This was revealed after tonight’s Taskmaster final:

• David Baddiel
• Ed Gamble
• Jo Brand
• Katy Wix
• Rose Matafeo

Wix the only unknown quantity for me.

The studio shows record in about a fortnight.

Rylan’s Supermarket Sweep! Hurrah! Although interestingly it’s set for ITV2 and “pre-watershed”. I know I’m going to get comments saying “hey, it should be at 9:25!!!” but come on. At the very least ITV2 don’t put original programming on during daytime, Ellen excepted. Will it be Rylan versus Corrie?

20 episodes over four weeks and “will feature iconic elements of the original”, which presumably means saying “… Dale” after every answer. Sixty minute episodes, but presumably we aren’t about to get twenty-minute sweeps. I suspect there might be added inflatable physical challenge elements at a guess.

The other burning question is which lucky, lucky supermarket will be sponsoring it?

So today a new international record is going to be set (it’s been spoilt pretty much everywhere so it’s not like this is news), Los Lobos are about to win a €4m+ progressive jackpot, on top of the €2m+ they’ve earned as returning champions on daily Spanish quiz Boom!, one of the shows from about five years ago everyone reckoned was going to be the next big thing, and then wasn’t. This is getting a primetime special.

Our Italian correspondent CeletheRef tells us “Nicolò Scalfi, 87-times champion of the Italian “Who’s Still Standing?” couldn’t defend his title and went home with all of €651,000 the highest sum won on the show.”

It is not uncommon for champions on Tout le Monde Veut Prende Sa Place to rack up 100+ victories (and even then if they lose they can offer previous winnings to the winning challenger to walk away and keep the seat). Les Douze Coups de Midi also has champions occasionally rack up 50+ wins, the record holder having 193 appearances. People talked about those.

People talked about Jeopardy when Ken Jennings was winning. They talked about it with James Holzenhauer on his run.

They probably didn’t talk about it when Ian Lygo was forced to retire at 75 victories on 100%.

In making shows self-contained because they’re apparently easier to broadcast, is someone missing a trick? Pasaparabra allows its champions to return indefinitely. Alphabetical, as well has having an endgame which was to all intents and purposes impossible (sidenote: audiences will accept very-hard-but-doable, they won’t accept having to get 26 out of 20) kicked its champions out after 10 games.

The one UK exception is Who Dares Wins, but the record for that is only 12 games.

Well this was a pain in the backside and no mistake. I couldn’t quite get my head round DOSbox so ended up playing it in a browser at an abandonware site and used cam software to isolate the gameplay. The big issue with this is that I can’t quit any of the rooms – the control for that was CTRL+ESC which just brings up the Windows Start Menu.

Anyway here we are, Bother’s Bar Plays The Crystal Maze On An MS-DOS Abandonware Site Badly. Enjoy!

Alright then, let’s see what you wrote. I can’t vouch for the truthfulness or otherwise of what has come in, although doubtless there are grains of truth dotted about:

• The SRO show about quizzers turned out to be a quiz where 15 different contestants from five shows (Millionaire, Chase, 15 to 1, UC and Mastermind) battle it out to see who’s the best. Host was Jeremy Vine, who was pretty decent. We didn’t leave until midnight but at least they gave us a snack and a drink.
• ITV special to air later in the year named ‘Quizmaster‘ and is hosted by Jeremy Vine. The show sees 5 teams of 3 quiz show champs (Mastermind, 15-To-1, The Chase, Uni Challenge and Millionaire) playing an elimination tournament over 5 knockout rounds until 1 player remains. (I don’t think this sounds very ITV to be honest but we’ll see. Also crikey at the recording length, how long does it take to film a quiz?)
• Insiders relating to the Banijay Group are stating that Nickelodeon are playing safe and has shortlisted John Cena as the maze master for the US produced series of the Crystal Maze.
• Crystal Maze USA might be eyeing Richard Ayoade. (Well Ayoade is the kids’ favourite. Personally I hope it’s John Cena but mainly because I predicted it would probably be him weeks ago).
• I’d heard rumblings that The Amazing Race UK was being considered, but that Race Across The World pretty much stopped it dead in it’s tracks. (I still think the demanded editing style of TAR would go down like a lead balloon over here, so probably a good thing.)
• Channel Ten in Australia is bringing back The Amazing Race. In keeping with their continued existence on doing as little work on their television productions as possible and hoping viewers stick with it anyway, they’ve got a rugby player hosting. (Grant Bowler or GTFO.)
• ITV is planning to put WWTBAM on the week commencing 5th August for 6 nights at 9 pm.
• All the gunge used on UK telly comes from one online shop who also make and sell weird and adult messy fetish videos. Different legal company so all deniable but obviously the same people and style . It’s really creepy and will be a tabloid scandal one day. Everyone in kids tv knows it but pretends not to cos there’s nowhere else good to buy gunge from. (This is hilarious if it’s true. I’m not sure though, is it really that hard to make? They used to show how the Beeb made theirs on Going Live every other week.)
• Stool pigeon used to be fun and I enjoyed sorting the wheat from the chaff! I liked the spoof stuff! (I’ve completely made up one of the comments and reactions. Try and work out which!)
• The BBC and 12 Yard still aren’t confirming whether or not Eggheads is ending – the latest story relating to the show being that someone in Nottingham left a signed photo of Chris Hughes on a bus and will get a replacement courtesy of Jeremy Vine and Greg James. Apparently, the latest series of new episodes (since it’s almost as notorious as Pointless for having long blocks of repeats seemingly at random) is the 21st. If this series *is* to be the last, will the Beeb wait till it’s over before making the announcement (“We’d like to thank Jeremy Vine, Dermot Murnaghan and all the Eggheads over the years, blah blah blah”)? Or will they actually give the show a proper send-off, like they did with the Weakest Link in 2012? It would be nice if they did, IMO – it *has* been running for 16 years, longer than Link, with nearly 2,000 episodes in that time including a not-insignificant number of celeb episodes, as well of course as the two spin-off shows to find new ‘heads. *And* it has made the old Simpsons slot its own, too (whereas the likes of Ready Steady Cook and Flog It! never really nailed themselves to a single time slot, despite their own long runs and popularity). (Fair to suggest it probably deserves something even if it’s never really made the public conscious in the same way any of the other shows mentioned have.)
• Ever wondered what presenters get paid? Standard appearance fees for household names start at £20k a pop, for a one-off. Real top division stars like McIntyre and Norton are £50-60k.

Well there we are. Thanks to all of this month’s contributors.

Ha-cha-cha-cha, it’s been a while but it’s Stool Pigeon Thursday! Let us know the goss you don’t want to put your name to.

We’re not interested in lies (although by its very nature we don’t know the truth about anything left in the box) or your fascinating opinions (we have actual comments for those), or stuff that’s pretty well known and discussed on Twitter or whatever already, in quite a slow period we’re interested in gossip that you might not want to put your name to.

I’ll keep the box open until around 8pm, then come back later in the evening to see if anything interesting has come to light.

BOX CLOSED.