Merry Christmas readers, Bother’s Bar will be on minimum updates over Christmas period (which is different to when? – Everyone in the World) but I will still be around, and will certainly be on Twitter.

So here are some things for you to do and look forward to over the next week or so:

• Tonight it’s the Fort Boyard Christmas Special on France 2 at 7:35pm UK time. We’ll be watching it on Pluzz through a VPN, although on previous form it will almost certainly be up on Youtube in some capacity before the night is out. The New Year’s special is next Saturday also.
• Tonight it’s ALSO, we think, the Avanti un Altro Survived the Apocalypse special on Italy’s Canale 5, although you’ll be able to watch it online later. If it wasn’t on last year it’d almost certainly top the international section of the UKGameshows.com Poll of 2012 I reckon.
• Speaking of which that’s coming in the New Year. In the meantime I currently have a poll up re: the Bother Series of Poker. If you have an interest in playing it’d be nice if you could fill it in.
• This Monday it’s Fifty 50 Show, featuring the 21 Questions Wrong CHRISTMAS SPECIAL! And we wouldn’t call it a special if it wasn’t SPECIAL…
• Channel 5 continue to do World’s Strongest Man wrong, Thursday at 8pm.
• Next Saturday there’s a lot on – Superstars 2012 on BBC1 at 6:45 and Dale’s Great Getaway ay ITV1 at 8:30. Show discussion posts will go up for these two in due course, and you can read what we thought about Great Getaway as we went to the recording.

Also maybe you got a new iThing for Christmas. Well we will try and update our list of iThing gameshow reviews over the festive period. If you want to know if a gameshow app is good and it’s not up there then feel free to ask in the interim.

Merry Christmas!

Here’s my review of the The Chase app, currently on the app store for £1.49 – we don’t tend to mention prices in these reviews because there’s no telling what it’s going to be on any given day. Strike it Lucky came out today as well, a full review in due course but my advice would be save your cash.

So something left me fuming this evening. No, it wasn’t the 21 Questions Wrong CHRISTMAS SPECIAL (on Fifty 50 Show this Christmas Eve!) it was in fact LIVE Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Tonight we had Des O Connor and Lee Mack win £150k, Rosemary Schrager and Hugo Taylor win £20k and JB and Oritsé from JLS win £50k when the time ran out. So who had the brilliant idea of putting the guys the kidz will tune in for in the last hurried cut-short slot especially as it turned out they were much MUCH smarter than you might have expected? Who knew that JLS were mates with Robert Winston? They were BRILLIANT and if ITV were on the ball they’d have let it run over and pushed the news. I don’t think Millionaire has ever left me so angry or baffled.

I would have hoped they’d get to continue in a pre-record they can play out on the New Year’s Special. Failing that, it’d be rude not to invite all four of them onto The Celebrity Chase, on the basis of tonight it’d be epic.

Incidentally, final Pointless filming at TVC tomorrow, I’m informed it’s moving to Elstree in the New Year.

Hello, sorry, Christmas.

Just a few things:

• Really pleased Avanti un Altro has had its daily run extended until the end of March. There is even a Christmas song!
• Tomorrow we record the 21 Questions Wrong Christmas Special for this weekend’s Fifty 50 Show. And then after I promise to write up the The Chase app properly. Preview: it’s really good.
• Seen on Buzzerblog, Victory Television looking for pairs of contestants for a new Channel 4 quiz. Sounds like a combination of general knoweldge and lateral thinking are needed. Very (very) idly wondering if Twee tot des Zesde Macht has sold recently. Sidenote: As Channel 4 are looking for hit game formats for their afternoons, I still don’t see why nobody has thought about trying De Slimste Mens, even if it’s a civilian version.
• And don’t forget! It’s the Fort Boyard Christmas Special this Saturday on France 2, 7:45pm UK time. If you’ve access to a VPN or similar, you can watch it live on Pluzz.

Well things are really hotting up in the run-up to Christmas. Here’s a round up of stuff at the Bar you might or may not have missed:

I’m currently doing a Bother Series of Poker Survey. If you’ve played in the past or have never played but are interested, please take a look. I do not intend to close the poll until after Christmas, the new season will be begin in mid-January.

The new episode of The Line Up is out. We’ve had record numbers of downloads since it dropped yesterday morning so thanks for that. If you want to listen:

• You can listen to the web player and peruse the show notes here.
• You can download the show directly as an mp3 here.
• You can subscribe on iTunes and NEVER MISS AN EPISODE.
• You can also subscribe using your RSS feed of choice.

Yesterday I went and saw Dale’s Great Getaway and wrote it up. It goes out over Christmas. Of course it might change in the edit, but you can read what I thought about the audience experience here.

Finally, friend of the Bar Lewis Murphy has done this week’s edition of the Fifty 50 Show. This week he’s having a chat with David Bodycombe and Daniel Peake about all sorts of things, including last weekend’s RECORD BREAKING Schlag den Raab.

• Download it directly!
• Read the show notes and comment!
• Why haven’t you subscribed on iTunes yet?
• Haven’t you made an RSS of yourself enough already?

Hopefully, HOPEFULLY we’ll start getting through our app reviews by the end of the week. Just in time for Christmas!

It was Only Connect‘s Grand Final and 100th episode tonight so well done them!

Fort Boyard news: it’s the French Christmas Specials this Saturday and the following one. If you’ve been enjoying Ultimate Challenge on ITV1 and CITV on weekend mornings then good for you! Apparently it’s rating in line with the slot average.

Ho ho ho! Episode 03 of Bother’s Bar’s monthlyish pub quiz The Line Up, the Non Celebrity Special de facto Christmas Special is now available to listen to! This month as well as 30 questions from our friends at QuizQuizQuiz there is a NEW BED and a NEW SOUND EFFECT.

• You can listen to the web player and peruse the show notes here.
• You can download the show directly as an mp3 here.
• You can subscribe on iTunes and NEVER MISS AN EPISODE.
• You can also subscribe using your RSS feed of choice.

And if you can’t get enough Line Up action, all the old episodes are available from The Line Up page.

Dale’s Great Getaway films this evening in London, fingers crossed we’ll have some information on it later this evening.