TIME ON THEIR HANDS

JOE LYCETT AND ALISON HAMMOND ARE CLOCK-WATCHING IN A NEW GAME SHOW…

As anyone who’s ever queued in the post office knows, time is a strange and elastic thing that plays by its own rules. In that spirit, this new game show has done away with timers for its question rounds, and replaced them with something a little bit more fun: contestants will have the amount of time that it takes for a specified task to be performed, like completing a Rubik’s cube underwater or hanging out a football team’s shirts to dry.

The trick is in figuring out which of these tasks will take the longest, and therefore give them the most questions. Inside TV caught up with host Joe Lycett and referee Alison Hammond to find out how it’s all going to work…

Tell us about the show…

Joe Neil Gallery and Jimmy Baker are the guys who came up with it – one of them was making some toast and said, “While the toast is going, ask me some questions”, so that’s how they came up with the format, and now it’s a full eight-part series on BBC1! Telly’s mad for that. It’s simple and well-produced, like all the best formats should be, and with two Brummies, which is always essential for a good TV show, I find.

Alison, you’re the one performing the tasks in round one. Did you discover lots of new talents?

Alison I think I did. I didn’t realise I had so much talent – there was not one task I didn’t enjoy doing. I discovered that I can pick up pom-poms with my nose, using Vaseline, and obviously that comes in handy because I do like to have pom-poms on my jacket.

Joe There are lots of things I love about Alison, but one of them is how she had to say things to the contestants that were totally insane – like the one where you were straining baked beans through a pair of tights, and you go, “I love beans, but I hate the bits”.

Were the contestants ever distracted by the timer challenges while they were answering questions?

Alison I think they get a pep talk beforehand saying, “Listen, Alison’s going to be doing the timer so you need to focus on Joe and the questions”, as it is quite offputting. But I love that! Joe I didn’t really get to watch Alison while we were filming it, as I was asking the questions and focusing on getting those right. I’ve watched a couple of episodes now, though, and some of the stuff that she had to do is just so funny. The way she threw herself into stuff, the energy is just brilliant.