In It To Win It

We don’t really do the lottery in our house; not out of any particular principle, we just never get round to it. However, a compelling argument for never doing at all is that it prevents you from sitting through the banal game show hosted by Dale Winton in which The Lotto, Thunderball and Dream Ticket draws (and whatever other variants they’ve come up with for that week) intersperse it like pellets in the body of a recently-buckshot rabbit.

I know game show contestants aren’t renowned for their intelligence, aside from obvious exceptions like Mastermind, though the chalk of Mastermind’s participants are polar opposites to the cheese of In It To Win It’s.

Saturday’s motley collection of freaks wouldn’t have looked out of place sharing a dorm with Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. Five of them lined up on stage, each hoping to be selected at random by “the computer” to answer questions for cash. First up was Daz, a Redcoat from Clacton, sporting the sort of confused happy expression normally reserved for playful canines or Lenny from Of Mice And Men.

Dale subsequently opened his fifteen minutes of fame with the following teaser: “What is the Spanish translation of The Sunshine Coast? Is it Costa Brava, Costa Blanca or Costa del Sol?” After verbalising his thoughts from what seemed like an age, Daz plumped for Costa Blanca and was promptly consigned to ‘The Red Area’ where he stayed eating ear wax or something. The second contestant, a bodybuilder (who exhibited his poses on stage in typical Blind Date style and clearly harboured an inversely proportionate body:brains ratio) was invited across to Daz’s barely warm seat, and asked questions instead.

“What was the snake that killed Cleopatra?” ventured Dale, “Was it an asp, a blank mamba, or a python?” With a brow like a freshly-ploughed field and clearly in some distress, Mr Muscle answered ”Well Dale, I’ve never heard of an asp. So my answer would have to be python.” That’s right mate, The Queen of Egypt was crushed to death by a constrictor – very dignified.

Luckily for Daz, this gave him the opportunity to extricate himself from the dreaded Red Area, his ticket back to the hotseat attainable by a correct response to the following question. “Who released albums called Rattle and Hum and The Joshua Tree?” asked an increasingly defeated Dale. “Umm… The Rolling Stones?” replied Daz.

And so it went on…

Frankly, I’d rather not win eight million pounds if it means sitting through this shit every week. My sanity is too high a price to pay.