We were very sad to hear of the passing of interviewer, DJ, gameshow host, Eurovision commentator and sometime holder of the world’s longest televised golf putt Terry Wogan when we got up this morning. He was 77.
It is a bit obvious but here is the first episode of Blankety Blank in tribute.
And here he is on Would I Lie To You.
So this turned up in a forum I was reading this morning, a show from the US 1979/80 called The Guinness Game, where people bet on records that may or may not be broken. The game element is basically lousy but the record breaking elements are quite good.
What’s really interesting is that lousy as the game is, the central conceit actually predates Wetten Dass? by a year or more.
Whatsmore as much as I love You Bet, one of the issues I had with it is that people wrote in saying they could do a thing, they come on, and 80%+ of the time they successfully do the thing and eventually I find myself wanting them to fail to add a bit of spice and because the celebrity forfeit element was quite amusing. World records are inherently a bit more challenging to break.
In other news do you remember Come On Down – The Game Show Story? One of the contributors to that and old-TV talking head, Louis Barfe, wants to write a book on the genre and is looking for crowdfunding. I’m sure this will be very entertaining, so if you’re interested put your name down for a copy here.
That old fallback when we’re too busy to research something else worth sharing:
Lots of things filming at Maidstone, not ideal but certainly much more pedestrian friendly than BLOODY Pinewood if you’re training in, or at least it was last time I went which was some time ago.
Well there’s not much else on at the moment so let me tell you about a study I recently took part in, which I think it’s OK to talk about a little now in general terms (with some of the bits omitted) because I’ve just been paid off. You fill out forms saying what you would do and then are randomly paired up with someone else, and there’s about £25 to be won in total.
To my knowledge there hasn’t been a gameshow based around the Ultimatum Game (maybe Divided as a variant), one of the games that form part of economic game theory.
In this game there is a resource, lets say 100 units. Person A proposes how it should be split. Person B decides to accept or reject the offer. If they accept, both get paid off how A split it. If B rejects, both go empty handed. There’s an added wrinkle in this particular experiment in that in some games if B rejects, A gets a small amount of money anyway (about one-sixth of what’s on offer).
As Player B you have both none of the power and all the power – in theory you can veto anything not shared equally, but by the same token leaving with *something* is better and more rational than leaving with *nothing*. In theory A can push quite hard with this knowledge, especially as in some instances they stand to make money regardless. The question is how far are you willing to roll over and take it?
As it turned out as a Player B I was pretty happy to suck it up – up to a point, expecting that I should be better off than Player A would be if he was worst off (i.e. I want more than zero, and a little bit more than what they’d get in games with a consolation prize).
Happily it turns out that I was paired up with someone pretty generous and I won about £11. My first thought was “oh that’s quite nice!” My second thought was “what a sucker, they should have had a lot more.”
Anyway that was a lot of fun, and to top it all off I appeared to have wangled myself a free coleslaw getting KFC on the way home. When you’re up you’re up.
I’m trying so hard to reign in my spending after Christmas as we approach two exciting council tax free months, so the one-two punch I’m suffering today might take a while to get over. First popular Bother’s Bar approved beat combo The Pet Shop Boys have a new album coming out in April and they’re doing a gig at the Royal Opera House which I got a ticket for, and this evening an advert on Facebook – on Facebook of all places! – that piqued my interest is a show called The Money, a cross between a theatrical performance and a game. Basically if you want to play you put a stake forward and if everybody who puts a stake forward can unanimously agree what happens with it then that thing will happen, if not it will rollover to the next performance (it’s low-stakes Unan1mous in theatre form, basically). Anybody been already? I’ve got a ticket as a silent witness.
Contemporary theatre are two words that fill me with a sort of dread but if you’re local to Cambridge and this interests you then it’s going to play out at The Guildhall in Market Square on 16th Feb, minimum donation is a tenner if you want to play, you can sit as a silent witness for £12. Tickets through the Cambridge Junction website.
If you missed it, here’s your chance to watch the entire broadcast again!
The Full write up is up at UKGameshows.com and afterparty stuff can be found after the cut.