Who wants to be a millionaire... if Clarkson’s asking the questions!
It’s back — with a prickly new host. So what was our TV critic’s verdict after he braved the hot seat?
LIke so many quiz fans, I’ve sat smugly through countless episodes of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? and reeled off answers, convinced I could be rich if I ever landed a chance to appear on the show.
But when I had the opportunity last week to perch on the famous swivel seat and face those fiendish multiple- choice questions — from new host Jeremy Clarkson, no less — all my thought processes shut down.
Question One: For which movie did Leonardo DiCaprio win his first Oscar in 2016? Was it: A) The Departed, B) The Revenant, C) The Wolf Of Wall Street, or D) The Great Gatsby?
everything I thought I knew went straight into hibernation as my brainstem froze. All I could think was ‘I’ve actually seen only one of those four movies’ and I wanted to blurt out ‘Gatsby!’ and run.
No doubt it would have been worse if there had been real money at stake. This was a mere rehearsal, a chance for me to preview the revamped game show before it begins a week-long run on ITV tomorrow.
The biggest departure from the classic show is its change of host. Since the launch of Millionaire in 1998, presenter Chris Tarrant has been its face. But now in his place comes Mr Clarkson.
The former Top Gear presenter is a similar character at first sight: tall, curmudgeonly, hugely experienced in front of the cameras. Both Tarrant and Clarkson have a reputation for being straightforward blokes who don’t suffer fools.
Better still, Clarkson is a bona fide quiz fan, so he ought to be the ideal choice to revive the format. It’s no secret that ITV would love to bring back Millionaire on a regular basis if this trial run draws a big enough audience.
The first intimation that all is not going quite smoothly comes from the buzz outside the big studio at Media City in Manchester on the day of the first rehearsals. Technicians and assistants seem edgy: Jeremy is a bit nervous, they whisper. It’ll be Ok, but he’s feeling the pressure.
That’s understandable. Clarkson has never tackled a show like this, so tightly scripted and timed. He is more used to the conversational nature of car shows, such as his current Amazon series The Grand Tour. He has never even worked for a commercial network, with advert breaks interrupting the flow. When we come face to face in the Millionaire studio, Clarkson fixes me with a glare across the studio floor and announces loudly that my first question will be: ‘ How many people died on the Titanic and what were all their names?’
Uneasy laughter trembles around the studio.
The format for the new series is largely familiar. Tomorrow night’s Millionaire players will build up from a £100 pot by tackling a few easy warm-up puzzlers, such as: ‘What part of its body does a woodpecker use for pecking? A) Beak, B) Tail, C) Wing, D) Foot?’ to get them used to the game. Only when the prize fund reaches £1,000 do the questions get tricky — at which point some contestants will want to start calling on their ‘lifelines’.
They can use the 50/50, which eliminates two of the four multiplechoice answers, Phone a Friend or Ask the Audience. And there’s now a new lifeline: Ask the Host.
As Clarkson is such a keen quizzer, this seems a jolly notion. When the questions flash up on his
prompt screen, he doesn’t see the correct answers, and there is no producer’s voice in the earpiece feeding him clues. So when a player asks for Clarkson’s help, he can give it — if he actually knows the answer and feels like being helpful.
On the day I was there for the trial run, he gave one contestant a boost when she was flummoxed by a poser about wiring a plug: ‘What colour is the live wire in a three-pin plug? A) Blue, B) Orange, C) Brown, D) Green-and-yellow.’
As Clarkson pointed out, he grew up in the Seventies, when wiring a plug was a DIY rite of passage. Without hesitation, he told her the answer was ‘brown’.
But there was an added complication. As well as the new lifeline, Millionaire now allows players to set their own safety net. Under the old rules, prizes doubled with every question but one wrong answer meant losing almost everything. Get the £ 16,000 question wrong and you forfeited all but £1,000 of your winnings.
There was a safety net at £ 32,000. Once players reached that point, with ten correct answers, they were guaranteed at least that amount. Now this has changed.
Instead, contestants can set the safety net where they want. If they reach £4,000, for example, the next question can be designated as the guaranteed jackpot. Provided they pick the right answer, they will take home a minimum of £8,000. The problem is, Clarkson has to explain this convoluted rule before each question, and ask: ‘Do you want to set your safety net now?’ It is needlessly complicated and repetitive. And as Millionaire was already a perfect format, topping TV ratings from Iceland to Argentina, it’s a mystery why the producers should want to change it. Still, Clarkson seemed to be managing. And then I took the chair, and neither of us coped well. So far, standing in the wings, I had been able to answer all the questions fired at other people.
But when I stared at the screen on the podium in front of the hot seat, my brain froze harder than a penguin stuck in permafrost.
The spotlights swept down and transfixed me in the chair. The familiar theme tune boomed across the studio, the sound of a trap snapping shut.
They started me on that question about the film which gave Leonardo DiCaprio his first Oscar, for £2,000.
I started to babble: I’m not a cinema fan, I don’t go to movies, I’m a telly addict. Films are too expensive — and who wants to sit in a room full of strangers slurping and crunching snacks, when you could be at home watching the television you’ve already paid for?
I did actually go to see The Great Gatsby, but that didn’t help. My
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brain was clutching at that answer for the wrong reasons. Helplessly, I looked up... and realised Clarkson was enjoying this.
Of course he was. He wanted me to fail. I’d just said that I was leaning towards D) The Great Gatsby and now I saw the ghost of a smirk on his face.
So, the answer wasn’t Gatsby. I did some more thinking aloud, and commented that I had barely heard of The Departed or The Revenant. He smirked again, just for a fraction of a moment.
I asked to use my 50/ 50 lifeline. Two choices vanished: Gatsby and The Revenant remained. At this point, I thought I’d found the answer — it wasn’t that Scott Fitzgerald farrago, so it must be The Revenant, a film title that meant nothing to me. ( I wasn’t kidding: I really don’t go to the cinema.)
Now I wanted to see what Clarkson would do. I was sure I’d read his face and that he knew the answer. But would he tell me if I asked?
‘I want to use my other lifeline,’ I said. ‘I’m asking the host.’
Grudgingly, torn between the desire to demonstrate his knowledge and the opposite urge not to help me, he confirmed that the answer was B) The Revenant. ‘I can’t believe I’ve just won you £2,000,’ he grumbled.
Then he had to go through the rigmarole of explaining about the safety net and asking whether I wanted to set it at £4,000. By now, my brain was unfreezing. I believed that if another question foxed me, I could simply read out the answers and watch Clarkson’s face, trying to provoke him into a giveaway smirk.
Perhaps that wouldn’t work for every player. But his tell-tale expressions could give me an edge, like having a friend in the audience to cough at the right moments. As it happened, I didn’t need any more assistance. The next two questions (for £4,000 and £8,000) were ones I knew from my schooldays: ‘What is the fifth planet from the sun? A) Mars, B) Mercury, C) Saturn, D) Jupiter’; and ‘ In golf, what nickname is given to a hole completed in three shots under par? A) Birdie, B) Bogey, C) Eagle, D) Albatross?’ (See below for both answers). At that point, we ran out of time. The klaxon squawked and I bolted from the chair. Later, I asked Clarkson whether he found it difficult to concentrate on just asking the questions, not trying to answer them in his head. ‘I did it with you,’ he admitted. ‘There was one where I was thinking [of the answer], but you have to go back into host mode.’ Let’s not forget that this was the first day of rehearsals. By the time the first episode airs tomorrow, Clarkson may well have learnt to adopt an impassive, unreadable face throughout the show. Good luck to whoever takes that hot seat tomorrow night. If they can ride the wave of panic and survive until rational thought starts to return, they may just win a million. Answers: D) Jupiter, D) Albatross
Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? starts tomorrow at 9.15pm on ITV and continues throughout the week at 9pm.