The summer brings a lot of crap onto our television screens. ‘Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Superstar’ being four ideal examples.
However, ITV has really excelled itself this time with the arrival of the ‘quizzzzzz’ show, ‘Tipping Point’.
It’s a whole hour spent standing around the one 1960′s ‘Penny Arcade’ machine that every 1970′s husband and his wife used to kick if no-one was looking.
Basically, contestants answer questions to win themselves a token to slide into a machine that in turn slides itself towards other tokens, which in turn hopefully push other tokens over the edge into a ‘winner’s tray’.
The questions being posed by some geezer who was made redundant after a defunct ITV Breakfast TV company lost its franchise.
Yes Folks, It’s that exciting!
In ITV’s version the overall winner can win up to £10,000!
But the original ‘Seaside Penny Arcade’ version never paid out as much. In fact you were luckily if you got anywhere near the same amount of pennies you slid into it.
The prize version (10p a go / tokens for prizes) was even worse. For although one was promised inside the machine of winning the latest Sony Walkman or packet of twenty ‘Rothmans King Size’ you only ended up with a ‘Adam Ant’ fridge magnet or a plastic watch that can only offer two ‘times of day’.
The latter being totally dependant on the position of how one views its clock-face.
‘Let’s see if I can tip my piss-poor television career over the edge.’
