Just look at what you could have won – humiliation on national TV
Jim bumbled through proceedings with all the grace of a oneman-band falling down a lift shaft
Not too long ago I auditioned to be a contestant on The Chase
TV quiz show. You know the one – Bradley Walsh and an assortment of high profile brainiacs, the Chasers.
Well obviously the selection process is deeply flawed, as I wasn’t one of the chosen few. However, a runner (they fetch the coffee and, in my case, massage wounded egos), imparted that genius-like levels of intelligence are not the only criteria they employ when choosing quiz show fodder.
Personality counts – perhaps I left mine at Haigh Towers that particular afternoon – and that certain je ne sais quoi. Also, it doesn’t hamper your chances if you’re an idiot.
A very glamorous hopeful from my group was picked and I made a note to catch the episode she brightened with her sparkling personality. She answered a single question correctly and was unceremoniously sent packing in a flustered flurry of botox and big heels. The Governess, in short, governed.
In the words of the old adage; all that glitters isn’t gold and TV gold, it seems, is a different fish and a slippery one at that.
Take University Challenge for example – a quiz show for the educationally elite, the crème de la crème, the frizzy of hair. A spectacle (pushing it, I know) of the supreme intellect; a battle of the boffins.
Well, the question that really needs to be asked is – if they are so smart, why are they on a show that has no prizes? No car, no cash, not even the speedboat so beloved of the tubs of polyesterclad lard, on that retro homage to the hostess trolley and Goblin Teasmade, Bullseye.
So ineffably bad it was genius. Fronted by the legendary Jim Bowen, it featured three pairs of contestants, each consisting of an amateur darts player (the thick one) and a quizzer (the less thick one), competing in darts games and questions to win cash, prizes or BFH – bus fare home.
Jim bumbled and stumbled through proceedings with all the grace of a one-man-band falling down a lift shaft. He was no Bamber Gascoigne, the elegant and intelligent host of University Challenge from 1962 to 1987, but we loved him anyway and when, in November 2014, he was finally handed his own BFH it wasn’t so much bus fare home but Bullseye’s finest host.
And do you remember 3-21? The Yorkshire Television produced hour of nonsense rhymes, masquerading as clues, that ran for 10 years from July 1978 to December 1988, with Ted Rogers as the host. 16.5 million viewers were mesmerised by its combination of pizzazz, prizes and properly difficult trademark hand trickery. Get it wrong in school the day after and the resultant rude gesture, while mimicking the host, meant 100 lines ensued: ‘In future, I must watch University Challenge .In future’ etc.
The object of the game was to avoid being landed with Dusty Bin, the show’s mascot (losers actually received a bog-standard dustbin) and go home with a lovely prize. Talbot Samba, anyone?
As a 16 year-old youth at the time, I would have happily forgone the not so obvious charms of the Talbot, in favour of the infinitely more shapely ones presented by 3-2-1’s occasional co-hosts – ‘Dishy’ Debbie Arnold, Wei Wei Wong, who was always so, so right, and Lamb’s Navy Rum pin-up Caroline Munro.
For younger readers, the Talbot Samba was a precisionish engineered lump, thrown together in France from washing machines and stale baguettes.
It earned the accolade ‘the most economical car in Europe’. Mainly due to the fact that the majority of people would rather take a ride in the business end of a hearse than Johnny Foreigner’s clown car.
Somehow, we seem to have gone from University Challenge to universally challenged. Which brings us to the game show phenomena that is I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here! where has beens, heroes and never weres compete for viewers’ votes by performing and sadly surviving seemingly death-defying tasks and eating trials.
Many of these involve feasting on a variety of jungle foods. Crickets, green ants, mealworms, witchetty grubs, roasted spider, cockroaches and genitals various are the order of the day. Chef is either pregnant, with the strangest cravings ever, or previously worked at the world’s worst motorway services.
Personally, I’m a massive advocate for launching the most annoying celebs in the direction of the nearest alligator. They might not be to my taste but I’m banking a walking handbag would love them.