It’s fair to say that friend of the Bar Gary Monaghan has made his fair amount of rubbish television (I think he basically admits as much) but at the same time he’s also been responsible for lots of quite groundbreaking exciting stuff like Banzai. Judge for yourself which is which on Mad Monk’s new site, featuring clips from shows that have made it to air and perhaps more interestingly, the pilots that didn’t. Some of which are a bit rude, so be warned.

I’m mildly thrilled to discover he worked on (in fact featured prominently in) TV Mayhem with Chris Evans because it was brilliant and I don’t know of anyone else who remembers it.

In other news here’s an episode of Give Us A Clue starring Celebrity Big Brother‘s Lionel Blair from 1979. Michael Aspel would have made a brilliant Professor Layton, no?

Starring me! And Lewis Murphy. Watch us advertise the Poll of 2013, whilst also going “great idea, not quite there in execution, sigh” in extremis.

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In other news, Wie Is De Mol 2014 has begun so watch it and then why not play Dan Peake’s Suspect List game? I won it last year. Here is our discussion page.

In other other news, someone has stuck episodes of Bother’s Bar favourite Die 100,000 Mark Show on Youtube. Look at them here.

Prepare to speak your brains, the UKGameshows.com/Bother’s Bar annual poll rounding up the year of 2013 is now open and waiting for your votes.

You can read instructions for voting by e-mail on the UKGameshows.com site here.

Alternatively (and preferred as it makes it a bit easier to add up and leaves a paper trail) we’ve got our very own form for you to use right here (and linked to in the sidebar on the left). It’s not very pretty but it’s beautiful inside, and that’s what really matters right?

Lines close 11pm Wednesday 15th January. Best of luck to all the runners and riders.

We discuss last year’s biggest shows in this week’s Fifty 50 Show, give it a listen.

Also we’ve got a poker game going on tonight, the first episode of the Bother’s Bar Monthly. Come and join us for cards and ‘laughs’, 8pm start, ten minutes late reg available.

9pm, Channel Five, massive twist and so on. God knows why they bother advertising it as the most extreme every year (this year celebs will apparently enter handcuffed together! Which is a new launch night thing, but not new Big Brother thing), it’s not like people don’t know if they’re going to watch it is it? They’ll never beat Julie Goodyear and Cheryl Fergison for launch night antics anyway.

I’ve also got no idea who is going in as I’ve avoided most of the gossip, so it could be quite exciting.

Im other unrelated news, squeaky-voiced comic Willy Rovelli’s returning as the chef on Fort Boyard next year.

And Happy New Year to you all. Come and play cards on Sunday night.

So Deal or No Deal has a shiny new set and a new game element – can’t blame them for not trying – in Box 23. Box 23 is a box set aside from the stage with one of five things randomly loaded inside – Double, +10k, Money Back, Half, Nothing. After the main game, the player can elect to buy Box 23 for all their money and receive a return based on what is inside.

Crikey. I’ve been in several minds about this over the last hour, varying from hmmm, to mmm to hmmm again. They’ve been filming with it for months now so other people will have a better idea of how it’s panning out than I, but here’s where I am.

I sort of respect it but think it’s been done too conservatively. The fun of Pacco Matto (the crazy box in the Italian show) is that its game changing effects could come in at any point, here we have high potential for really big Pressure Pad style anti-climaxes.

I maintain that when people come up with these ideas, it’s not enough to consider expected value implications (mathsy people have already worked out that any prize under £20k is +EV and worth going for, over it is not) but also the sorts of real world decisions people make, ideally you want to cause a bit of indecision agony followed by a reasonable percentage of people going for it – this is why the Final Drop of The Million Pound Drop was really poorly thought through.

I reckon the sweet spot for this is going to be where the stake is around £3k-£8k, maybe a little bit more, not mega money but the sort you’d be quite upset to not have and where doubling or  halving represents significant utility risk. Below this it’s pretty much a no brainer – the gains significantly outweigh the losses, above this I think most people will walk away and certainly once you get power five I can’t see anybody going for it leading to really awkward win celebration followed by energy sapping pointless epilogue. A really elegant solution should avoid this sort of pitfall entirely.

Perhaps the recent running average has been in that sweet spot – I don’t really know. But I’m interested to see how it plays out. I think they’ve been quite clever in downplaying the half million payoff potential.

I still think the Deal team sets the high bar in the business, but my gut thinks Box 23 in its current form it’s a bit of a misstep.