Pointless is the best entertainment show out there

Gamayun

The new score screens in front of the contestants seem huge! There was a woman on it today and only the very top of her shoulders upward was visible, made her seem tiny. I've seen people standing on a box for the final rounds before, you'd think they would have these always to at least bring shorter people up so you could see their upper body...

Mr.Prodston

Richard really loved that new chair :pac:

Oh and the

jackpot of £20,250 was won too, didn't really like them though, been plenty of much more deserving/likable people.

S.M.B.

I've been watching a lot of Pointless on the iPlayer over the past few weeks and 2 things struck me:

When they say they ask 100 people, are they talking about a previous audience? Cause it's certainly not a random 100 people on the street that they're asking.

Also, has anyone ever seen a non-national/any sort of immigrant on Pointless or any of these shows? I pay my UK TV Licence as I have been living in London for the past few years. I don't see why that should effect my ability to appear as a contestant on a show like this. It's pretty obvious that it does though.

Dozen Wicked Words

S.M.B. wrote: »

I've been watching a lot of Pointless on the iPlayer over the past few weeks and 2 things struck me:

When they say they ask 100 people, are they talking about a previous audience? Cause it's certainly not a random 100 people on the street that they're asking.

Also, has anyone ever seen a non-national/any sort of immigrant on Pointless or any of these shows? I pay my UK TV Licence as I have been living in London for the past few years. I don't see why that should effect my ability to appear as a contestant on a show like this. It's pretty obvious that it does though.

Seen a good few Irish on there, from North and South, also seen Australians, Americans, Canadians, Dutch, Swedish, Polish and I'm sure there are probably other nationalities too. I don't think they give a fiddlers where people are from.

S.M.B.

Fair enough, that's good to hear.

I can honestly say, in all the episodes I've seen, I've yet to see a non UK national play it.

Must be a complete coincidence then.

Might enter then!

Dozen Wicked Words

Good luck, hope you get on! Always that bit more difficult for people who weren't brought up in the UK as the more trivial questions about old kids shows, or old politicians etc make it harder.

Mr.Prodston

I reckon a lot of us would nearly know more about their politicians than they do given past performances on the show!

I would love to enter just for the banter with Richard and Xander, although the money I'd obviously win would come in handy too

muckisluck

I think you have to be a UK resident. After that anything goes. One of the funniest ever was a foreign national who came to Britain to learn English. He was asked some question about english football and the only answers he could give was Preston the town where first learned to speak English. It's worth looking up to see if it's on Youtube. As to the 100 people that is done by computer survey according to the FAQn in their Christmas bestselling book "Pointless"

S.M.B.

But who are the sample 100 people? It has to be somewhat biased.

Lingua Franca

I reckon they ask across a decent spread of people, 50/50 men and women and spread evenly across ages. We can usually estimate accurately how many people will answer a given question. I'd expect around 50% of people to be able to name a Robbie Williams number one single, for example, but around 5 to able to name a minor royal from a picture.

mitosis

The format is great.

But

The prize money is pathetic

I don't trust the numbers of correct respondants. There is no way to verify it's not all just a fix - which is my belief.

Too many final rounds are about cinema

Mr.Prodston

mitosis wrote: »

The format is great.

But

The prize money is pathetic

I don't trust the numbers of correct respondants. There is no way to verify it's not all just a fix - which is my belief.

Too many final rounds are about cinema

It's a daytime quiz show in which the bbc also has Perfection and Eggheads contributing £1000, Perfection is actually £2000 per show. When it builds like it did to £20,250 that's quite a jackpot.

I don't think it's an even spread a lot of the time, normally after a question or two you can tell whether it's an older/younger 100 depending on how the scores fall. Like sometimes a song from 2008 is 4 whereas some other song from 1978 could be 40 and vice versa

Also it's up to the contestants to pick the final question and a choice between acid jazz and actresses will be a pretty straightforward one.

mitosis

Mr.Prodston wrote: »

Also it's up to the contestants to pick the final question and a choice between acid jazz and actresses will be a pretty straightforward one.

That's kind of my point. Offered are "obscure locations in Oman" or "James Bond". Hobson's choice, if you will.

Mr.Prodston

mitosis wrote: »

That's kind of my point. Offered are "obscure locations in Oman" or "James Bond". Hobson's choice, if you will.

Although I reckon the obscure sounding question would actually be quite easy compared to the simple sounding one unless you really were a buff. Unless Geography or Football/rugby/golf or Will Ferrell came up I'd love a crack at something like funky music. Like the Steve Carrell question only had

3

pointless answers. I would have thought I'd be fairly well up on his movies too.

I guess it's all just the luck of the draw really.

muckisluck

S.M.B. wrote: »

But who are the sample 100 people? It has to be somewhat biased.

According to Richard they are all surveyed anonymously online, a cross section of ages and geographical areas.

muckisluck

S.M.B. wrote: »

Might enter then!

When applications are open you'll find a link on bbc.co.uk/beonashow.
Good luck and please pm me to watch if you make it. i wouldn't be brave enough although I'd love to be in the audience even if they do all appear to have come on tour from the local old folks home:D

Fighting Irish

ifl

S.M.B.

muckisluck wrote: »

When applications are open you'll find a link on bbc.co.uk/beonashow.
Good luck and please pm me to watch if you make it. i wouldn't be brave enough although I'd love to be in the audience even if they do all appear to have come on tour from the local old folks home:D

Had 2 pointless answers to the jackpot question today which was a first!

Maybe that's a sign.

It's also open for applications at the moment.

Surely that's a definite sign.

sock puppet

dooferoaks wrote: »

Good luck, hope you get on! Always that bit more difficult for people who weren't brought up in the UK as the more trivial questions about old kids shows, or old politicians etc make it harder.

Though given that today's last 6 contestants could barely name a 19th century British prime minister between them, it might not be that much harder on the politics front...

Skid X

Nice article in the Guardian today about the success of Pointless

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2013/mar/22/pointless-daytime-game-show-league-own

Also, Pointless is getting excellent ratings recently, so its future looks good.

http://www.digitalspy.com/british-tv/news/a457702/pointless-overtakes-the-chase-in-teatime-ratings.html

I think it still going well after hundreds of shows, still one of my favourite programmes.

Mental Mickey

Eggheads is better.


imo

brian_t

It gets repeated regularly on Challenge TV

The only thing I didn't like about it was the season when at start of each episode Richard used to try to guess which couple would win.
I thought it was a bit unfair to the others

K-9

Doctor Who celebrity special on this evening.

Degag

Funny moment in yesterdays show when Richard asked Alexander if he had an answer for a word ending in "ind"

Alexander answered "friend"

brian_t

Degag wrote: »

Funny moment in yesterdays show when Richard asked Alexander if he had an answer for a word ending in "ind"

Alexander answered "friend"

muckisluck

That clip shows all that is great about this show. For anyone who puts this on sky plus and skips the link pieces you're really missing the best bits!

Dozen Wicked Words

They seem to have such "nice" contestants on there too. Being a miserable git, on other quizzes I am often happy when people don't win the prize, but its fairly rare that I don't want a contestant on pointless to win. A great cross section of people. The only things that bug me about pointless these days are the anagram rounds and the missing letters rounds, not a fan.

Degag

Dozen Wicked Words wrote: »

They seem to have such "nice" contestants on there too. Being a miserable git, on other quizzes I am often happy when people don't win the prize, but its fairly rare that I don't want a contestant on pointless to win. A great cross section of people. The only things that bug me about pointless these days are the anagram rounds and the missing letters rounds, not a fan.

Yeah, i'm terrible at them.

muckisluck

I feel the same generally. i say Respect to anyone who gets to have a go at the jackpot but I would have hated to see that taxi driver from Leeds this week win! I took great pleasure in seeing him go out because he treated his partner with such contempt!

lertsnim

I lol'd when that ex teacher gave Alexander a tip on how to spell friend. Classic Pointless