![]() ![]() ![]() It’s a measure of how strictly financial protocols were imposed that the prize most people remember from The Generation Game, which culminated in players winning all the items they could memorise on a conveyor belt, is the joke consolation of the “cuddly toy”. Photograph: Ken McKay/ITV/REX/Shutterstock Thanks a bunch … Blankety Blank pen and cheque book. On Blankety Blank, the “star prize” of “a flight on Concorde” would turn out to be a quick spin over the Bristol Channel, not a weekend in New York. Internal guidelines (and external scrutiny by the tabloid press) began a fashion for joke or token prizes, like the “Blankety Blank cheque-book and pen” or the “Crackerjack pencil”. Due to BBC rules, though, it’s noticeable that the dream set of wheels that literally hangs over the contestants on Can’t Touch This has an unspecified marque.įunded by the public, the BBC has always had to be careful about redirecting too much money to a single licence-payer. More cynically, manufacturers realised early that, for the cost of donating one four-door or even a three-wheeler, they could achieve an on-screen prominence for their product, whoopingly admired by the studio audience, that would have been far more expensive if they bought a slot in the ad breaks. The motor has endured as the ultimate take-home trophy because it remains one of the few consumer dreams that have survived all changes in taste and technology. Photograph: REX/Shutterstock/ITVĪ car is the biggest prize in Can’t Touch This too. Nicholas Parsons with hostesses Carole Ashby and Karen Loughlin – and a lucky washing machine winner – on Sale of the Century. On Sale of the Century (ITV, 1971-76), another imported American format pauperised for British audiences, volunteers competed for tiny amounts of notional money (starting with £1) that allowed them eventually to compete for a car they would get for a knockdown price. That was a sizeable sum at the time (the average UK house-price was around £3,000), but not life-transforming in the way the top American pay-out would be.īecause the ITV regulators developed a rash at the sight of cash, shows were drawn to giving away items whose worth could be disguised. The rules of the then commercial TV regulator, the ITA (Independent Television Authority), against giving too much away meant the UK version had to be re-named The 64,000 Question and the prize consisted of 64,000 sixpences, which amounted to £1,600. But when ITV produced a British spin-off, the row was over the amount of cash. In the US, the 1950s quiz series The $64,000 Question became scandalous when it emerged that some contestants were being given answers in advance, leading to a government investigation of TV, as dramatised in the Robert Redford movie Quiz Show. But British TV has always had a problem with prizes. Participants also have to suffer a sardonic voiceover from Sue Perkins, so these enticements seem low. Anything for a saucepan … Can’t Touch This.
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