Remember this?

That’s right! It’s the trophy for last year’s The Smartest Person At Bother’s Bar. We were going to do it again this year then came to the conclusion that I couldn’t be bothered to write questions for it.

I do, however, have a trophy collecting dust to give away. What to do?

Well this coming Saturday night, the 22nd, I’m going to do our very own TV Total-style spin-off. The Great Briggish Festive Jack-Off. Six contestants (inevitably male nerds) join me in the Jack-Off Tent, one leaves with a trophy. Five games of cultural phenomenon quiz game You Don’t Know Jack: Full Stream will be played with the lowest scorer eliminated each time. The last person standing is the winner. It’s a test of your smarts and your endurance, who will go the distance and leave Festive Jack-Off champion?

You will need:

• To be free on Saturday night from around 9:15pm to 11pm UK.
• To be on Twitter.
• To have a microphone.
• To have a second screen.

Also, because there’s a trophy and postage involved this time, I’ll be prioritising UK players. However international friends are welcome to apply and fill gaps, and if we do this again I will be more liberal. We will also be live and you will be able to playalong on your phones.

This will only go ahead if we can get six people. It’s a last minute idea (i.e. I was in a queue for a kebab) and people may have plans for the December 22nd.

If you’re interested, please fill in the form below.

Good luck!

In case you missed it, Netflix have started uploading seasons of recent-ish US Game Show Network originals: Idiotest, Emogenius, Winsanity and their adaptation of Minute to Win It. Idiotest is probably my pick for the one you should watch, although people seem to have a lot of time for Emogenius as well.

Fingers crossed for some GSN Golden Age at some point – yer Russian Roulettes, yer Crams. Even so with Jeopardy it’s interesting that Netflix are going down this route – cheap content presumably.

In other news, blog Jack Remembers Things is doing a Crystal Maze month and has interviews with Bob Lishman (who wrote his experiences of being on the show up in the early years of the world wide web) and more interestingly, David G Croft, which is a 45 minute interview on Youtube. A third interview is to come!

Tonight, 9:15pm UK
Here and on Youtube

Get your phones ready! We’ll be live at 9:15.

Crikey, you had a lot to say. We opened an anonymous box for people to leave anonymous gossip and this is what’s transpired. Please bear in mind we cannot know for certain the truth for any of these things, only the people writing know that. Eyes down, look in:

• There are rumblings behind the doors of ITV to get Harry & Noel together for a spin off show in some vein similar to what Gino Fred & Gordan have currently. Touring around the world due to the chemistry they have. If greenlit it will probably go out in the latter half of 2019.
• Channel 4 might be pulling the plug on the crystal maze after this years xmas-ish special. No one at the company wants to confirm or deny this rumour. (Well they probably won’t until they do a press release. I’ve heard through very very unofficial sources that a third series may well be happening, making it the McDonald’s Big Tasty of TV shows – it’s not very good, nobody seems to like it, but they keep bringing it back “by popular demand” anyway. The Crystal Maze Xmas Special is going out on Boxing Day this year.)
• I recently saw a UKTV commissioner try and fail to remember the name of the host of “Beat The Internet with John Robbins”, which wouldn’t be so funny if that wasn’t the most repeated joke in the show. (Ha!)
• Two spinoffs of ‘The Chase’ in development: ‘Beat The Chaser’, which seems to have an ‘Eggheads’-type mechanic where the team chooses which Chaser to face on each subject; and some kind of all-star champion-of-champions bout (made by the original producer Sue Allison) featuring Madeline Grant from ‘Mastermind’, Bobby Seagull off ‘University Challenge’, Shaun Wallace off of ‘The Chase’, and CJ from pushing a tramp into a canal but not really haha. (Not sure I like the sound of the first one, feels like needless dilution of the brand that risks tainting the original. The second one is interesting because those were the names associated with the recently piloted Game of Your Life with Jonathan Ross which everyone’s gone quiet about. Presumably they want to do something with them, even if it’s not that.)
• With Dara O Briain now confirmed as host of another Blockbusters revival, how far up the tree does he now come in the number of gameshows hosted by a single individual? (I’d have known this once but these days I don’t. Anyone?)
• Gemma Collins unexpectedly brings down the house in All Together Now Celebrities. A German version comes out next year. (How did the Australian one do in the end? Also I hope the penchant for putting “Celebrities” at the end of titles of shows where it doesn’t make sense to isn’t going to become a thing.)
• So was reading that a big hit in Germany recently was Adam Meets Eve- think Celebrity Love Island except everyone is naked. You think C4 or C5 would ever try to do that (I know C4 did Naked Attraction), and there are enough desperate D-list celebs to agree to do it? (What am I saying, you know there are enough celebs williing to do it…) (Well, Naked Attraction seems to do well for C4…)
• Dan Walker to replace Sue Barker as host of A Question of Sport (This seems like both an attention seeking lie and very plausable).
• Studio Lambert spent a six-figure sum on a hi-tech games room for The Circle earlier in the year. Channel 4 decided after the first episode aired they didn’t want Studio Lambert to use it – insisting they focus solely on the interaction between the players. What a waste. (Pity, although I wonder how that would have worked in the context of the show? “Circle, move left, send.”)
• I think children’s gameshows are the best kinds of gameshows since there’s much more you can do than an adult show and i’m slightly annoyed that there’s not as many as there used to be. The cbbc commissioning page says that even though they have a bigger budget, they want fewer programmes. Surely in the age of netflix, the more programmes you have, the more chance of a hit rather that only specialising in 2 shows per year. (We’ve often said this. In other news, presumably Raven didn’t do enough to get a recommission?)
• Late add: I’m late to Stool Pidgeon but I also heard the thing about The Circle games room. Also, the viewers vote prize was a late addition to try and make sure there was a satisfying winner for audiences and they didn’t expect what did happen. And that production team members had the job of going in to the rooms to just chat to the contestants occasionally just so they didn’t go mad being alone.

Phew. Thanks to all our gossips.

Ha-cha-cha-cha.

Basically I’m too busy to research content right now so you do it for me. The box will close around 7-ish with the results to come a bit later, if there are any.

Anonybox closed.

I don’t have any leave left so these people need not worry about a surprise drop-in from me, but they might still like a surprise drop-in from you.

• Small Fortune with Dermot O Leary, which basically sounds like Big Money Operation. This is filming at Pinewood this and next week.
• Gino’s Win Your Wish List is recording on Friday at Salford.
• Impossible Celebs returns! 18 brand new celebrities do battle in Glasgow at the end of January.
• Blind Date is recording in Maidstone in Kent next Monday.
• I have no idea what Rob and Romesh vs is, but it sounds a bit like a modern celeb take on Fakin’ It. Anyway they’re doing a DJ set at London’s famous Cargo Nightclub “soon”.
• Re-Play 2018 With Richard Osman, which I think you’ll find is legally different from The Big Fat Quiz of The Year actually, films next Wednesday at BBC Elstree for ITV.
• Your Face or Mine is recording at Television Centre in January.
• The 100k Drop is filming another run up in Salford in January.
• And finally Al Murray’s Great British Pub Quiz records at 3 Mills in London throughout January and February.

Phew!