Here’s a fun thing I saw a link to yesterday, a full episode of Channel 4’s Television Scrabble from 1984, hosted by Alan Coren. An exhibition match between the series champion and an actual Scrabble champion.

To be honest, the actual game is as dull as anything so it’s quite fun to see much joviality Coren can make from the proceedings and we also enjoyed the amusingly light-entertainment theme by Harry Rabinowitz (a name that’s popped up because his orchestra “did” New Faces with Marti Caine which I had been watching a bit of of late).

Yes, no longer wonder “what if they made Squid Game… but in real life” as it seems Netflix, through Studio Lambert and The Garden are making Squid Game… but in real life!

The losing contestants aren’t getting shot, the winner will be taking home $4.56m. Thrill to a full 45-60 minute game of Redlight Greenlight, except this time punctuated by quite annoying US-style confessionals! “So, right, there’s this doll, right, and you had to get from one side of the room to another, right, but if the doll looked at you you had to stand still! It was absolutely mental!” Get excited by huge amounts of contestants, none of whom you’ll care about! Discover that when it’s not in a dramatic form, the actual Squid Game process of playing kids games with no chance of death probably isn’t actually all that exciting!

Anyway you can apply if you want.

Look, isn’t it about sometime someone just revived Ultra Quiz?

If you’re missing Only Connect during the two-week off-season or however long it is these days, you’re in luck as FOTB Royal Flush has put together v1.0 his own daily version, have a look.

It sounds like the press pack has come out, we *believe* the series is going to start on July 2nd, although that’s not set in stone, and if it sounds a bit late that might be because there are 9 episodes this year rather than the 10-11 of previous years.

• It sounds like, as I understand it, each episode is going to be played under slightly different conditions/rules, “the nine aspects of Pere Fouras” – we’re aware there’s a Masked Warrior where the team have to take them on in games to earn clues to find out who they are, but we don’t actually know if it’s an episodic thing or a one-off (as an aspect), although since the press have already revealed who it (or at least one of them is) we’re slightly puzzled. It looks like a return to seven keys to unlock the Treasure Room.
• New games that have been revealed – The Infernal Cell, looks like contestants will have to put fires out by transporting water through a course including two Wipeout-style twirling forks. High Voltage – a new take on the don’t touch the laser game, one person has to guide the other who can’t see the lasers but will get an electric shock if a laser is breached. Cyril Gossbo has been moved to Pere Foruas’ Storage room because of low ratings. Mud Wrestling’s back. And it looks like a new adventure called The Laboratory “played across three levels of the Fort” – if it’s as good as The Clue Seller was then I’m well up for this.
• New outside games/adventures include The Propeller – sounds like you have to hang on to something spinning as you go down a zipline (I wonder if it’s a bit like that game where you have to hold on to the spinning mushroom on Takeshi’s Castle?), a Tug-of-War across the top of the Fort against the Boos, the Sphere Path, get across a course of spheres hanging in mid air, and Looping, which sounds like that game from Dog Eat Dog where you have to swing a contraption to loop the loop (it sounds like you get thrusters to help you here).

This won’t be everything, there will always be new judgement and council games and new little bits of business. Hopefully enough new stuff to not feel stale, at any rate.

A second TV legend turns 80 this week! Today it’s the turn of journalist, newsreader and quiz show host Gordon Burns! Host of the bona fide top-five-of-all-time gameshow The Krypton Factor for the best part of twenty years, Burns also hosted Password and a few communication-based games in the mid nineties, A Word in Your Ear and Relatively Speaking. Unfortunately there aren’t any episodes of Relatively Speaking and its virtual reality-based endgame on Youtube, but here’s an episode of A Word In Your Ear which was basically the same thing but earlier and with celebrities anyway.

So that’s a Fred, a Gordon, are there any gameshow Ginos having an 80th birthday this week? We might get a road trip commission out of ITV.

The word “legend” is probably overused in TV circles but I don’t think it can be used nearly enough for Fred Dinenage who turns eighty today. Sportscaster, kids TV presenter, newsreader, true crime author and documentary maker, I grew up with Fred and Fern Britton reading the news on TVS before I moved to Anglia-land in my early teens and it was certainly the age where suddenly having different news people was quite jarring.

The nation probably best knows him for his stints across three generations of kids show How, but for me my favourite thing will always be his rather bolshy hosting of Gambit, which I’ve said before and will say again, in a just world would be repeated as much as Bullseye on Challenge. He only just retired from reading the news in the South of England last year.