Well it’s been almost six weeks, I figure it was about time for some Fort Boyard at the bar, so I’ve updated the Specials Board with the articles I’ve written about the Fort with a 2010 EXCLUSIVE!!!! update of the retrospective. I bet I’ve missed something somewhere, and I’m pretty sure someone will mention what. Whatever happened to Operation Fort Boyard, then?

In other news, you can now register for The BotherSOP Game 2 and this time round I’ve even provided the Tournament ID number you can search to find it a bit easier (through Requests up the top). PROVE YOUR DOMINION OVER THE SOULS OF OTHER FELLOW MAN THROUGH PLAYING CARDS. That is why we play poker. Also: money and trophies.

We’ve not had a round-up thread for a while, so let’s do one now:

ITV fined about £3k (including fees) over the I’m a Celeb rat-eating incident. Regardless of how ridiculous I think the situation is, I’m glad that ITV are at least taking responsibility for it and haven’t just left Manning and D’Acampo out to dry. Someone should do some sort of Rodent Injury Lawyers 4 U skit, it would go down a storm on Radio 4 I imagine.

A late arrival for the Board of Excitement, Deal or No Deal’s Love Week begins today.

Well done and thanks to everyone who played!

The results can be found here.

I was rather hoping a few more would turn up so to entice you for Game 2 (on 21st Feb), you missed out on David Bodycombe being lucky, discussion of A-ha, discussion of Compare the Meerkat and discussion of David Bodycombe being lucky. Amongst other things! The details will go up soon.

It’s American reality season, which is good news for us because that means easy entries:

• The Bother Series of Poker 2010 Event 1 (Tonight, 8pm GMT/1500 ET) – if you’re playing in this tonight then best of luck. If you intend on playing but haven’t deposited with Full Tilt yet, I advise against waiting until 7:45pm to do it, sometimes it can take a little while to go through. You should still be able to join in anytime up until 8:10 in theory, although how it will work out in practice I’m not sure. There’s no lobby chat, so I’ve put a new page up for discussion relating to the first event. When the game gets going, you can chat as a player or as an observer at will, in theory. Good luck!
• University Challenge (Monday, 8pm, BBC2) I don’t normally make a habit of billing (or indeed watching) this, usually tuning in about ten minutes befre the end waiting for Only Connect to come on, and even then mainly to judge the contestants’ attractiveness because yes, even I am sometimes that shallow. However, last week’s was exciting enough to warrant watching it for ‘proper’ reasons, so Uni C gets its first outing on the Board of Excitement.
• Only Connect (Monday, 8:30pm, BBC4) But Only Connect is all about the interesting questions, and this week the people I won’t be making value judgements on are Exeter Alumini vs Gourmands. It’s the Will Young vs Giles Coren battle THE WORLD HAS BEEN WAITING FOR.
• The Krypton Factor (Tuesday, 7:30, ITV1) – this series is just sort of pootling along without really capturing anyone’s imagination, and last week I actually forgot it had been on until the Wednesday. But thankfully I was saved by the V+ Box where I’ve got it on series link and I watched it and it remains still not as good as last year but y’know, entertaining enough. It’s such a shame.
• Survivor: Heroes vs Villains (Thursday, CBS) And probably a day later for naughty Brits. It’s the big two-oh for Survivor and The Probstmeister (as nobody calls him) is back for another season in Samoa with twenty previous players, some for a third time. I’m pulling for Cirie, Boston Rob or Russell to win, all of whom were brilliant players in previous seasons and none of whom won. Also if Boston Rob wins, the fans will go mental which will be funny. And it will be interesting to how much Coach will play up at ‘be’-ing Coach. Maybe one day we’ll get to find out what happened to Tontine. Also I was tipped-off that the third series of South African Survivor – with celebrities! has started, but that they “can’t seem to acquire it.” So there we are.
• Solitary v4.0 (Saturday, Fox Reality) Unfortunately because it’s on right at the end of the BoE week I’ve not normally had the chance to watch the previous episode before billing the following one. So this is Episode 3, it will probably be a bit like Episode 2 but with one fewer people in it, and that’s a Brig Bother GUARANTEE.

Thanks to Setsunael for flagging this up on a forum elsewhere, it’s Les Bon Gènies, France’s very French version of Match Game (i.e. Blankety Blank) It is, of course, hosted by the legendary Patrice Laffont, and this clip comes from 1996.

Don’t forget, if you’ve been to the The Cube US pilot this evening, I’ve set aside your own little post beneath this one for your comments.

This is what THE WORLD is after: The Bother Series of Poker 2010 trophy, awarded only to the best of the very best of the Bother’s Bar community’s poker playing players. This Sunday, the journey begins with the very first game in the series, The BotherSOP Game 1. It will cost you $11 to play (that’s about £7, although if you’re depositing for the first time you will need to put more in), and I’ve added $25 to the prizepool to spice it up a little bit. Already, already, enough people have signed up that I can almost make my money back on the weekend if I win. And as one of the top 72,000 players (out of about half a million) ranked this year, I HAVE to fancy my chances.

All the details (including the password you need to join in) are on the BotherSOP page. Don’t forget that 8pm UK time means you want to be looking for 1500 server time in the private tab when you join.

I really really really will be ‘doing’ Secondhand 3-2-1 very soon. You will possibly enjoy it.

Meanwhile, thanks to Chris for pointing out that there’s a sort of Internet version of Wanted going down in the States. which you’d have to think wouldn’t work particularly well without the mass television exposure. Still, Universal Pictures are sponsoring it, so you never know.

Sorry, I’ve been busy Seven-upping my computer today and likely a bit of tomorrow as well so there’s not much to say.

Except that is that The Cube US films tomorrow night with Neil Patrick Harris. Unfortunately I don’t have a ticket, but I know several of you who do so I’ve set aside this post just for you – what did you think?

Also the Saudi version has been filming. Has anyone been to see that?

…this makes me quite sad.

That being said, I’m intrigued to find out what was cut from the first episode of Solitary 4.0, as my problems with it (entertaining as it still was) went a bit deeper than what may or may not have been cut out by rubbish channel execs. Namely that the make-yourself-sweat task shouldn’t have eliminated someone, because Solitary isn’t about elimination by workload, it’s about elimination by giving up. Also whilst I approve of the strategy element (and indeed, Solitary’s increasing strategy elements) of the unappetizing drinks treatment (contestants picked at random to combine two foodstuffs to form a drink but have to drink it themselves before everybody else has to do the same), my gut feeling is that strong stomach treatments should come mid-series, when you can play on the contestants’ hunger. Series opening treatment should be something more visual, I think.

In opther news, it is very important to take a minute to note that TV Ark have the titles for top army gameshow Combat, with Emelyn Hughes and Anneka Rice up right now.

Mission 2110:

• Mission Two-thousand, One-hundred-and-ten?
• Mission Twenty-one Ten?
• Mission Two-hundred-and-eleven Zero?
• Mission Two One One O?

Enquiring minds need to know.

Bonus question for D Peake or G Male: In the title sequence of Accumulate! there’s a round of Speculate to Accumulate going on with the answers shown as ‘Floods’, ‘November’, and finally ‘Accumulate’. What was the question? Also please use “you lost, you chost” next series please thanks.

Via two lines on Broadcast, then better via Quizzlestick, via The Independent, on shows Channel 4 have lined up to replace Big Brother:

Bellamy talks often of “the national conversation”. He hopes it will be reflected in The Drop, the first commission from the newly-appointed Channel 4 head of entertainment Justin Gorman. Ironically, this is a show made by Endemol, the production company synonymous with Big Brother. Bellamy plans to screen the hour-long show across six nights of the week. “It is live event meets game show,” he says. “I’m very interested in taking different genres and colliding them.” Contestants are given £1m, but must answer 10 questions or watch it all disappear through a series of trap doors.

The format, untried in international television markets, contains “a whole bunch of smart interactive thoughts, twists and turns” and allows viewers to be rewarded for questions which fool the contestants.

So it’s a live million quid quiz, not seen since the glory days of The Vault all those years ago, with added physical set element and where the people set the questions like The People Versus. I’m not generally speaking a fan of shows where you get a top prize that gets reduced as a penalty, because it gives people the opportunity to switch off if it’s not going so well – it doesn’t feel like risk even if they dress it up to look like risk. We’ll see.