Saturday 23 April 2016

Audition Result

About 3 weeks ago I was in London for an audition for the UK version of the US quiz show 500 Questions. If you haven't seen the show, well, it might be worth your while looking it up on Youtube, as it's not without interest, although like most shows it is possible to point out some flaws in the format. I don't know how many shows, if any, you've ever auditioned for, but the usual outcome is either you'll get on the show, in which case they'll call you back, or you won't, in which case you often just don't hear from the production company again. So I have to pay tribute to the good people making 500 Questions. On the day they said that whether we're through to the next stage of auditions or not, they'd be in touch. They got back to me during the last week - sadly to tell me that I wasn't going forward, but at least they got in touch to tell me.

They're funny things auditions, and I'll come clean here, I enjoy them. So I'm not all that gutted about not getting on. Yes, sure, I'd have loved to have been on the show, but hey, I had a nice day out in London and got to take part in the audition which I enjoyed anyway. So driving the best part of 180 miles there and back in a day seemed worth it.

Yes, I enjoy auditions. Not that I've had that many of them really. The last one was in 2014 for Fifteen to One, and before that in about 2012 for Breakaway. In fact, I'll show you the list at the and of this post.

Out of all of them I think that the most exciting was probably the first, for the first series of Eggheads, which was exciting because I'd never had an audition before. The first Mastermind audition was possibly the most nerve wracking because all 4 of my nominated specialist subjects were rejected during the audition and I had to come up with others right off the top of my head. The most enjoyable was possibly Breakaway - mainly because when we played the game I broke away as soon as I was allowed and went right through to the end. Sorry, things like that I enjoy. Little things and all of that.

Here's the full list of my applications and auditions: -

* Who Wants to Be A Millionaire - the phone audition wasn't an audition as such. It was a simple question with a numerical answer. Get close enough and you were on.
# Mastermind Champion of Champions wasn't an audition as such. It was a chat with Laura from the production team about whether I was interested, and what my specialist(s) might be if I was invited.

Show
Year
Outcome
The Weakest Link
2001
Unsuccessful application
Eggheads
2003
Unsuccessful Audition
Come and Have A Go If You Think You’re Smart Enough
2004
Successful Phone Audition
Eggheads
2005
Successful Audition
Mastermind
2006
Successful Audition
Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
2006
Successful Audition*
Mastermind
2007
Successful Phone Audition
Are You An Egghead?
2009
Successful Phone and Face To Face Auditions
Britain’s Best Brain
2009
Unsuccessful Phone Audition
Brain of Britain (Radio)
2009
Successful Phone Audition
Mastermind Champion of Champions
2010
Successful Phone audition#
Only Connect
2010
Successful Audition
Breakaway
2012
Unsuccessful Audition
Pointless
2012, 2013, 2014
Unsuccessful applications – no audition
Fifteen to One
2014
Successful Audition
500 Questions
2016
Unsuccessful Audition





2 comments:

Ian F said...

I'm interested to know more about the process for the 500 questions audition. Did they get you to do IQ tests?

Are they going to have an enormous set like the US version? It looks like it was filmed in a spare hangar on the Death Star...

Glad to see the blog is only dormant, not extinct. Cheers.

Londinius said...

Hi Ian

This was only the first round of auditions, and basically it involved playing through a truncated version of the show. There were not IQ tests, but there is another stage of short listing auditions, and for all I know this may be part of that.

It is going to be filmed on a massive set. They said that they were unable to book anywhere big enough in Britain for the time they are going to film, so it is going to be filmed in Europe, but frustratingly they refused to tell us which country it would be.