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All images and sounds copyright their respective owners probably used without permission (please get in contact if this is a problem), all writing copyright Brig Bother 2004-2007.

LESS TEDIOUS THANKS BIT Comments system provided by Haloscan, webspace kindly provided by Labyrinth Games. Thanks to TP for shows, Michael for logos, KP, DB, Giz. Mister Al, Simon, Andrew and NJ for recaps and you for reading.

16th May 2008

Don't forget! Lines close for the BIG MONEY Eurovision Happy Hour Competition on Tuesday so get your entries in for then. Meanwhile it's yet another nonny comment:

Sadly I don't have any exclusive news, but I did want to share this. Thanks to Paddy Power, you can now bet on what the next big gameshow comeback will be. Krypton (25/1) and Blind Date (10/1) look like good value bets to me...

That's really interesting! But what's most interesting, what do they know that we don't that puts The Gen Game and Play Your Cards Right at such low odds? And you can never rule out The Crystal Maze at 18-1 seeing as rumours of its return don't seem to have gone away during the last ten years and you'd have to think it would happen sometime... wouldn't you?

Paddy Power also have a spate of special bets on Gladiators, many of which are quite amusing. Paddy Power are funny guys, aren't they?

15th May 2008

Anon(n)ymous comment:

The bittorrent tracker Demonoid's back, and seems to have the first two series of Aussie Mole - and this time with *seeds*, too...

And if it's worth recommending anything, it's worth recommending Aussie Mole.

This week's Fort Boyard clip will be on Saturday. Meanwhile we hear that the new series of Superstars is currently being filmed in that glamourous HOTBED of SPORT... Crawley.

14th May 2008

Awesome! Our first video that's been taken off of Youtube for copyright reasons is the Solitary one. Thank FOX for that!

13th May 2008

The Clipton Factor - Gr££d

No real reason for putting this show up this week, but you can play Spot The The Mole contestant if you want. Gr££d was Channel 5's attempt at a big money quiz, this one nicked off the US. It was hosted by Jerry Springer who as it turned out was quite good at this sort of thing.

American Gladiators Season Two, then.

Two hours of it felt a bit much in a way it just about got away with for season one. Whether it's because there was visually more of everything, or whether it's because the show's shelflife is less than we thought it was remains to be seen.
The new arena is huge and lovely.
The Wall is fifty foot now. Hang Tough is the proper size. They've made the scoring pods smaller for Powerball, but slightly ridiculously they've reduced the points for a successful score from 2/3 to 1/2. That's a bit strange.
New event Rocket Ball is a lot of fun although I don't think there's as much body checking as perhaps they anticipated and hoped for.
It's not often you'll hear me say this but credit where it's due, Vertigo still isn't the best game in the Gladiators repetoire but I think they've improved on our version - it's a longer course and contenders can score half points if they can get a certain distance before the Gladiator finishes. Fine.
The Eliminator feels more interesting - they've got rid of some of the deadwood (the barrel roll!) and improved the existing elements - falling off the handbike now dumps you into an energy sapping ball pit, for example. It took almost ten minutes for one of the women to finish (and she was the winner!) which to be honest completely makes a mockery of the rest of the entire show. I'm not sure what the best way round this is going to be really, or at least in a way they're likely to implement.
New Glads! Eight over the entire series, three revealed last night including Rocket and Jet, the winners of last season. Rocket was limited to The Wall where he excelled, Jet was allowed to get right stuck in and put in a very good performance I thought. Phoenix is the other new Gladiator who appeared by - yes! - leaping out of some flames.
One of the contestants had a prosthetic leg.

There's a Wii Fort Boyard game coming out next month in France. You'd think a Wii Gladiators game would be a gimme, wouldn't you?

12th May 2008

Round up

Here are some interesting things that have been written in the latest comment box for the benefit of those of you playing along on RSS. We know this is lazy, but you haven't worked a 13 hour day.

It's my review of Gladiators in the point by point stylee!

First impressions: the arena is about half the size of the recent AG S1 arena, but saying that I'm quite impressed that they've manged to fit everything in, especially for The eliminator which is pretty much the same course as in AG but without the high wall to begin with, and quite clever use of layout so the crash mat for the zipline is the same mat they crash onto to finish. Travelator seems easier, in fact the whole course seems easier and doable than the US one despite it being basically exactly the same. Like in AG, half a second per point doesn't seem like enough of a headstart to make the previous events really worth it on this sort of course.
I don't get why people want to take away the fire and water element, I think they add to the spectacle of the show, and if Gladiators doesn't have spectacle than it has nothing.
Only having eight + 1 different events is going to hurt it in a 15 episode series (if I've done my maths correct).
I don't mind five points for the centre basket in Powerball - people rarely went for it when it was three points, now it's much more of a tempatation. Too many people were just throwing shots in, surprised they didn't make the lids smaller like in the new AG.
Enjoyed Oblivion's trash talking. Spartan is the new Hunter, clearly. Kirsty and Wrigty were alright, John Anderson felt a bit out of place actually I thought, sadly. Alan Parry doesn't have John Sachs' ready wit.
Not amazing, could have been a lot worse. Which was pretty much everyone's opinion of AG S1 really.

Meanwhile That Norwegian Girl (not, we suspect, her real name) asks an interesting question:

"Just wondering, how high is the frequency of serious injuries in the game shows you're watching regularly [as in requires a doctor and has to pull out]? In Norway we almost always manage to get at least one contestant so badly injured that they have to go home, even in shows that are supposed to be low-risk."

We came up with Gladiators, Celeb Wrestling and one episode of Fort Boyard and can't think of any more off the top of our heads, discounting The Late Late Breakfast Show as not really a gameshow. Anyone? I did point out that Health and Safety is quite stringent in UK Productions simply because it makes the insurance much cheaper.

Anonymous comment!

Apparently there was a fort boyard board game released in Sweden. you can see some pictures at
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/35733

Looks like the original La Cles... game but in Swedish. Would be intrigued to find out when it was made though seeing as it uses Maitre d' Jeux imagery on the front. EDIT: It's not a Maitre, it's a sacrifice head. Duh. And it comes from 1993 as David points out. Thanks!

And finally tomorrow's Clipton Factor features a Mole contestant before he was famous. That is something for you to ruminate on.

Meanwhile apparently the new Big Brother eye is getting revealed later this evening.

EDIT: Here it is, looking a little bit ugly truth be told. "War and Order" is the theme of this year's show if the Daily Star is to be believed. Format details apparently coming Wednesday. So there we are. Shattering.

We may as well give up on UKBB9 now

George Lamb's apparently lined up to host Little Brother, with Caroline Flack.

Edit: No, it's George Lamb and Zezi Ifore, now, Flack was hilarious misdirection. It's all on Inside Big Brother, anyway.

11th May 2008

American Glads starts again tomorrow. Exciting! They're promising something new every week (they've even nicked completely wholesale the recent Aussie marketing campaign for Big Brother, look) - seven events and eight new gladiators including the two winners from last year. This actually excites us a bit more than the UK version does, surprisingly.

Gladiators... READY!

Apparently Gladiators starts tonight. Going by the videos on the official site, I think they might have missed a trick in not getting Hunter and Jet to host the thing properly.

Eurovisionwatch: Latvia's down to 34 on Betfair - when it wins when everyone on the internet has whinged about it, you read it here first. Bother's Bar's preferred choice for Eurovision news, OnEurope is already in Belgrade and being uncomplimentary about the early rehersals. Awesome!

8th May 2008

Fort Boyard Fri...Thursday

Well! Whilst the world recovers from the knowledge that The Power of 10 is OFFICIALLY the best new format of the past twelve months and everybody is just plain wrong for not watching it and it getting axed everywhere ACTually, we mustn't forget that Gladiators begins on Sky One this Sunday, along with Don't Forget the Lyrics. So really there's a very obvious candidate for this week's clip, it's Côton-tiges, this clip from 1993.

Meanwhile, TV5 are showing FB from Wednesday at 17:27 (and probably repeated on Saturday nights). Unfortunately when we click on the blurb there's no description, only that it's episode one of ten and that it's 110 minutes long. We'll stick our neck out and suggest it's 2007 being shown.

7th May 2008

Oblivious won it one year as well.

The results of this year's Rose d'Or festival are in!

Best entertainment show: Hider in the House, obviously.

Best gameshow: the ever popular and hugely successful The Power of 10.

Best reality that isn't really reality: The Phone. Which is at least passably good.

Wow, foreigners are weird, aren't they?

6th May 2008

The Clipton Factor: Number One

Here's this week's one series quiz wonder, Number One from 2001 hosted by Krishnan Guru-Murphy. This is the most interesting round. Of course, it's also quite interesting that the production team seemed to change their mind about the titles halfway through recording the series which is why the logo on the question cards and the screens right at the beginning are different to what they became.

5th May 2008

Hey there. Just to let you know, updates are going to be a bit slow for the next month and a half I'm afraid - the place where I work when I'm not running is bar is open very late this term so the students can do some "revision" which means lots of lovely overtime for me so fingers crossed we can do a proper Christmas round-up this year, unless we spend all of it on booze, poker and Haribo in the meantime obviously. Don't hold your breath, we've already pitched Pokerboozibears to them. Try Aldi.

However, we will at least guarantee you two videos a week - likely to be on Tuesday and Friday. And hey! It's the Eurovision in a fortnight.

Tomorrow it's another mediocre quiz from the turn of the millenium we found on the end of a tape recently.

2nd May 2008

Fort Boyard Friday

Yes! Actually on a Friday this week!

Anyway, this is Tir à l'arc (shooting with the arc, apparently). In fact it's the second version - the original only had one target. This one comes from 1993 and there are three targets, but only one of them will release the key, hitting either of the others just releases a fake key.

In other news, Latvia are currently at 50 at Betfair to win the Eurovision! I might just stick another tenner on. Anyway, it's just two-and-a-half weeks until Eurovision, so don't forget to enter our competition.

In other news, does anyone know how well It's Not What You Know is rating? Considering how hard they've pushed it, it seems to be barely registering on the sorts of places you'd expect there to be anything on it.