That’s right! Summer is over and that means we start thinking about interactivity, and that means it’s almost time for Bother’s Bar(‘s) Game Night XI: SMBB: LIVE! What can match the anarchy of a Saturday morning kid’s TV magazine show with the tight formatting of a Saturday morning kid’s TV magazine show?

We will be going live at 9:25pm on Saturday 29th September and require a panel of motormouths who don’t mind running the risk of a double dare in the twistiest most arbitrary game night yet, ending in a final of great skill – and don’t forget this is the last opportunity to guarantee your spot in the upcoming CoCs and be one of the first to play Jackbox 5 when it comes out in the coming months.

Team Audience are an important part of Game Night and we will be opening up Youtube Chat for you to interact with me and the panel during the games themselves, as well as being the Eighth Player. Just bring yourselves and a smart device and join the fun.

But if you want to join the panel you will need:

• To be free from about 9:15pm UK to around midnight on 29th September.
• A microphone. A camera is not necessary for Game Night.
• A Twitter, so I can disseminate information.
• A screen to watch the live stream through a Google Hangout and a screen with a web browser to play the games on.

We’re especially interested to hear from you if you’re female and/or haven’t been a panellist before. There are no guarantees of anything, the aim is to cast for an entertaining show and I want a mix so don’t take it personally if you are not selected, I will almost certainly be oversubscribed. What I will say is that we will definitely be needing a Voice Of The Audience for the Arbitrary Final so have a mic ready on the night if you want that to be you.

I’d like to get a panel sorted by Thursday night so try and show your interest by Wednesday 26th, if you could use the form it would save me having to remember who has applied or not verbally. Gopher it!

But it will be a more unusual commentary situation – Dan, David and myself will be running around London solving puzzles and won’t be around for it, however get ready for a volcanic e-rux-tion! Scott Rux will be helming a commentary stream, you are advised to follow @sensei256 on Twitter.

In other news, do you remember the thing that was going around recently of some US urban explorers investigating the abandoned Canadian Splatalot set? Well this appeared on my Youtube recommendations last night, the same people exploring an abandoned Cyberdrome Crystal Maze. Can anyone work out which one? Evidently they hadn’t heard of The Crystal Maze beforehand.

AND SPEAKING OF THE CRYSTAL MAZE and abandonment, The Gamers team starring Will of occasional Bar fame are auctioning off their Diggerworld tickets for charity. Go and have a look.

Lots to tell you about. Or at least there was if I hadn’t forgotten most of it.

On Friday Fingers on Buzzers, the quiz-chat podcast starring Jenny Ryan off of The Chase and comic Lucy Porter began but already there’s an exciting upstart rival (that was actually planned ages ago so the timing is coincidental), Hey, I Was On That! is meant to start on Monday where Friends of the Bar and Game Night vetrans Alex McMillan and Laura Conlon have a chat to contestants about their experiences. The first one features Stephanie Merritt who featured on University Challenge recently.

Follow their Twitter @heyIwasonthat for more details.

Ah, that was something! Our friends at RTV Warriors were meant to be doing their own Game Night, based heavily on the pioneering Game Night format tonight but it’s been pushed back a week for “good reason” apparently so you might want to put that in your diaries. I’m about a month behind with podcasts generally but I’ve been enjoying their interviewing reality stars season (and if you haven’t listened to their interview with Gilles de Costa off of Belgian Mole, you should) so go and have a listen. Bother’s Bar’s Game Night will return on the 29th September.

Also next Saturday it’s Schlag den Henssler! But this episode is going to be different for us, because basically most of the commentary team is going to be running around London solving puzzles for a thing called DASH. However it sounds like Scott is willing to commentate with or without special guests so we’ll see what happens.

In other news, since between them seven or eight different people have made comments, a) Chase the Case starts on BBC1 on Monday afternoon – we’ll have a Show Discussion post, b) Millionaire is being renewed for a ten episode run (21st anniversary specials, presumably) and you can apply.

Edit: Now on iTunes.

And so TV’s biggest will they/won’t they story comes to a close – no, not the latest Love Island shenanigans ha ha! But the relationship between Controller of Channel 5 Ben Frow and Big Brother. It’s over.

Tonight’s civilian launch will be the last one on the channel and it will be interesting to see how and indeed if it goes out with a bang. On the one hand they’ve been very clear to use the words “the original social experiment” (TV’s most meaningless two words) in all the promo. On the other hand, this final series is meant to be “the most competitive ever” with “mind games” aplenty.

On the one hand I’m sad – I have several friends who have worked on the show variously and they’ll be looking for work, and as a show it pretty much defined my twenties. On the other hand as I get older I find having to give over an hour plus a night to something more like work than entertainment – I still follow the show but the actual amount of times I watch it past launch night is pretty low, at one point Bit On The Side was proving more of a must-watch than the show it was talking about.

What next for it? The council have extended the permission to keep the house up for a further three years, almost certainly speculative on Endemol’s part. It’s jumped channel once before, could it do so again? The problem is I can’t see BBC, ITV or Channel 4 picking it up and presumably it has no chance on another Viacom network. I don’t think ITV2 would touch it, not at the likely rate Channel 5 were paying which to all intents and purposes was pretty low in the first place, and would probably seem old hat in comparison to Love Island, although if LI has proved anything it’s that there is a possible audience for this kind of thing.

There’s an idea floating round that they could do it US strategy-style for Netflix. I never really thought the strategy-style would work over here, I can’t see the average Brit getting excited by “WHO WANTS TO SEE MY HOH ROOOOMM!!” and tediously identiscripted “ceremonies” to point where the average viewer would just tell everybody to get over themselves. I fear being an international streaming service they will try and make it more palatable for Americans and will be edited and put together as such, but with quaint British accents.

So there we are, I find it difficult to see where Big Brother could potentially go in the future. Still, they’ve got three years on the lease, what are the odds on The Big Brother Live Experience at some point? Nominate Your Friends! Do A Task! Have a Cold Shower! Talk To Big Brother in the Diary Room! Argue over shopping! Evict Your Friends! Get booed! 60 minutes for £50 a head.