Hitting the target - The history and development of Bullseye

Thursday night sees the last episode in the first ever series of Bullseye which has been shown by Challenge TV over the past couple of weeks, but the game show which was there at the end is a world away from the first episode of the first series. In and around studios of television companies of the late 70's, game shows were in production or going into production at that time the BBC had The Generation Game and the new to air Blankety Blank to name two. Throughout ITV of all the franchises, they each had a show in production from the major contributors such as ATV and Thames, the likes of Celebrity Squares and Give Us A Clue were astride the schedules. The more minor companies like Anglia would have one or even two shows offering big prizes, on the one hand Sale of the Century with Nicholas Parsons and the other Gambit with Fred Dinenage.

With these shows flying about set Andrew Wood thinking about what was the perfect game show, taking time to look at their nuances. The appeal of the shows were something in themselves, regularly they were topping the television ratings. But what was making people write in to take part on a regular basis, was it the taking part? The competition or just winning the prizes? It was clear that the format itself was important, the more clearer the better for the viewer to follow at home but also for the host to understand the rules as the programme went along. The problem with so many going into production was that ideas were being used up ten to the dozen, whether imported from American formats or thought up to make original ideas, premises of shows were the same but tweaked to suits their own style and rules. Wood's idea was to come up with something that had never been seen before in any game show before, to feel familiar but be new enough to surprise people.

What was come up with was a format which was not seen before, the 1970's had seen darts become a major television sport in its own right and because of this more and more people were playing in pubs and social clubs throughout the country. Overtime Wood developed this idea into a format, however with great competition from other formats being invented and also imported, it was really hard to get an idea seen to a head of light entertainment at any channel or company at that time. So Wood decided to go a name who had been a presenter of a successful show which was Norman Vaughan previously host of the Golden Shot, knowing that Vaughan might have some clout to get the Bullseye idea seen. As far as a deal went, Wood said if Vaughan could make the new idea seen by someone and if it goes into production that he could present it but if you don't get the presenter's job that Vaughan would be given a cut of all future revenue accruing as being a co-creator of Bullseye.

Thanks to Vaughan's links to ATV in Birmingham, the Bullseye idea was seen by Jon Scoffield, the station head of Light Entertainment at the time. The brief synopsis on a piece of paper presented to Scoffield was “A contestant throws a dart at a categorised board and is then asked a question on whatever he hits.” Scoffield took a look at it, rather then just baffling the presentation by giving an explanation by Wood, Scoffield just requested the idea to be seen as it went along just like it would almost be on the screen. The idea Scoffield liked, but the kick in the stomach was to come for Vaughan when Scoffield said he didn't like Vaughan for the presenter's job. Now having being the co-creator of Bullseye meant that Vaughan would taking a cut of any earnings from the programme, so the search was on for first a presenter and secondly a producer plus a director. The original plan for the presenter was to get Birmingham-based comedian Dave Ismay to film the pilot in 1980, Ismay had been a warm-up man for many of the ATV game shows and had made appearances on other shows such as 3-2-1 and the Golden Shot. Being around these shows meant Ismay could get a feel for how they worked and see how the hosts of each of them worked. Such was his closeness to The Golden Shot, he had seen the master of the game show Bob Monkhouse close at hand. So he seemed a natural choice to be the host, though a director was still needed.

Peter Harris, a well respected director of many types of shows had been working at ATV since the 1960's. In his time, he had directed Crossroads, helped launch Tiswas in 1974, at that time of the early 80's, he was most famous for directing the Muppet Show since 1977. This gave him lots of acclaim and is created on helping Jim Henson's creations come to the screens for a family audience, but come 1980 he had moved on to launching another of ATV's new game shows when he was the first director of Family Fortunes. So having launched that show and made it a success, Harris was called to Jon Scoffield's office to choose what he wanted to do next and there he was given three choices. One was Runaround, newly brought to ATV to possibly relaunch on Central Television in 1982 where Lewis Rudd, the new head of children's television had brought it with him from Southern Television, some unknown format, but possibly Chris Tarrant's O.T.T. which was in development and also Bullseye. Harris chose Bullseye because he was brought up in a public house during his formative years, so thought it was a good choice to take in this case.

The parts of this jigsaw were coming together, but then something was to happen which was throw the planning into chaos. With Dave Ismay, the host of the pilot for Bullseye, Peter Harris had met up with him to finalise details on when the pilot was to be filmed. But when Harris stated the dates, Ismay said he could not do them because he was on a cruise line entertaining the passengers. With the dates stuck and the studio time booked, there was no real way they could cancel the dates. So they offered it to Jim Bowen, famous at that time for his appearances on The Comedians and also as the comic foil for Pauline Quirke and Linda Robson on Thames Television's children's programme You Must be Joking. Bowen accepted the position as host, so it was on to development of the format. Though when finally Bowen met Harris, it was a great relationship as presenter and director, but on the first sighting of each other, Bowen was impressed by Harris who was immaculately dressed himself at the Grovenor Hotel in Birmingham. It was only after a while when Bowen had cottoned on about arriving at a coloured pink hotel building and seemingly flamboyant character, that they were going to hone the format to Bullseye in a Gay Club. But this broke the ice between them both and they got the format ready for the pilot to be filmed.

The series itself went to air on Monday the 21^st of September 1981, but these were not the first two episodes to be filmed which were shown first, actually it was the third ever episode filmed. By their both their own admissions that the first two were awful with Bowen being too nervously, fluffing the rules of the game and the nadir of when talking to a couple during the contestant's introduction when told that a person had been unemployed for two years, naturally Bowen had replied “Smashing...” without out no malice with the contest themselves looking daggers at Bowen for doing so. With that the decision to boost Bowen's confidence that the episodes would be scrapped and wiped, thus getting the production crew on his side. With the episodes having been filmed, they had to give the contestants who had won the prizes on both of them to them. One of which they won a caravan on, so they had to give it to the contestants. Compared to the cost of doing this, the value of junking the first two episodes filmed was far greater.

Looking back at the first series of 1981, using the original titles of Bully coming down from his pub sign to play darts, though the titles are different in one significant feature. During the titles there are lots of women with nipples prevalent, whether this was a nod to the cheeky pub nature of the game or an in-joke by graphic designer Chris Wroe, by the third series these images have been edited out where cue to pressure from high up the command chain or just a change attitude at when the programme was being broadcast on a Sunday afternoon in difference to a Monday evening slot. Though the basics of the game are there, the rules themselves seem over complicated. In the category board, the partner of the dart player has to pick the value of the question they want their dart playing partner to hit, ranging from ten, twenty, thirty or fifty for the bull itself rather just a category and the value of the question being for instance twenty pounds plus the bonus amount as well.

But well even before for the game has started, a nearest to the bull board is used to determine the order of play, the board consisting of concentric sections is also called upon if there is a tie, making sometimes the gameplay in these early editions hard to keep up with. Though the pound for pounds second round is a strange affair as the darts players through for the highest scores, rather then being on a pounds for points basis like in later series, the dart players partners can choose question to the value of twenty pounds, fifty or one hundred and one pounds. Whether this was a nod to the start darts scores of 301 or 501 for instance, is not quite revealed during the game play. But it is possible for a couple to have only won maybe only thirty pounds when they get to the prize board, meaning that couples will want to always gamble for the star prize every time with it being a brand new car, caravan or even a speedboat compared to winning the ubiquitous prize of a clock for every room in your house. The first series was seemingly to encourage the players to go for the star prize every time with every little jeopardy of an big amount of money accrued or prizes won at all.

During this series Jim Bowen is charged with doing everything as in asking the questions and taking care of the scoring as well, but sometimes with so much to do he has to rely on other off camera to help him with this, plus also inadvertently putting off players by making jokes of them and when they are throwing, though this seems like putting them at ease, most times it has the opposite effect. Bowen in this first series, does seem jittery about what he is meant to be doing at times, not quite knowing what's coming next. One significant event was to happen during the first series, which was to shape the whole programme from then on. During the series, the voice-over had been ATV Today's Nick Owen out of vision introducing the contestants and also with Bowen doing the scoring, it seemed that the show need some help from someone in the darting know. On the thirteenth edition came Tony Green, then a professional darts player but also as a darts referee as well.

It was this meeting with Harris and Green's own personality which lead to him joining the programme not only for his distinctive voice but also his darts refereeing as well. Out of vision for the first couple of years, Green's role grew bigger and bigger eventually becoming a foil for Bowen's jokes. But by doing this, it showed that the programme was more professional and also had respect for the darts players themselves. The charity throw which Green had been a part of was slowly changed away from just professional darts players in series three, with also celebrities who played darts coming into the mix as well, with them getting a sixty point head start to help boost up the funds if they were to score a relatively small amount of points to be coverted into pounds for charity.

The celebrities who came on were an eclectic mixture from George Best and Jimmy Greaves from the world of Football, 'Mighty' Mo Morland from the Roly Polys, Kenny Lynch and Jimmy Cricket plus from Bullseye own world co-creator Norman Vaughan and also former voice-over artist for the programme Nick Owen, who by 1983 had joined TV-AM. This type of thing combined with best darts players of the day, who by now were household names made Bullseye a hit with viewers. But this was not always so, in 1981 when the programme was placed on Monday evenings after Crossroads, they inherited an audience of thirteen million viewers, but slowly the viewers started to ebb away and by show six, the viewership was down to just over six million viewers but something remarkable happened from show eight as the viewers returned, if it was through sheer curiosity to see how bad this game show was or at that time Terry Wogan would say about it on his Radio Two show, thus people being curious would switch on it see what Terry was going on about and somehow they stuck the show.

Bullseye in itself had been become a 'cult' game show before people had even thought of the term, such like The Golden Shot had been moved from Saturday nights to a Sunday afternoon slot. Bullseye benefited from the same thing happening to it, it its own world even strange things couple happen oblivious to the host even. In the episode where George Best throws for charity, after the programme come back from the advertisement break, in the audience are a group of pensioners passing around a tupperware tube of sandwiches to feed themselves between them. Surreal this may seem, but these things endeared the programme to its viewership, by embracing a warts and all approach to being a game show.

This itself was almost being an anti-game show, wanting to more rougher them some of the more expensive productions going into studios such as LWT's Play Your Cards Right or Punchlines, more homely then Yorkshire's 3-2-1. In earlier series, the losing contestants would get a brass dart shaped chalk holder and also a set of darts plus whatever money they had won, later getting a keyring as well. But like with Yorkshire's 3-2-1, the programme wanted something unique to give away as a constellation prize, the Kirkstall Lane based production gave away a ceramic Dusty Bin to contestants, so it was decided that Bullseye should go down the same route and Peter Harris decided the programme should give away to contestants a 'Bendy Bully', though at first Jim Bowen thought this was not a good idea as it seemed that it would be rubbing salt into the wounds of losing contestants, by giving them something which appeared to be a bit of tat. But Harris decided that it was a good idea to do this and after having graphic designer Chris Wroe make up one as a trial model, he gave the go ahead to mass produce the item to give them away to every contestant who played the game. This in itself became another cult item, for the programme to build its reputation on.

"101 with six darts, three for you and three for you..."

With success comes decline, by the mid 1990's the show was starting to look somewhat dated against newer shows, even with more of a risked gamble introduced to the end game of just winning 'Bus Fare Home', the viewers had been drifting away from the programme and a move to Saturday teatimes did not help the production at all, with the programme beaten by twenty year-old repeats of Dad's Army and what ever else the BBC had to offer and they had to offer a new type of game show which had never been done before one based on a burgeoning sport, that was Big Break. All the traits were there in that show for the BBC which Bullseye had been doing ten years earlier. Even Carlton developed Tenball, a derivative of snooker and pool to replace Bullseye, in a move which had seen ITV going from stone age to space age in just two weeks. By now the schedules were dominated with brash, flash shows done on bigger budgets or Gladiators being only one example. Seemingly Bullseye was old hat, but until when ITV revived it for one week to take in the Gameshow Marathon season in 2005 to celebrate some of ITV's best ever game shows hosted by Ant and Dec, so popular was the edition of Bullseye it came back for the next series of the Gameshow Marathon presented by Vernon Kay.

With the rise of Challenge TV on cable and satellite television at that time, this lead to two new series of the programme presented by former contestant of the show Dave Spikey, who by now had become a successful comedian, regaining a cult audience once again the Bullseye story had gone quiet until Challenge TV had moved onto the Freeview platform in 2011, with them showing old editions of the programme from the early 1990's and the audience who remember the show came back to it once again prompting the purchase of the third, fourth and fifth series of the programme from 1983, 1984 and 1985 respectively. Eventually in 2013, they started to showed the first two series of the programme and as I write this, they are coming to end of series one.

But one thing can be certain, for all of its years its been a 'Super, Smashing, Great' ride to get where the programme is today and with talk of the original format being tweaked again, it may not have been the last we've seen of Bully yet...

Chuck Barris - Truth, Stranger than Fiction and Fiction, Stranger than Truth

The name Chuck Barris may not mean much to people in Britain and who he actually is, but for nearly a decade in American television, he was the man who could do no wrong at all. Presenter, creator, executive, songwriter, these are some of things that Barris has been throughout his career. He has also claimed to be a hitman for the CIA as well, his story maybe seemingly as varied as one person can have, though is it true?

His self-described “unauthorised autobiography” 'Confessions of a Dangerous Mind' charted his career inside and outside the media and beyond that, first published in 1984 first put out the claim that he had worked for the CIA as a hitman during the Cold War. Though the CIA refuted claims that Barris had ever worked for them, but this adds to the myth of a man whose life seems to perpetrate its own story. His book was turned into a film in 2002 with George Clooney directing and Sam Rockwell playing the part of Barris. Though he did realise a sequel in 2004 called 'Bad Grass Never Dies', charting more of his 'true' life both with the CIA and also within the entertainment industry. But away from that he wrote a memoir of his only child, his daughter Della in 2010 and her personal struggle with drug addiction.

Though the people who know or have known Barris describe him as a shy man, with a darker side to him, but the criticism of his shows by the press, critics and the moral majority may have added to this, in his own words “I wanted to get out of the kitchen because of the heat when all this criticism happened, but in truth I should have stayed.” It seemed that he wanted to push the boundaries of what television could do and to almost play on what was happening in society as such for entertainment. Maybe the finger on the pulse, not so much reality television, but to bring everyday reality to entertaiinment.

Barris himself, born Charles 'Chuck' Hirsch Barris on June the 3^rd 1929 in Philadelphia, USA. Attending Drexel University as a student and becoming a columnist on the university's own newspaper showed an aptitude for working in the media and also being able to spin a good yarn as well. Though his start in television came when he became a page and a staffer later on in his at NBC in New York. He worked his way up until he got a job at ABC as a standards and practices person on American Bandstand, who filmed the show in Philadelphia. His uncle Harry Barris was a singer/songwriter and sometimes actor, so it is quite possible that this may have influenced him to go into the music industry.

With surrounding himself with people already with in the music industry, it was only matter of time that he was to start to produce pop music both on records and more importantly on television. It was through these links that Barris wrote the song 'Palisades Park' for Freddy Cannon even though he could not read music himself. The success of the record shot it upto to number three in the American Billboard charts and becoming Cannon's biggest hit in Cannon's career. Though the royalties for the single were to prove important to Chuck, as they could be spent on a room at the Bel-Air hotel in New York, allowing him to stay there whilst pitching a programme to the ABC network. It seemed almost natural to Barris, that this would be the way to do it, by making money from something else to be able to do another thing which could lead on something or as he tells the tale.

The truth is pretty as unspectacular. Barris had been promoted throughout the network, moving to Los Angeles to the daytime programming, specifically being put in charge of what gameshows ABC would broadcast during the day. But when Chuck suggested to his bosses that most of the pitches for new possible shows were worse then his own ideas, the suggestion came up he changed from being a programme planner to a producer instead. So he did and came up with a new format and pitched to the executives 'The Dating Game' for their daytime schedules, but everything was different about what had gone on with gameshows before. The 'flower-power' set itself and the sexy banter between contestants, set the programme out from anything else on other networks let alone ABC, though it was a sign that Barris had observed what was going on around him with the flower-power revolution and wanting to get that into a show that was like nothing else. Such was the popularity of the show during the daytime that a prime-time version was produced an year on year the programme returned for seventeen years. If it was not for 'The Dating Game' though that Australia would not have made their version of it in 'Perfect Match' which would give LWT the idea to produce a British version taking the best bits from The Dating Game and Perfect Match to form Blind Date.

Riding on this success, Chuck was asked to took an idea of young newly-weds answering for electrical goods they might need for their new martial homes and started producing 'The Newlywed Game'. Though he only cajoled the couples along with their candour and allowed Bob Eubanks to pull as much detail out of the contestants as was possible without crossing the line. The combination worked once again leading to the programme having a nineteen year run on network television.

A Very Christmassy Newlywed Game...

Though Barris also produced several other gameshow formats for ABC based on the interest of the contestants, such as their humour, excitement, anger, embarrassment or vulnerability. Almost capturing the right mood for the show, by pulling out of the contestants what they thought wasn't possible, their inner feelings whilst being swept along by the action. But gameshows may have been what he was most famous for, he also tried producing other formats in light entertainment such as 'Operation Entertainment' which was a modern version of the old USO shows staged at military bases and The Bobby Vinton Show for the Canadian based singer Bobby Vinton, which outside gameshows became his most popular show.

But the one show he will be remember for is 'The Gong Show', a different type of variety/talent show thought its beginnings were a lot different to what the show would eventually become. The format developed by Chuck was a strange one, Barris himself had pitched it to the NBC executives as a parody show, where they saw it as a straight talent show and thought of it as such giving it to John Barbour, an actor/comedian who had previously played a part of a game show host in Sanford and Son. Barbour was given the pilot to present, but he could not get the concept that the show was trying to be a parody of this type of show. So eventually, when the network heads decided they liked the show and the one only one to understand it was Chuck Barris, they gave him the opportunity to present it and over time he developed his style playing on his personality of being almost shy to being on the screen. A couple of attributes to this was wearing oversized hats so that he was a bit hidden by them, the nervous clapping inbetween sentences and also being bumbling and jokey. With the parody angle, this always was meant to be like that, the antithesis of much more smoother and slicker hosts on other shows.

The atmosphere was meant to be eccentric, right down the interaction between himself and the judges, with a irreverent style between them both joking and playing off each other for laughs, introducing characters in to the show to give a more variety feel with them coming on at various times to do their acts such as 'Gene Gene The Dancing Machine' actually an NBC stagehand who would turn up when 'Jumpin at the Woodside' was ever played and start to dance, the unknown comic would tell really bad jokes and sometimes as Barris' expense. Opportunity Knocks, this was not.

His strange, surreal side would often come out wanting to see how far he could push the show before the executives had enough of him and the show as well. On one show in particular show, he got all the acts to sing 'Feelings' not matter if singing was their main talent or not. Another one featured two young women suggestively and slowly sucking ice pops to all intensive purposes looked like they were performing fellatio to them, though Chuck suggested that it was only in the viewers minds that they saw it like that. Though when judge Jaye P. Morgan exposed her breasts on camera just as a performer was doing in her act, NBC fired her from their version of the show but she was kept on the syndicated version though as Chuck though that it wasn't such a major thing really.

Come 1980 with the success of the show, Barris was give the chance to star in a movie version of the show with all the characters interlinked by a storyline which itself was a very common type of movie in the late 1970's and early 80's. But the film itself flopped at the box office, all the popular elements of the show were in there, the audiences didn't get it quite as much as the TV show as the 'zaniness' as Chuck put it wasn't not so much in evidence.

The height of 80's elegance...

Though with new shows being added to the rosta, such as the $1.98 Beauty Show where it was a parody of beauty contests where the judges deliberated over three rounds on personality, abilities and the final round being a swimwear contest with the eventual winner receiving $1.98, rotten vegetables as a bouquet and a cheap plastic crown as well. The whole idea came from Barris noticing that the least attractive contestant always won beauty contests with the whole contest being a 'fake' and already decided before filming, but was covered by the opening announcement to say it was fake and also with a note in the end credits to say the same staving off any controversy right from the start. But the end of the run came to pass with 'Three's A Crowd', a game show which involved husbands, wives and their secretaries to see who knew most about each other, from protests groups from both end of the spectrum declared that the show was promoting adultery, a much bigger blow was to come when the syndicated version of The Newlywed Game lost two of its biggest sponsors in Ford and Proctor and Gamble. Even worse was when the wife of Gene Autry, the owner of the studios and production base felt the content of the production was too much and too racy, so they had misgivings about keeping the show and production at the base. Though the syndication of the programme ended before that threat could ever come to pass.

By 1984, Barris was living in France and had set up his own distribution company though he could come back to produce a new version of The Newlywed Game between 1985 and 1989 for syndication and he sold his shares in Barris Industries to Burt Sugarman in 1987, eventually leading to being sold again in 1989 to Sony Pictures Distribution owning all of Barris' formats. With this new version of both The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game were revived between 1996 and 1999 being syndicated as well, though during the 90's new pilots for new shows were tried out such as Comedy Courthouse and Dollar A Second and revivals of the Gong Show.

So its certain that some of these things happened, others not so. But the mystery of the person still lingers on, perhaps he was ahead of his time with the programmes he created and produced. In a time of reality television with it having gone to a more open and creative angle now, maybe his ideas could fit in or perhaps they were of a world of their own. Though what ever was happening on Planet Barris, the truth maybe stranger then fiction but its fiction is a good as the truth..

"And its Bob's Full House tonight as well.." - Why Bob Monkhouse and Bingo on the Beeb is still beloved after all these years...

Over the past couple of weeks, Challenge has started to repeat one of seminal gameshows to be broadcast on television in the United Kingdom, that of course being Bob's Full House. 

Previously the channel has shown all the available editions of Bob Monkhouse's time on Family Fortunes, so it came as no surprise when they said they had purchased Series One of Bob's Full House. Following on from the success of its purchase of the earlier series of Bullseye as well. This takes the modern viewer back to the day when the gameshow were the kings and queens of the screen. So much so, that at one time BAFTA used to present an award to the best gameshow host.

Going back to the early eighties, all sorts of shows were on the air such as Punchlines where contestants had to match the joke read out by Lennie Bennett to the Punchline given by one of the celebrities opposite them, which in turn could be said that the show also took aspects from one of Monkhouse's former shows Celebrity Squares. Also in the London Weekend Television camp came Bruce Forysth in Play Your Cards Right, the idea imported from the United States' Card Sharks. Though Forsyth wanted to swap with Monkhouse, so that he could do Family Fortunes instead. ATV held their ground and Forsyth along with his Dolly Dealers turned the cards for nearly six years on top of the new millennium revival.

Over at the BBC, the big banker gameshow was Blankety Blank with Terry Wogan but soon to be hosted by Les Dawson in 1984, plus with Paul Daniels coming on the scene with Odd One Out as well. The BBC needed something new and different, when Bob Monkhouse left Central and Family Fortunes in 1983, the next port of call was the Beeb. First of all he presented his chatshow interviewing legendary plus up and coming comedians as well on BBC 2. But the gameshow itch was waiting to be scratched by both the management and also Monkhouse as well.

Though the story of how Bob's Full House came to air is not quite as smooth as the show turned  
out to be. When the idea was first presented by its devisers Terry Mardell and David Moore in 1983, it was a different beast originally called 'Top of the Shop'. From where it actually came from through so many different versions before the final version came to screens on the 1st of September 1984, that thirty-seven revisions were made to get it to the right format with one version even suggesting putting bingo cards in the Radio Times to allow the viewers at home to 
play along with the quiz at home. Which would have made it a sort of national lottery before the idea had been even thought about in this country.

The final format settled on was easy to understand, by cutting down the numbers from 90 to 60 meant that the game could be simplified. The space given was taken up with a monologue at the start of the show and the time to allow Monkhouse to talk to the contestants, very much like he had previously done on Family Fortunes. But when it came down to the actual game itself, the simplicity was in the types of questions, part general knowledge but also part fact based as well allowing Bob to do a joke about the question before moving on to the next contestant. 

With the first round for the four corners of the bingo card, it relaxes the contestants into the game by asking them questions individually. Most of these are fun, sometimes silly facts usually of a true or false nature, pretty much almost really easy to get into the game and win the first spot prize. The game itself as a contest starts with the 'Monkhouse Master Card' with each ten numbers referring to a subject with the contestant can choose from on the gameboard. Thus going for a subject which they may know about such as Cooking, for instance with that subject taking in the numbers 11-20 and choosing the number 14 for example. Getting it meant that number was lit on the players bingo card in front of them. Though get the answer wrong and it would be open to all the rest of the contestants to answer, get it right and they could lit a number of a subject they didn't like on the board. Though get it wrong and they would be frozen out of answering the next question if it was their turn or not, more commonly know in the game as being 'Wallied'. Though ever the pro Monkhouse had a catchphrase for the reveal of the subjects "In bingo-lingo its clickety-click... Its time to take your pick of the six!" and also when the subjects were mixed up "Please mix the six, if you'll please..." The style of the catchphrases used by Bob makes the game even more fun then it already is.

The final part of the game where contestants are aiming to light up all the numbers on their bingo card ramps up the excitement as all the contestants try to answer the questions quick fired by Bob to them all the time. Every so often he reminds the audience and the viewers at home of the situation of play with the refrain "Boggenstrovia neeeds seven for a full house, Rob neeeeds four..." etc. Again making the game flow as natural as it can, seemingly making the last part of the main game almost exciting as the actual game of bingo itself whist waiting for the final number to come out of the bag for a big prize. The moment is as thrilling as anything ever experienced on television before, not knowing who will win at all. 

Once the full house is completed then finally its time to play for the big holiday and the chance to win money to go with it in the Gold Card round. The uniqueness of this round is not only the time limit of two minutes to answer the questions, but also the number of questions to do it in, fifteen to be precise. Seeming easy, but sometimes very difficult. The actual skill is in picking the right numbers to be able to form the letters which make up the place name of the holiday the contestant will be sent on if they find all the letters, but the tension is played to it fullest with the contestant not sure where the letters would be and trying to get all the questions right or have enough to be able to find all the letters at the end. Bob does make play of this with the first letter being reveal such as a 'B' making light of it with the joke "An 'B'... I hope it isn't Bognor!" Though this puts the player at their ease, allowing them to smile and have a laugh at this. Once won, the prize is revealed and the contestant congratulated by Bob to wish them a happy holiday and to say goodnight to the viewers and invite them again to join him again to watch the show next time.

It is Bob's enthusiasm for both the game and the participants themselves which makes the show great, he is one big part of it but its the game aspect which is bigger then anyone. The prizes may seem cheap to us now, the style is different to what a newer generation is used to, but this is why Bob's Full House maybe, just maybe be the best gameshow that has been broadcast on British television. Maybe, you have a different opinion on that. But for me the doors are always opened for you and me on Bob's Full House and I for one am glad that they have been reopened for us by Challenge TV....


-->