I Can't Believe It's Not The Traitors (and I have no problem with that)

The great Richard Osman once said that the best way to pitch a TV show to commissioning executives is to say that it is like something else that they know. And in terms of reality/game shows, what is the huge success that other channels would like a slice of? The Traitors of course. We’ve already seen BBC’s Destination X last year, which only had a slight hint of The Traitors, and Channel Four’s disappointing “The Inheritance” last Autumn, which I found to be somewhat mean spirited. “Nobody’s Fool”, or - I Can’t Believe It’s Not The Traitors - sees ITV having a go, and to be honest, a rather more convincing go than either of the other two shows.

It works like this. In the first episode we were introduced to the ten contestants enteringa huge English country house (as opposed to a huge Scottish baronial castle). The main point of the game is that every day each contestant goes on their own to a quiz pod. They are asked a number of questions. Each question correctly answered earns money for the prize pot. They may not reveal anything about what happened in the quiz pot, nor do they have to tell the truth about how they did in it. The contestants then face a round table style vote. Each one is asked how much money they contributed, but they do not have to tell the truth. Their task is to work out which of them contributed least to the prize pot, and then vote them out. If they get it right, then happy days. If they get it wrong, then the prize money is halved. The idea is to be the last one left who will get the prize pot. The show has not yet explained how the end game is going to work.

There are challenges between time in the quiz pod and the votes as well. For example, sorting out a ton of tennis balls to find out those with the letters needed to spell a nine letter word. These don’t contribute money but are meant to help the contestants work out who might actually be the weakest players. Three episodes are available on the ITV player at the moment and we’ve already seen plenty of plotting, making and breaking of alliances and shock reveals – supposedly prim and proper , 178 IQ Melissa revealing that she is a dominatrix being perhaps the most surprising.

The show is presented by Danny Dyer and Emily Atack. Mr. Dyer is probably something of an acquired taste. But you do know what you are going to get with him. He’s certainly intelligent enough to know what this is and to give you what you expect. But in a show like this, although the host is not the most important element of the show, the host can make a difference. Would the Traitors be quite as good without Claudia, for example? I like Alan Cummings the actor, but I don’t think he’s as good a host in the US version of the Traitors. I felt that the Liz Hurley character was one of the worst things about The Inheritance, but that’s just my personal opinion and feel free to disagree. So Danny Dyer, scion of royalty, doesn’t give us quite the full on gawd blimey, apples and pears diabolical liberty my old china, but just enough. Having said that, I don’t know that there’s anything he does that Emily Atack couldn’t do on her own. She asks the questions in the pod, and does just as much as Mr. Dyer does. But then she’s not (at the moment) such a ‘name’ so the presenting tag team it is.

Cards on the table. When I review new shows, I watch one and then if it hasn’t grabbed me I will rarely watch another edition of it. I have watched all three editions of “Nobody’s Fool “ currently on the ITV Player. Yes, it speaks almost exclusively in the vocabulary and syntax of “The Traitors”. You might say it does so openly, or, if it’s not your cup of tea you might say it does so blatantly.  I really don’t mind though. If you can’t have the real thing, this is a perfectly acceptable like for like alternative. Yeah, the quiz elements aren’t necessarily that great, but they are only a small part of the show. But I like it. I shall watch the next episodes as they become available, and I sincerely hope that when we get to the end game it will stick the landing.

Bit of acid 's what that needs.

Do you know what the Romans kept in an acetabulum? I would imagine that you do. The question, how is diluted acetic acid better known? - is a real old hardy perennial in quiz terms and so that acet at the start of the word has probably given you the answer – vinegar.

I mention this because yesterday it was just me at home with my grandson Ollie at lunchtime and I suggested we head down to Aberavon Beach and had some fish and chips for lunch, and a walk on the beach, which is what we did.

Okay, another quiz question. What is the derivation of the word vinegar? Anwer – it comes from vin aigre which s French for sour wine. Mmm, sounds good, doesn’t it? I think that I’m the only member of my family who doesn’t like vinegar. You know, more than once I’ve wondered – who was it who first looked at a portion of sliced, fried potatoes and thought to themselves – , it’s good, but you know what would make it better? A liberal dousing in acid.

But then I’m a fussy sod, anyway. At least most places don’t automatically assume you want vinegar and ask you in the first place. I remember 10 years ago I made what would turn out to be my first sketching trip to Ieper in Belgium. In the shadow of the magnificent (rebuilt) medieval Cloth Hall. I bought a portion of chips. I didn’t look at them as I began eating and the moment I put the first chip into my mouth, I thought – what the hell is that?!- I looked down. The chips were slathered in mayonnaise. And the stupid thing is I don’t even dislike mayonnaise. But chips? I couldn’t finish them.

Tomato ketchup? Tastes too sweet. Curry sauce? Okay, fair point.

Helsinki

I mentioned in my last post that I’ve never been to an Olympic event, even though my mother, who couldn’t be less interested in sport if she tried, got to see the men’s 100m final in London 1948. (Harrison Dillard. He was, I think, the world record holder for the 110 hurdles at the time, but failed to win selection for his best event. So he entered the 100 and won gold. 4 years later he won the 110 hurdles and may well be the only man to do this career double). By my reckoning I’ve been to every European city that has hosted the Summer Games apart from Munich and one other, the city I’m planning to visit in September.

I’m sure that you’ve worked it out that this would be Helsinki. I was in Tallinn in March and I did consider taking the ferry to Helsinki. But I was only in Tallinn for a few days and it would have taken a huge chunk out of the day and I had no idea how long it would have taken to get into the centre of the city once the ferry docked. But I do want to visit Finland. I’ve enjoyed the other Nordic countries I’ve visited – Denmark, Sweden, Iceland and Norway. Oslo was, to be fair, a little bit bland, I felt, but then the Viking ship museum was (and I believe still is) closed for refurbishment and it was one of the things I most wanted to see.

So, what distinction does Helsinki hold amongst Olympic cities? Well, this is a little contentious. I’m sure that it is the smallest capital city (in terms of population) to host an Olympic Summer Games but I have seen some sources saying that at the time of the 1920 Games Antwerp had a smaller population than Helsinki had in 1952. Well, whatever the case, former IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch – a man admittedly given to hyperbole (if the price was right, allegedly)- said that the 1952 Helsinki Games was the best and the best moment was Emil Zatopek entering the stadium at the end of the marathon with the crow all on its feet chanting Za-To-Pek! Yes, it’s on the list for when I invent my time machine.

Fair's (World's) Fair

I moved to Port Talbot in 1986.  In a space of a few weeks I became a dad, sat my finals, got married, moved to Port Talbot and started my PGCE training to be a teacher. The last three all happened in the space of 5 days. Sadly, I was a few years too late to see the Miami Beach funfair on Aberavon Beach.

I’ve seen many photographs of it, even drawn it and my wife Mary remembers it vividly. Now one of the notable features of the funfair was a large structure made of a lattice of metal poles, and spaced on regular intervals across it were a lot of unevenly sized coloured balls, on which was placed the sign Miami Beach. Now, I haven’t been able to prove conclusively that this was the Atomic Structure from the Festival of Britain, but my goodness it was a dead ringer for it.

Okay, so let’s recap. In my last post I mentioned that the 1904 St. Louis Olympic Games were staged as part of the 1904 World’s Fair. Well, that got me thinking about world fairs, or expos, in general. Now you know that the 1851 Great Exhibition in Hyde Park will be one of my very first destinations when I build my time machine, and this is generally regarded as the first World’s Fair/Expo.

Yet as with many things, it’s not necessarily quite as simple and clear cut as that. For the 1851 Great Exhibition was drawing on a tradition of shows of industry and technology going back into the 18^th century, although maybe none of them were on the same scale as the Great Exhibition. OK, all well and good. What I didn’t know was that on the official list kept by the world sanctioning body, the Bureau International des expositions, London also held the third world’s fair in 1862. The second? Paris.

That’s important, because the 1862 Exhibition was designed partly to outshine the 1855 Paris exhibition. It was originally planned for 1861, but hey, delays in construction are by no means just a 21^st and 20^th century phenomenon. The Exhibition took place in South Kensington on the site now occupied by the South Kensington museums. Was it a huge success? Well, not financially. It made its costs back and a small profit of £790 or so I read. The government of the time had no wish to take over the exhibition hall when the exhibition closed and so it was dismantled and the materials were sold and later used in the construction of Alexandra Palace. There you go. Compare that with the profit made by the 1851 Exhibition, which made a profit of about £186,000, the equivalent of over £20 million in today’s money. The good old Festival of Britain made a loss of about £7.5 million, despite having over 10 million visitors, but then it was never really expected to make a profit.

Do you remember the Millennium Experience? No, me neither. That’s a little unfair. The reason I don’t remember it is because I never went to it. Well, when you factor in that I have five kids who were all aged between 14 and 6 in 2000, not to mention the cost of getting to London and back, I really couldn’t afford it on just one teacher’s salary. Well, couldn’t or wouldn’t, anyway. But I idly googled to find out just how much money it lost, and it’s been really difficult to arrive at a concrete figure. Several hundred million pounds seems a conservative estimate. Okay, maybe this too was never designed to make a profit. But it was certainly designed to attract up to 12 million visitors. Which maybe wasn’t that unrealistic when you consider that the Festival of Britain attracted in total 10.25 million visitors to all attractions and events across the country, and 8 million visitors to the main exhibition on the South Bank in London in just the 4 months it was open. But give a dog a bad name, I suppose.

My brother did actually go to the Millennium Experience and he seemed to enjoy it, as I recall. Come to that, my Mum was 11 years old and was taken to the South Bank for the Festival of Britain, and 3 years earlier, despite her having no interest in sport whatsoever, she was taken by my Grandpa to Wembley to see the Olympic 100m final. The closest I have ever got to attending an Olympic event was when the 2008 torch relay ran past my house. Which actually was quite an event. The only thing I remember that parallelled it was in 2002. The late Queen Elizabeth II was making her Golden Jubilee tour of the constituent parts of her United Kingdom. On the day she visited Port Talbot, when I left for work in the school in the morning, there was nothing to show that Her Majesty would be driven down it later on. By the time I returned home in the afternoon council workers had flung bunting across the street and placed union jacks in strategic front gardens.  (I refuse to answer whether the one placed in mine is still in my garage on the grounds that I might incriminate myself).

Her Majesty and the late Duke of Edinburgh arrived at Port Talbot Parkway station on the Royal Train and got into the limousine that would carry them the couple of miles to Margam Park, which meant driving right past my house. It was a very regal occasion, only marred by the fact that a local character, who had a reputation as what my grandmother might have called a ‘lady of the evening’ leapt out in front of the royal limousine and flashed them. That’s Port Talbot for you, folks.

St. Louis Blues

Here’s an easy one for you. Where was the city outside of Europe to host the Modern Olympic Games? St. Louis of course. It’s interesting to note that the only other US city to host the summer Olympic Games is Los Angeles – who will take their third turn next. But St. Louis, Missouri got there first. OK then, try this one – why did St. Louis host the games in 1904? Well, to tie in with the 1904 World’s Fair. If you  remember the Judy Garland film “Meet Me in St. Louis “ (Meet me in St. Louis, Louis, meet me at the fair) – well, that was set at the same world’s fair. This was following what had happened with the 1900 Olympics which coincided with an international exposition in Paris – indeed it is said that some of the winners never knew that they were actually Olympic champions, so little prominence being given to it at the time.

Alright then, try this one. Who were Etienne Desmarteau and Tom Kiely? Answer, the only two non US athletes to win track and field gold medals in St. Louis. Etienne Desmarteau was a fire officer from Montreal. The Montreal fire department refused him leave to participate but he resigned and went anyway. He won the weight throwing event and returned home to a hero’s welcome. The police department hired him, but sadly he passed away in 1905, possibly from typhoid fever.

As for Tom Kiely, well, he won his gold in the all-round athletics competition. This was a predecessor to the decathlon. All on the same day the competitors took part in a 100 yard run, shot put, high jump, 880 yard walk, hammer throw, pole vault,120yd hurdles, 56 pound weight throw, long jump and 1 mile race. He is listed as representing Great Britain but he really was not. Tom Kiely was an Irish Athlete. Ireland not having gained its independence at this time did not have their own Olympic Association. Despite all this, Kiely accepted no help or sponsorship from the British Olympic team and made it perfectly clear to everyone that he was representing Ireland and only Ireland. Good on him.

If the 1904 Olympics is remembered for anything though, it’s probably the antics of Fred Lorz. Lorz dropped out of the marathon, then hitched a lift to outside the stadium. He ran in, accepting the plaudits of the crowd, until the real winner, Thomas Hicks entered the stadium and his prank came to light. The American Athletics Union took a dim view at first, banning him for life. They did reinstate him after accepting that he meant no harm, and he went on to win the Boston Marathon in 1905.

There is speculation that Hicks’ two predecessors, 1896 winner Spiridon Louis and Michel Theato may also have taken short cuts in their respective marathon wins. Both were local boys. In 1896 the Marathon, the very last event of the Games, was the host nation’s last chance to win a gold. As it was the Greek competitor who was originally placed 3^rd was disgraced when the Hungarian runner who came fourth reported that he had seen him getting into a horse drawn carriage. Did Louis do the same? Well, History says no, but until I build my time machine, we’ll never be 100%. Then in 1900 it is speculated that baker’s roundsman Michael Theto used his knowledge of Paris’ back streets to take a win for the home team – although to be fair he was actually supposedly born in Luxembourg. 

 

Confession Time

Forgive me, Dearly Beloved, for I have sinned. I committed a really rookie error when I put together my quiz for Thursday evening just gone in the rugby club.

I made the 8 rounds last weekend. Then I thought, oh, I’ll do the handout later on. And I forgot all about it. So when I remembered early on Thursday morning I quickly downloaded a handout round from a well known free quiz site. And I didn’t check it. I printed it out and photocopied it.

It was only at halftime that I really stopped to look at it. And there was something bothering me. It was an anagrams round, all the phrases being anagrams of film stars past and present. One of them was NIL NACHOS JACK. The answer given was Jack Nicholson. But there is only one A in Jack Nicholson! So I took the mic and explained to the teams that it had all happened because I had done what you should never do – downloaded a free handout and not checked it.

I’m not the first, and I won’t be the last to do it in the club. However, it does make it difficult for me to take the moral high ground when anyone else does it. It’s a shame too, because one of the teams who have certainly never won my quiz before – and may never have win anyone else’s either – won, which was the cause of much celebration by all.

Word Games - or do I mean Game Words?

 Here’s a question for you. What connects :-

An Old English word meaning to drag

A Welsh phrase meaning little battle

A 17^th century English slang word for brandy or strong liquor

A Sanskrit word for four divisions of the military

A Dutch word meaning to claw frantically

Well, I’m sure you might well have figured out the connection now, but just in case you haven’t, the words are :-

Dragan (draughts) -

Bach cammaun (backgammon) – which may alternatively come from Middle English baec gamen (back game

Bingo

Chaturanga (Chess)

Schrabbelen (Scrabble)

I’ll tell you what prompted me to ask. Two of my colleagues and I were taking a ten minute break for a cuppa (coffee in my case) away from the phonelines. Kim happened to mention that she used o play Backgammon. Now, I did briefly play Backgammon, back many years ago when I was in the 6^th form. This was before the world wide web was even a twinkle in Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s eye, and I’ll be honest it never occurred to me at the time to find out how such a splendidly unusual word came to be. But on Friday afternoon it was a matter of whipping out the phone, and googling it.

You could possibly make a handout quiz – or at least part of a handout quiz, based on derivation of names of games. Here’s a couple more

Which game takes its name from a 19^th century slang word for an inexperienced British army officer?

Which game probably takes its name from a French phrase with a similar meaning to upsy-daisy?

Which game has a name that is a combination of an Old English word meaning to dance, and an old French word meaning to score or notch?

Which game takes its name from a French word for a stick with a curved end?

Which card game’s name ultimately derives from a German word meaning to knock?

Which game takes its name from a masquerade costume of a mask and cape?

Which game takes its name from the name of a Russian form of whist?

Answers

Highlight the lines below and they should be revealed

Snooker

Hoopla

Hopscotch

Billiards

Dominoes

Poker

Bridge