Deal or No Deal......

It's about time I stated my allegiance for Deal or No Deal (C4), an almost-live quiz show which has been steadily capturing my heart since Christmas. On six days a week, it looks set to continue until Noel Edmonds has a stroke or dies. He can't believe he's back on the telly. I can't either, and after the vomiting eventually subsided, I was able to view the show dispassionately. A format which I saw in Australia over the summer, the rules are almost inpenetrable, but boil down to a game in which a banker bids for a box with an amount of money hidden inside it, from a player who has to decide when he or she is being offered the best deal. There are also twenty- one other people with boxes with amounts of money in them from 1p to £250,000. The player picks three of these boxes at random in each round, and then the banker phones up with another offer - better if they've managed to avoid the high numbers because of the greater possibility of the player him/herself having one of them. The object, therefore, is not to pick a box with £250,000, £100,000, £75,000, £50,000 or £35,000 inside it, as the deal offered to you will be lower - but because it's a game of chance and not skill, the possibilities for moments of incredible, unbearable tension and sudden, crushing deflation are endless. And to top it all off, once the player has dealt with the banker, they continue to see what would have happened if the game had continued to the end - so you get to see if they made the right deal at the right time. Cue intense pathos when it turns out the player had the £250,000 all along and, if they'd just held their nerve, etc........or vicarious joy, as when a 23 year old student dealt at £41,000 and it turned out she'd had £10 in her box after all!
I'm a big fan of the daytime quiz show, but they usually involve general knowledge or spelling, so the spell cast by Deal or No Deal is surprising. One great feature of the show is that the people who open the boxes for the player end up being contestants themselves at some later date, so it's like you already know a bit about them. I wanted Mumtaz to do really well the other day, for example, because she seemed so nice. It does make you wonder, though, how these people have that much time on their hands that they can stand around opening boxes from 4-4.45 pm every day. Do they not work? Am I a pot, and is the kettle black? I don't know if this programme's going to wane in my affections or not but I'm totally addicted at the moment. If I was forced to, I would even trade off Countdown to watch it. I can overlook the fact it's hosted by Edmonds for Chrissakes! Next time you throw a sickie - or if, like me, you're a bum - Deal or No Deal is must-watch TV.