Got a cracking DM from @metaboatchris last night, which I shall repost here. Perhaps you know something?
I was talking to my fiancé’s mum recently, who mentioned a contestant she knew who took part on Big Break in the 90s. According to her, he made it through to the “Make or Break” final round, and won two prizes (not sure which, but presuming the red ball prize and a blue/pink ball prize). On the show, you can only win two prizes, however because he claimed that it was not adequately explained to him at the time, he said that he should have won every prize between red and blue/pink, not just the two prizes the contestant normally does, and took the producers to court. In the end, he was given all the prizes, and as a result later episodes of Big Break make it clear that it is only two prizes that are won in Make or Break. I’ve tried looking for information in relation to this on the internet and in news articles, but I can’t find any information relating to this, and I’m wondering if it was ever reported at the time. He may have settled at the time, so it may have never made it to court, but I wasn’t sure if it was ever made public. I know that the contestant was called Ian and he was from Northern Ireland, but don’t know any more information than that. Would you know if there is any information out there in relation to this? I know that Big Break had its transmission delayed for several years, but I think this was due to legal issues regarding the rights to the series, rather than this issue. I also read on a forum that there were several episodes of the series that were canned, but I don’t know if it a) that’s true, and b) if it was in relation to this.
It’s interesting looking back at this – the first three seasons of Big Break in 1991 and 1992 existed while the £6000 prize cap was still in force.
If we take an early episode:
* Trick Shot – Binoculars
* Pocket Money – £30 and £320 in this case
* Prizes – Vintage Port (Red), Dry Ski Lessons (Yellow), Dishwasher (Green), Mobile Phone (Brown), TV and Video (Blue), PC (Pink) and Exotic Holiday (Black)
It does feel like they play off that ambiguity somewhat in the earlier episodes – for example in the same episode Jim announces that they’ve “won £320, the vintage port [red], a colour TV and all that stuff [blue]” as he’s hurrying to sign off the episode – and people could easily read “all that stuff” as either the rest of the blue prize (the video recorder) or the blue, brown, green and yellow prizes. Things were a lot clearer in the charity specials where they indicate the progression of money from £200, 400, 600, 800, 1000, 1200 and 1500 top prize.
The BBC tended to be a lot tighter on prizes anyway, so the above list would have not only been in the ballpark of the prize cap, but may well have failed the “value to taxpayers” test.
I’m struggling to find anything related to a legal case – although it would be dwarfed by the Roger Medcalf case (1998) where he sued regarding format creation including a six-figure settlement. For the cost of the prizes in question, I can imagine they’d settle and fix the problem rather than have an expensive drawn out process.
Regarding episodes being delayed, I think that’s most likely because of Jim Davidson taking over the Generation Game… it seemed to cause more and more of a scheduling slide to Big Break between 1995 and 2001 – in some cases episodes being broadcast 24 months after recording and in increasingly bizarre time slots (Friday evenings, Wednesday evenings, pre-CBBC daytime).
I’m the wrong person when it comes to knowledge of canned episodes and the like, so I’ll defer that to someone else.
Every Second Counts had the same prize structure, in that you’d win the first and last prizes you’d reached in the final, but none of those in between. As mentioned on UKGameshows, they made it so the first prize would be related to the star prize. It was never that explicitly mentioned on Big Break, though, so it’s not surprising people didn’t notice.
As mentioned, the marathon recording sessions meant some episodes went out months and even years after broadcast, I remember some going out in 2000 with the old BBC logo and a 1997 copyright date.
Someone used to post on The Mausoleum Club who did the graphics on Big Break, and he once said that he remembered Jim making reference once to the hostage Jackie Mann and expressing his hope he’d soon be released. Then ages later he was reading the Radio Times and saw Big Break was on that night, and remembered from the snooker players billed it was that episode, and Jackie Mann had since been released. So he phoned the producer, who had forgotten about it completely, and he had to go into TV Centre that day to quickly edit it out.