Contestant who got more than he bargained for...

QUIZ shows today are a TV mainstay. But when I was presenting the quickfire quiz Sale Of The Century during the Seventies and early Eighties, newspaper columnists were pompous and condescending about quiz shows. They considered them downmarket entertainment.

Television companies shouldn’t be putting such things on our screens, they cried — TV’s role was to lift the aspirations of the public. Only quality shows should be aired. Quiz shows were naff and therefore so was I, for presenting one of the most popular ones.

And it really was popular. The Christmas 1978 edition drew more than 21 million viewers, an all-time record for an ITV quiz.

But I didn’t think about viewing figures when I was on camera. I was too busy dealing with nervous participants. Most of them had never been on television before, and it was my job to help them relax.

I always met the contestants beforehand, to get to know them so that they would not be inhibited when I put on the pressure later in the show. On one particular occasion, the three contestants were an attractive young woman, a quietly self-effacing, middle-aged man and a friendly, voluble cockney character.

I spoke to the woman first and discovered a little about her. I then turned to the Londoner and said: ‘On the card I have here, it says you are a pawnbroker . . .’

Before I could go any further, he jumped in to explain rapidly that, while he did that kind of work, his main source of income came from working off barrows in the market, where most of his money was earned in cash:

‘Mostly back-handers, you understand, Nicholas, nothing declared. What the eye don’t see, the heart don’t grieve over, if you get my meaning, Nicholas. I couldn’t put that down as my living for obvious reasons, Nicholas, so I thought pawnbroker covered a multitude of sins, without raising no suspicions . . .’

He carried on loquaciously for a time and then said: ‘Oh, look at me, I’m talking too much.’

Turning abruptly to the third contestant, who had been listening quietly, I asked: ‘And what do you do for a living?’

The man replied drily: ‘I’m an income tax inspector.’

I had never before seen anyone actually turn white in an instant.