An episode of Gordon Ramsay’s Bank Balance (I’ve realised that doing the typography gag makes it hard to search for) films remotely today, if you’re in the audience do feel free to spill the beans on whether it’s any good or not.

Of interest, the BBC is planning on semi-stripping it several nights a week at 9pm which suggests a) real confidence and/or b) a lack of dramas in the tank.

“This is going to be truly epic. It is such an intense game with so much jeopardy to win big and lose even bigger, where the difference between failure and success is always in the balance. I’m so happy to be working with the fantastic team at the BBC and cannot wait to get in the studio and start stacking those gold bars!”

Gordon Ramsey

Looking forward to seeing how they can “lose even bigger” – fail to stack your bars and lose your house.

In other news, Lingo has been recommissioned for another 60 eps. Let’s hope this time Adil tells losing contestants to “Ling-off.”

Hey, gaming’s back and it’s not just for dweebs any more!!!

Yesterday’s big news is that genuinely iconic 90s show GamesMaster is coming back on E4 as a celebrity gaming challenge show, where five celebs will battle it out in “a gaming odyssey… over three episodes” to win the coveted Golden Joystick.

90s GamesMaster was basically a proto-New Top Gear which got away with a lot of silliness and smutty gags in an early-evening timeslot, and also appeared at a time where it could showcase things you wouldn’t have seen before. I’m struggling to see who this is going to be for in 2021 – people who remember the original? But we don’t think Dominik Diamond’s involved and Patrick Moore certainly won’t be. Young people? Already watching served many times over for gaming stuff on Youtube/Twitch. Celebrity fans? It’s not like Go 8 Bit is still a thing.

Still, good news for bald celebrity Tom Allen who’s agent is probably getting the call to be cast to be the next GM as we speak.

Saturday, 7:15pm (UK) 8:15 (CET),
Pro Sieben and naughty internet streaming

Yo, what are you doing this evening? Not much these days I bet! So why not join us as two celebs battle it out for €100,000 in an empty studio across fifteen mystery games, one of which will be Blamieren oder Kassieren, live on German television?

As ever we will have our Discord open for live chat and quizzing and gossip and stuff. Remember it’s a privilege not a right so behave yourselves. To avoid cutting out, we advise turning Auto-sensitivity off and setting it to -85dB or so in your settings.

THIS EPISODE! It’s the first one of the year! And it’s Kevin “Fisch” Großkreutz (Footballer) versus Pascal “Pommes” Hens (Handballer). Yes we see what they’ve done there.

There is a chance our live Youtube commentary stream may start a bit late – basically because members of my family are getting COVID jabs and I need to babysit. People will be about in the Discord and I will broadcast as soon as possible.

The link to the Youtube commentary stream will be live here from 7:15pm until end of broadcast.

This stream is commentary only. You will need to have a naughty stream running at the same time for the visuals. We are likely to be about 15-20 seconds behind the visual stream (and about a full minute behind if you’re watching an actual satellite feed), sorry.

The Opera VPN has apparently stopped being useful for SdS. Bother’s Bar recommends shelling out for a proper VPN service. Bother’s Bar uses ExpressVPN, other VPN services are available. Matt Clemson recommends Windscribe as a free alternative. We cannot take responsibility for anything you do to your system, so be careful and use some common sense.

To watch it would be useful to sign up for ProSieben’s catch-up service – it’s pretty simple to work out, don’t click the box if you don’t want e-mail messages. You will need to put in a proper e-mail because it will send you a confirmation. 

If anyone knows of any relatively safe livestreams, do feel free to share.

A reminder that it’s Schlag den Star this Saturday evening from 7:15 UK, do join us for our watchalong.

Right, lots of things looking for contestants and such, let’s have a look:

• Moneyball (or MoneybΔll, apparently) is looking for contestants, lines open until 5th March, don’t look too closely at the web address.
• Epic Gameshow is looking for individuals AND bubbled pairs for its upcoming series, lines close 14th March.
• Gordon Ramsey’s B/£\nk B/\lΔnce records remotely on Monday, if you got a ticket do let us know if it’s any good.
• Der Der Der Der DER The Wheel is looking for contestants, lines close May 14th.
• Unbeatable with Jason Manford is looking for contestants, lines close 19th February.
• An unnamed show that sounds like You Don’t Know Jack‘s Dis or Dat writ large is looking for bubbled partners.
• Finally are you bright AND funny?

Balls.

Ian Wright has been announced as the host of The Moneyshotball for ITV which we think is the first gameshow he’s fronted in about twenty years (edit: forgot he did Gladiators on Sky, otherwise it does look like lottery quiz Wright Around the World). Sounds quite interesting from the press release – quite interested by the idea of being forced back into the game if they fail to cashout which isn’t something I think has really been explored before.

MORE BALLS, and yesterday it came to our attention that there are plans for a UK version of Holey Moley, although we don’t know what channel or anything.

This leads us to the question: who should host a UK version of Holey Moley? They bought Rob Riggle to the Australian version (which started airing this week), I figured they wouldn’t bother for the UK, but then someone pointed out he was a host on BBC3’s World Series of Dating, so perhaps? It might be very difficult to do a direct translation, US and UK sportsbroadcasting has a very different feel so perhaps they’ll try another way. Nonetheless, if you had the choice of a) commentator b) comedian commentator c) greenside reporter and d) ‘sponsor’ sportsperson, who’d you pick?

More balls now and somebody uploaded the first networked edition of Lingo from 1988 (as we understand it the first series was regional to Central the year previous):

Finally, and only tangentally related to balls in that some might get used, it’s Schlag den Star on Saturday so do join us for our watchalong.

Some fun to start the week, thanks to Wink Martindale’s Youtube channel (and I highly recommend subscribing as there’s loads of good stuff on it, and if they hit 18,000 subs they’re going to release an episode of the Patrick Kielty US Deal or No Deal which was all filmed and never shown), Neil Patrick Harris hosts ONE MILLION DOLLAR Going For Gold. I think we can agree American Know-it-All is a uniquely terrible title, perhaps they were trying to invoke American Gladiators.

It’s not the first time they tried to adapt the format in the US, here is the original Bill Rafferty pilot from 1987.