Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway is back tomorrow, or from the hushed tones of Twitter and internet forums, Ant and Dec’s Second Coming of Jesus Christ Super Fun Show. Good advert.

I am massively intrigued as to how it does. Sure, the original was good fun in a lowbrow Noel’s House Party way and I have no reason to believe the new series won’t be the same (although its appeal was hugely ephemerial, you probably can’t actually remember much of it). The difference is Ant and Dec’s (particularly Saturday Night) stock has fallen over the last few years, I’m a Celebrity and Britain’s Got Talent notwithstanding, what was the last show they did that was a proper bona fide hit?

Given that they apparently stopped doing SNT not because of the ratings (it was still doing OK!) but because they were bored of it, this feels like a bit of an admission of defeat.

If it doesn’t get 7-8m+ tomorrow, everyone will point out that it’s a bit of a failure. I think that’s a bit unfair, I think if it gets 6m everyone should be fairly pleased. It’d be their biggest Saturday night hit in years.

I hope it works out for them.

However, if they are not literally giving away the prizes advertised during the show itself, now Product Placement is a thing, someone ought to be sacked.

Right. So. It looks like I’m going to be charged with trying to arrange a Golden Balls board game tournament for a party thing on Friday. They want to play with real money (as in everyone puts a stake in). My argument is that this is likely to be a terrible idea, not for the arguments (which I suspect are part of the comedy) but mainly because it’s going to be quite an unwieldly thing to do with eight or more people. If you want the prisoner’s dilemma, it’s probably best you play something else and then do it with the final two.

Still that’s what they want so that’s what I’m going to attempt to give them. I think I know how I’m going to approach this. The thing is I don’t have a copy of the game and you know what they say about forewarned being forearmed. If you’ve got a copy, would you mind letting me know what’s in all the balls? I understand they are reversable, the more information the better. Thanks in advance. I will let you know what happens, should you want to play the Golden Balls board game for actual real stakes yourself.

[Alright, before we continue as we don’t want them getting lost, we wrote a feature on German show Der Klügste Deutsche last night, the show that Britain’s Brightest was based on. Also we are playing poker tonight, it’s game three of the BSOP ’13, $5.50 to enter, 8pm start. JOIN US.]

It’s the middle of February and that can only mean one thing: it’s time for irregular Bother’s Bar Pub Quiz Podcast The Line Up! Today Andrew “Keshihead” Sullivan and Shanine Salmon attempt to break their gameshow duck in my game of knowledge and strategy. Who will win drink from the bar for the rest of the evening? And crucially, is Eamonn Holmes different in real life? With thanks to our good friends at QuizQuizQuiz.com for supplying the questions.

There are lots of ways you can listen:

• You can download it directly as an MP3 here. it’s about 32mb.
• You can read the show notes and commentary here.
• You can subscribe on iTunes!
• You can subscribe on your RSS feed of choice!

Or you can listen to it on the Player:

CONTENT! And if you’re missing Britain’s Brightest, why not have a look at this thing on Der Klügste Deutsche that I wrote? Looks like Britain’s Brightest attempted to fuse the structures of DKD’s finals and semi-finals and sort of made rather a mess of things.

TOMORROW! Find out the truth about Eamonn Holmes with a new episode of The Line Up!  ALSO COME AND PLAY POKER.