Thanks to the Bother’s Bar Discord for bringing this up, the very first game of Wonga on The Big Breakfast, the end of the live millennium nine-hour special.
When they bought it back as a semi-regular thing, they added a seven minute chess-clock.
Show Discussion: Gordon Ramsay’s Bank Balance
Various weeknights over the next three weeks, 9pm,
BBC1
Extremely unusual scheduling for a shiny floor show on the BBC this which suggests either a) confidence and a willingness to ape Millionaire or b) desperation over a lack of shows in the bank. Gordon Ramsay’s Bank Balance sees contestants attempt to win up to £100,000 by answering questions and balancing gold bars atop an increasingly unstable table – wrong answers mean adding penalty bars, and if a stack falls down it’s game over.
Because of the way they’ve recorded audience reaction, we’ve already got some idea as to the quality of the largely edited shows. Clearly quite a lot of interest is going to lie in how well Gordon Ramsay fits in as host – it’s got a post-watershed slot so it will be interesting to see how his natural prickliness combines with the high tension the show wants to have. Not too dissimilar to Jeremy Clarkson on Millionaire, which has been a success by and large.
Does the end result work? Let us know what you think in the comments.
Stool Pigeon February 2021 – The Results
Let’s open the box and dive in:
Might be a bit banal but the BBC are currently looking for a new daytime quiz show for BBC1, so there is a massive amount of companies pitching quizzes to them at the minute. There’s around 25/30 companies pitching with 6 of them being sent to the next stage, which happens aound the end of March I beleive. So expect ITV and C4 to get bombared with quizzes from the companies that didn’t get through shortly after!
I’ve already been a zoom contestant on 3 different ones so far, with one that’s incredibly fun that uses a grabber and another that was hosted by a former girlband member who did a lot better than I expected her to do at hosting.
I feel like there should be a show in all that.
By grabber do we mean arcade-style crane? Will the tension in the arms match the tension in the studio? I have to say, I look forward to high stakes buzzwire quiz show The Coil With Nadine Coyle. Or perhaps it’s Mutya, Cudja? CelebShaznay Squares?
CPL are searching for contestants for a new quiz show where you have to say funny answers. Rumoured to be a Channel 4 show, with Tom Allen in line to host.
Always a risk with asking members of the public to be funny. Sounds a bit like Quiplash.
At least five UK past and present game show hosts (as well as, surely, host-to-be Jenny Ryan) are available on Cameo, so you can pay them to produce short personalised video messages. Twenty-five seconds, fifty quid.
For a bit of fun, it’s Play Your Cameos Right! You have to say whether the next celeb’s cost is higher or lower than that of the previous one. Your row of five is as follows: Nigel Lythgoe, Jason Manford, John Robins, Pat Sharp and Omid Djalili. (You can look up the answers yourself.)
Higher, Lower, Lower, Lower, I reckon.
Casting now on for a fan version of The Genius coming to YouTube: https://twitter.com/squadbaechu/status/1363630703867432960
One of the major UK channels are looking at adapting the Dutch game show ‘Voor het blok‘ as a Saturday night primetime show.
Ah now this is quite interesting. For the uninitiated, it’s basically an entire show based on that round of Japanese show Tore! (Pharoah!) where people stand in front of a wall of 100 blocks (or whatever), and if they take too long to give correct answers blocks start shifting forward to push you off, so you have to contort yourself into various positions in order to stay standing. It’s the Tore! equivalent of the Planks of Life on Dero!
I can’t find any sharable videos of Voor het blok, although it’s a sort of kids family show, so here’s the original game played in Tore! Jump to about 1h 20m in if it doesn’t go there automatically.
Maya Rudolph and Kate McKinnon are on the shortlist for the US version of The Wheel.
There is a ‘slight’ possibility of Wipeout returning in early 2022 if covid restrictions ease and the US version does well
These we are, some fun stuff if not a classic edition of the Stool Pigeon, if you didn’t get in it’s because it’s fairly common knowledge or clearly a lie. Or something that smells like something that looks true but probably isn’t:
Rylan’s been pegged to host the UK version of Holey Moley. Must be a weekday.
For no other reason than it’s been three days since a post and there’s not much about
Greek Supermarket Sweep and its stylish host. Rylan take note, although it doesn’t have our banging theme.
Dis, Dat or D’other
Channel 4 press release for The Answer Trap, a new daytime quiz hosted by Anita Rani where teams try and place items in one of two lists, except some of the items have been dreamt up by THE DEVIOUS Bobby Seagull and Frank Paul competing against each other to trick the players and don’t fit into either.
Might be quite fun, actually.
It’s time to vote off… THE WEAKEST VOWEL
Anne Robinson’s the new permanent host of Countdown.
When Nick Hewer took over we thought “that is an interesting piece of stunt casting” – he went on to host it for almost a decade and is now retiring at 77. Clearly this is also an interesting piece of stunt casting, we’d be lying if we said this didn’t grab our attention and are quite intrigued by the prospect, but she’s only six months younger than Hewer so this can’t be a long term thing, surely?