You Bet!

[www.doyouremember.co.uk]

ITV offices, circa 1987. A man sits behind a desk, flipping listlessly through a pile of pitches for new television programmes. There's a knock at the door, and an eager face peeks round.Head of Light Entertainment: 'Ah, Roger. Come in. Sit down. I'm just looking through these pitches. They're all awful. We desperately need a new Saturday night ratings winner so please tell me you've got an idea.'Roger: [animatedly] 'Yes I have, and oh boy you're going to like it! I'm thinking that we should be looking at something studio based, with a big name presenter.'Head of Light Entertainment: 'Ah, excellent start! Keep talking, keep talking.'Roger: 'Celebrities. Each week there'll be different celebrities involved. And members of the public. Members of the public put under pressure to complete a challenge.'Head of Light Entertainment: [perking up] 'Ok, this is working for me. Flesh it out a bit for me though, give me some more detail.'Roger: 'Ok, so for the first show I'm seeing Dickie Davies, Richard Digance and Kate Robbins deliberating over whether a retired civil servant from Portsmouth can correctly identify parts from a lawn mower engine.'Head of Light Entertainment: [deflating rapidly] 'Um....'Roger: [excitedly] 'And after that we can have Kenny Lynch, Nerys Hughes and Derek Griffiths guessing if an administrative assistant from the West Midlands can recite, from memory, every classified advertisement published in last Tuesday's edition of The Uttoxeter Advertiser.' Head of Light Entertainment: [biting fist] 'Er, this isn't exactly what I had in mind...'Roger: [unstoppable now] 'How about Sandra Dickinson, John Fashanu and Gloria Hunniford trying to discern whether a parking attendant from Clacton is able to eat fifteen hard boiled eggs in under three minutes?'Head of Light Entertainment: [close to tears] 'But this is absolute rubbish! Z list celebrities watching repetitively dull feats of limited physical and mental prowess from people who clearly haven't had any kind of social life for the last twenty years? What else have you got?'Roger: [sadly] 'I haven't got any other ideas.' Head of Light Entertainment: [Thinking for a minute} 'On the other hand, this is the 1980s - people will watch anything. Ok, let's get this made!'And so You Bet! was born. The exclamation mark is part of the show's title, by the way - there is no part of me that thinks watching Bruno Brookes, Helen Shapiro and Geoff Capes scratching their heads over whether Janice from Taunton is able to identify 1950's LPs by taste alone is deserving of that particular punctuation. I'm not making up these groups of celebrities either - each set mentioned has genuinely featured on You Bet! (it gets more irritating every time I have to type it). It reads more and more like the cast of some low-budget, end of the pier pantomime the further through the years you go: Bobby Davro, Letitia Dean, Barry McGuigan; Dame Hilda Brackett, Cliff Thorburn, Michaela Strachan; Willie Thorne, Diane Keen, Timmy Mallett. You couldn't make up a more banal band of 'famous' people if you tried. I can't look at the list without hearing Chris Morris' voice reading them out on The Day Today as a roll call of victims of some kind of light entertainment disaster.Now, I may have used some poetic licence on the challenges that I described (although I'm pretty sure the lawn mower parts one was in it once) but in reality, I didn't use all that much. A quick Google search (I'm not even going to pretend that I sat through all the episodes - I have some self-respect) tells you all you need to know. Let's jump to series three, where you could have witnessed a 'speed hairstylist', 'two tyre fitters under pressure' and somebody 'erecting a tent in the dark.' The weekends don't get more exciting than this people!Oh hang on, yes they bloomin' well do! In series four it was edge-of-the-seat-stuff: a seven year old named some sharks, an attempt was made to 'drive up a ramp AND down again while carrying a set dinner table' and somebody else (clearly a lunatic) tried to 'identify 10 people by just their hands'. Phew. There were ten series of this. TEN. 101 episodes of nail-biting tension, hosted firstly by Bruce 'Seriously, he's HOW old?' Forsyth from 1988 until 1990, followed by Matthew Kelly from Game for a Laugh until 1995, and finally by Darren 'What is he famous for exactly?' Day from 1996 until the show finally ran out of maniacs desperate to display their 'talent' on national television in 1997.(Don't worry though - You Bet! may have been buried in the TV graveyard, but it was replaced in 1998 by Don't Try This At Home! (note another 'let's try and convince everybody that this show is going to be fun!' exclamation mark) although I prefer to call it 'Don't Try Watching This At Home!' as you really shouldn't. It was as awful as You Bet!, although as the challenges were now renamed 'stunts' and were slightly more dangerous than their predecessors there was always the chance that somebody might get hurt which made it much more interesting.The format of You Bet! began in the Brucie years with four challenges on every programme - one sponsored by each of the celebrities, and one by the host - and all were bet on by both the panellists and the audience. The celebrities accumulated points for each bet they got right; the amount depended on the percentage of the audience who also predicted the correct result. If the sponsor said that their challenger would complete the bet and they didn't, then said celebrity would have to complete some ridiculously lame forfeit. At the end of the show there was some complicated equation done which ended up with a lot of money for the winning celebrity's chosen charity. Actually I don't think it was that complicated if truth be known; I'd just normally wandered off by that point of the show to see if I too could make a model of the House of Parliament out of marzipan using only my feet. (Oh, and Mr Forsyth used to rap at the end of the programme. Yes - rap. I can't bring myself to talk about it though.)When Brucie left and Matthew Kelly took over the reins the show started evolving through various tweaks of the challenges and forfeits - none made a massive difference to the overall pointlessness of watching people in anoraks sweat whilst trying to remember the name of every toilet cleaner ever invented in the entire world. You Bet! was modelled on the German language programme 'Wetten, dass?' which started in 1981 and is still going strong in Europe. It's broadcast live on six or seven occasions throughout the year from various cities in Switzerland, Austria and Germany and here's where I thank goodness that ITV didn't copy the entire concept for the UK's version, as the original show often lasts for nearly THREE hours at a time...It's the most successful European Saturday television programme there is - so who are these crazy people who want to spend three hours of their lives watching social misfits trying to identify pre-war teaspoons whilst standing in a wind tunnel? I guess that's the only thing that I can say in favour of our decade's worth of ridiculous challenges...am I glad we weren't forced to sit through three hours' worth? You Bet!

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[Powdered toast man]

Re: You Bet!

I remember the guy that could identify about 20 different types of car just by looking at the tail lights. A man that could close a matchbox by driving a 10 tonne forklift over it and other such highly exciting stuff. I lost all interest in game shows around the time Talking Telephone Numbers came out in the 90s.

[George 1978]

Re: You Bet!

One of the few programmes where Brucie didn't use his "nice to see you" catchphrase - up to that point, I thought that he only used it on Play Your Cards Right as I was too young to remember the first incarnation of the Generation Game.

I quite liked the challenges like "guess the episode from the five second clip" or the Name That Tune-esque "guess the song from a one second note" and challenges like that.

I am certain that some former politician (Denis Healey or someone like that?) came on in the Matthew Kelly era and decided to a challenge on the births, marriages and death of Coronation Street characters and name the year of the clips - he slipped up when he was shown a clip of Susan and Peter Barlow and said it was from 1971. It was in black and white and Kelly said "wouldn't it had been in colour if it was from 1971?" Ironically, some episodes were in black and white during January and February 1971 because of the ITV colour strike.

The teenage girl who tried to identify characters from The Bill from parts of the face and got the third or fourth one wrong.

The forfeits that the celebrities had to do as well - hostess Ellis Ward (later of the Ideal World shopping channel) always seemed to have her sponsored challenge fail most weeks and had to do the most forfeits - Brucie's ones were funny - I seemed to remember that he did one in a caravan or something. And let's not forget Matthew Kelly's one where he had to be a sumo wrestler and a tightrope walker. Cue Kelly getting dressed behind a portable screen and comes out dressed in a leotard - Kelly crouching down to bow and almost exposes himself from behind - he audience was screaming blue murder with laughter. "Is that it?" Kelly said afterwards.

And the celebrity challenge sponsors - it was often the sportsman that got the most number of points (and was allowed to donate his winnings to the charity of his choice), and it was the comedian at the end that got the least number most weeks.

The You Bet! logo matched the red, white and blue pattern of the LWT logo quite nicely. It's a pity that Darren Day had hosted it during its final couple of years - the nail in the coffin.

[escorteclipse1990]

Re: You Bet!

I liked watching You Bet, I remember a guy identify makes radios by their dials, another guy identify lawnmowers by touching them blindfolded and two guys identify the make and model of car after it was crushed into a cube.

[onthebusesfan]

Re: You Bet!

I Wish They Can Bring This Back On Tv I loved this as a kid .

[George 1978]

Re: You Bet!

I liked watching You Bet, I remember a guy identify makes radios by their dials, another guy identify lawnmowers by touching them blindfolded and two guys identify the make and model of car after it was crushed into a cube.

Let's hope that he wasn't blindfolded when he actually mows the lawn!

[George 1978]

There is a Starlight Express challenge on YT where the cast roller-skate around the YB studio in full make-up and costume. So brilliant to watch!

[George 1978]

I saw that "Meryl Streep" episode from 1992 on YouTube recently, and I felt it to be so weird that Matthew Kelly had got someone out of the audience, and had got them onto the celebrity panel (or "Homebase" has Brucie referred to it as when he was host). The articulateness of the woman made me think that she was an amateur actress herself that LWT knew about, and was deliberately "planted" in the audience for the benefit of the show - they unnecessarily gave her a red jacket to wear (as if it was a beige overcoat because they were starting work as a workman or something). She was commenting on the challenges as if she was so familiar to the celebrity status that the panel experienced. Even her own challenge, she made the mistake of almost presenting the scroll to her victorious challenger instead of the transparent trophy thing (and Sandi Toksvig had to go after her with the correct item to award the challenger).

Thankfully, it was the only time that this had happened on, and it reminded me of the first two series of Give us a Clue where Una/Lionel's third guest on the end was a member of the public - something that they got rid off along with the Grange Hill theme tune by 1981.