Happy Bit Between Christmas and New Year! I’m preparing to hand my notice in after winning lifechanging amounts of money (about £500) tipping Mrs Brown’s Boys to top the Xmas Day overnights, as could have you (and indeed some of you did!) if you heard me banging on about the price on Twitter. Don’t forget the inaugural Bother’s Bar Monthly Poker Open is Sunday January 5th, costing $5.50 to play (but a single re-buy and add-on is available), you can buy in now, all the details can be found here.

For now, Challenge’s First Ever Eps weekend approaches. It’s a bit liberal with the term “first ever” in some cases I think, but here’s the line-up, with particularly interesting (i.e. ones Challenge haven’t shown for ages anyway) emboldened:

Saturday 28th:

1400: Dale’s Supermarket Sweep – I might be wrong about this, Guardian’s TV listings suggest it’s the more recent version although I don’t doubt it could be the original. (Edit: It’s the original. Naughty Guardian.)
1430: Takeshi’s Castle
1500: 1 vs 100 – lottery references removed, natch.
1550: Going for Gold
1620: Bob’s Full House
1700: Whittle – We love a bit of Whittle!
1730: Fun House
1800: Ninja Warrior – Stuart Hall voiced this originally. Will it have been revoiced?
1900: Treasure Hunt – Set in Bali and very much a curio, closer to the original French show than the show most people would associate with Treasure Hunt. What’s really interesting is that it’s been given a seventy-five minute slot, so fingers crossed unedited.
2015: Celebrity Squares – Bob’s Big Box Game, this is from the 1993-6 reboot.
2045: Strike It Lucky – can’t say I remember Challenge showing the very earliest series for a while, although I might be wrong.
There is also First ever eps of Challenge’s wrestling coverage.

Sunday 29th

1400: The Crystal Maze – Yeah I know TCM is on Challenge all the time anyway. But it is brilliant. I’m convinced they’re editing out a game so it can fit the current ad break structures though.
1500: Take Your Pick – From 1992 rather than 1955 I expect.
1530: Deal or No Deal – Back in 2005. Simpler times.
1615: Wipeout – This was a great show with Paul Daniels, but certainly last time Challenge showed it is had been edited rather to fit in a three minute ad break, so not much contestant chat.
1645: 321 – From 1978! I had a mild addiction to 321 when Challenge used to repeat them in the small hours years ago, and I actually think the really old ones have a massive amount of charm to them.
1800: Stars in Their Eyes – I don’t remember this only being half an hour when it started, but that’s what it says here. Leslie Crowther hosts – I can’t believe Challenge haven’t considered Crowther’s Price is Right, it is genuinely brilliant and would fit in with their current output really well.
1830: Total Wipeout
1930: Knightmare
2000: Bullseye – from 1981 when it had weird rules.
2030: Blankety Blank – The crowning glory of the whole weekend for me, the very first episode fronted by Terry Wogan from 1979. It’s been given a 45 minute slot too, so let’s hope the only edits are for ad breaks.

It wasn’t so long ago Challenge refused to put anything on that didn’t look modern so I really hope the archive stuff is working out for them.

The Poll of 2013 will commence the following Sunday, so get your thinking caps on.

Alright, last post before Christmas. Last year’s 21 Questions Wrong Hotseat seemed to go down well so here’s another festive (it was only meant to be five or six festive questions mixed with normal questions, it turns out to be five or six normal questions mixed with festive questions) twenty-one for you to lord it over the dinner table with after Christmas dinner. Best played with a fast-talking quizmaster and about six people I reckon, but there’s no upper or lower limit.

If you don’t know what this is, it’s the endgame from LEGENDARY Italian quiz Avanti Un Altro multiplayered up. We used to do it on the radio and who knows may yet still again at some point, and not forgetting top celebrity Tom Scott partook in a live action version months ago.

Here is this year’s quiz (corrected) – it includes notes and the rules after the list (which is designed to fit onto one sheet of printed out paper). DO NOT READ IF YOU INTEND TO BE A PLAYER. As ever the questions run the gamut of difficulty – don’t assume they start easy and get gradually harder (the difficulties are mixed to try and trip people up, and part of the fun is the thrill of the chase) but the last two are always difficult but knowable (Q21 is hard at this time of year, much easier a few months later). No question will ever ask what is *not* something as I consider that unfair in the circumstance, and we won’t ask questions that are “according to polls” (unless it’s really really famous).

If you enjoy that and find you can’t get enough I did two more sets last year you can use for yourself – here’s Xmas 2012, and here’s New Year 2012. There probably won’t be a separate NY edition this year unless I’m really bored over the next week.

If you do play let us know how you get on.

AS WELL AS THAT, Fifty 50 Show reaches its landmark 46th episode and Lewis Murphy chats with Daniel Peake and Andrew Sullivan with regards to this week’s hugely exciting Schlag den Raab as well as some other things, I’ve not listened yet.

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We’ll be around over the Christmas period, although there probably won’t be a huge amount of updates. Whatever you’re up to, have a good one!

The Board Gamers face the Bakers in the series eight grand final, tonight at 8:30 on BBC4.

It’s also David J Bodycombe’s last edition as question editor. What will the show be like next year?

It’s Christmas! And that means it’s Noel’s birthday, and this year he can claim a bus pass as the erstwhile Deal or No Deal host turns 65. I expect he’s not about to retire any time soon!

So in the spirit here’s a clip from Noel Edmonds’ Saturday Roadshow, made in the days when the BBC could afford to build a different lavish set every week. Unfortunately it’s very difficult to find full episodes of this precursor to Noel’s House Party, but thanks to gunge fetishists (I’m not asking) there are plenty of examples of the Gunge Tank Game (in actual fact called In Other Words) played every week, or at least the aftermath.

Usually played with a celeb and a civilian, the civilian who stands to be gunged gambles on whether they’ll get 3, 4 or 5 word puzzles correct within 90 seconds for better prizes. Noel would try and convey words to a celeb, and when they said the word it would go into a puzzle, and if you say all the words in a puzzle together and in a certain way they’d usually make the name of something. If the civilian doens’t make the bid, they get gunged. If they do make the bid, they usually get gunged anyway. The contestant doesn’t have to wait for all the puzzle to fill in before guessing.

This clip comes from one of the later episodes and the rules are slightly different – the contestant gets a list of prizes and picks one prize per puzzle. Each prize comes with an attached point value but these are unknown to the player (but the bigger prizes tend to have higher points). The player must not only complete five puzzles in the time but they must not go over 100 points, otherwise they meet a messy end.

That’s the game, they’ve set this one up slightly differently. Fun game and a great little clip.

It’s Christmas and that means it’s time for the Schlag den Raab traditional non-Christmas special. In this last SdR of the year, Stefan Raab will be taking on allcomers in a bid to defend €3m of his production company’s money. That’ll be some Christmas bonus. And once again we’ll be attempting to provide a live commentary on a Google Hangout delay inbetween bits where we jump around live streams that get taken down.

We’re also promised the musical delights of top guests Casper! Thomas D! And Placebo! It’s like the last fifteen years haven’t happened. Incredible scenes.

The fun starts at 7:15pm UK time (8:15 local time) for the contestant picking, the games don’t begin until 8pm (9pm CET) and is likely to go on until around midnight, so feel free to dip in and out as you see fit. And hey! Don’t forget to get in touch via our Youtube comment stream or #bbsdr on Twitter and we’ll probably read them out, because we’ve got about five hours to fill.

This is the standard stream will we basing our commentary on.

Back-up stream.

Commentary Part 3:

ITV, 9pm.

Find out which of Sir Eamonn Holmes and Alex Ferguson, Caroline Quentin and Carol Vorderman and Kian Egan and Rebecca Adlington gets stiffed by the klaxon for the last time ever.

It’s not quite the last ever episode (although it is effectively the last one being made), two more have been pre-recorded this week for going out whenever. Which seems the wrong way round to be doing it, but whatever.