Osman could probably have a hit with a late-night version by getting his guests drunk first.

But the silliness isn’t what makes it so addictive. What keeps me coming back is the way Osman subtly goads the players to be competitive, drowning them in charm then lobbing honeyed insults at them as they flounder around.

He’ll tell the losing players that they’ve been desperately unlucky — then reacts with incredulity if they get a question right.

When celebs are playing well, he’ll praise them mockingly and then urge the others, in the nicest possible way, to gang up on the clever-clogs.

In his own way, Osman is as smarmy as Hughie Green or Bob Monkhouse ever were... but it’s all a leg-pull and we’re expected to know that. He means it most insincerely, folks.

For sheer insincerity, Fred sirieix matches him on Snackmasters ( C4). Holding up a Monster Munch crispy puff, he purred: ‘Look at this work of art, look how beautiful it is.’

Then he popped it in his mouth and gasped at the way it dissolved to nothing: ‘It’s gone, just like the leg of a quail.’ snackmasters, which challenges two top chefs to replicate cheap, mass-produced packet food, is proving much more entertaining than you might expect.

That’s largely due to the demented competitiveness of the cooks.

One chef, Tristan Welch, who runs the upmarket Parker’s Tavern in Cambridge, was so intent on winning that he bought a corn extruder, a sort of snacksquirting machine, from China . . . then hired a Chinese engineer to get it working.

He had to run the device in the car park, in case it blew up. You don’t get that problem with quails’ legs.