You Bet!

Revision as of 17:15, 1 September 2023

Host

Bruce Forsyth (1988-90)

Matthew Kelly (1991-95)

Darren Day (1996-97)

Co-hosts

Ellis Ward (1988-91)

Diane Youdale (1996)

Sarah Matravers (1997)

Announcer:
Bobby Bragg (1996-97)

Broadcast

LWT for ITV, 20 February 1988 to 12 April 1997 (101 episodes in 10 series + 4 specials)

Synopsis

Well made and sometimes stunning stunt show, a precursor to the more extreme Don't Try This at Home!.

ToDAY's panel are a double act and her from EastEnders.

Members of the public bet they can do a particularly whacky, impressive or just plain dangerous feat. 100 members of the audience bet on whether they think they can do it, as do a panel of celebrities. The celebs try to guess the correct outcome, thus earning points, which are later turned into pounds for charity, mate.

The odds are looking...decent.

The challenges on the show can be categorized into stunts (doing a wheelie in a truck for 1 mile), memory tests (identifying a Madonna song from 5 seconds of the backing track), and skill games (scoring 50 basketball hoops while riding on a motorcycle). The reward for a successful challenge was awarded a trophy (called the "Betsy" in early series) or a reward for a failed challenge was awarded a scroll (in later series a medal). The outside challenges were filmed during the summer months and slotted in, everyone involved in the filming having sworn on their grandmother's grave that they wouldn't say the result.

Now we know why series 19 of The Krypton Factor didn't go ahead.

A good show that wore well in the Saturday night TV battles.

Key moments

The two types of fanfare for the end of the challenge: the "happy happy" one and the "oh dear, it's all gone pear-shaped" one.

In an outtake eventually shown on Alright on the Night's Cockup Trip, while Matthew Kelly was filming a trailer explaining the rules for the Celebrity Challenge phone-in competition, he got tongue tied on some of the words and accidentally blurted out an expletive - to his own visible shock.

A fan of The Bill claims she can identify twenty-five characters from the show by just seeing a small area of their face in two and a half minutes, but only got three right and passed on one in twenty-one seconds.

What a shame!

The Red Devils were memorable challengers on the show, mainly because they failed three challenges in a row. They did however finally complete their fourth challenge.

Ooh, so close and yet so far

At last, we can now celebrate

Two memorable forfeits from Matthew Kelly when he had to do one that involved sumo wrestling and one that involved a tight rope walk.

Ain't he 'Game for a Laugh'

Catchphrases

Brucie got the show off to a strong start, despite the decidedly un-streetwise "You Bet Rap", dropped after series 3 but recorded here for posterity:

Bruce: You wanna bet on it?
Audience: You Bet!
Bruce: When you better get on it?
Audience: You Bet!
Bruce: So don't fret, get set, are you ready?
Audience: You Bet!

Another Brucie quote went: "You're now betting for the fate of Forsyth in the form of a forfeit. If you're right - I'm alright, but if you're wrong - I'm right in it!"

Before the ad break, Brucie used to say "We'll be back in a bit, you can bet on it!". Matthew Kelly changed this to "See you in a bit. Ta-ra!". Which isn't as good, but he did redeem himself by improving on the next one...

"Make your bet!", which was changed to "Place your bets now!" when Matthew Kelly took over.

Inventor

Based on an idea by Frank Elstner. it was originally a German show called Wetten dass...? See the ZDF web site for more information.

Theme music

1988: Alan Lisk

1989-96: Jonathan Sorrell

1997: Simon Webb

Trivia

11 years after its UK swansong, Ant & Dec took the format to the States with their presenting debut, Wanna Bet?.

Before they were famous, Alexander Armstrong and Ben Miller took part in a challenge during the Matthew Kelly years, where the two of them alongside My Parents Are Aliens star Tony Gardner each took several roles in the same play, and had to speed dress whilst off stage so that they could come back as the relevant character without missing a beat. They succeeded!

Malandra Burrows was the show's highest celebrity guest scorer. She appeared during the final series and scored 401.

Annabel Giles was the most frequent celebrity guest, appearing five times.

Web links

Wikipedia entry

Pictures

Bruce Forsyth warming up the audience for the You Bet! rap.

Annabel Croft smiling in hoping she will replace a sulky Forsyth.

File:Youbet matthewkelly withcontestant.jpg

Matthew Kelly and Linda Lusardi with a contestant after he successfully completed his challenge.

A typical celebrity panel from the Kelly years. Sandi Toksvig, Andrew O'Connor, Gareth Marriott and an audience member impersonating as Meryl Streep (They were a guest short).

A celebrity panel from the Christmas special. Kriss Akabusi, Judi Spiers, Annabel Giles and Andrew O'Connor (again).

Darren Day and his flying concorde.

A typical celebrity panel from the Day years. See above who they are.

Videos

An episode from 1996

Feedback

@@ Line 38: / Line 38: @@
 <div class="image">[[File:Youbet-screen02.jpg]]''The odds are looking...decent.''</div>
-The challenges on the show can be categorized into stunts (doing a wheelie in a truck for 1 mile), memory tests (identifying a Madonna song from 5 seconds of the backing track), and skill games (scoring 50 basketball hoops while riding on a motorcycle). The reward for a successful challenge was awarded a "You Bet Betsy/Trophy" (in one series "The Kelly") or a reward for a failed challenge was awarded a scroll (in later series a medal). The outside challenges were filmed during the summer months and slotted in, everyone involved in the filming having sworn on their grandmother's grave that they wouldn't say the result.
+The challenges on the show can be categorized into stunts (doing a wheelie in a truck for 1 mile), memory tests (identifying a Madonna song from 5 seconds of the backing track), and skill games (scoring 50 basketball hoops while riding on a motorcycle). The reward for a successful challenge was awarded a trophy (called the "Betsy" in early series) or a reward for a failed challenge was awarded a scroll (in later series a medal). The outside challenges were filmed during the summer months and slotted in, everyone involved in the filming having sworn on their grandmother's grave that they wouldn't say the result.
 <div class="image">[[File:Youbet-screen03.jpg]]''Now we know why series 19 of [[The Krypton Factor]] didn't go ahead.''</div>
@@ Line 48: / Line 48: @@
 So, where do we start? From the beginning of course. The original German version began in 1981 where it was a variety show that featured a mix of chat, music, comedy, performances and of course games. The show ran for approximately 3 hours, when LWT made their own version in 1988, they had to condense it to an hour by just focusing on the game part of the show.
-Unlike the original German version, which was a series of one-off specials, the UK version was given a six week pilot run during the winter months.
+Unlike the original German version, which was a series of one-off specials, the UK version was given a six week pilot run during the winter months on Saturday nights.
 The game format of the show is quite similar to the original German version but there were a panel of three celebrity guests and four challenges in each show. On each challenge, the celebrity would back the challenger(s) they were sponsoring and if they failed their challenge, the celebrity would have to do a forfeit that they have chosen themselves before the start of the show, which is either recorded on location to be shown on the next show or right here, right now in the studio.
-So, you're probably thinking right now "Four challenges? But there are three celebrity guests backing three challenges." A-ha! This is where we bring out the host of the show [[Bruce Forsyth]] plucked straight out of his comfort zone on [[Play Your Cards Right]]. Now remember when we said that the celebrity guests had to do a forfeit if the challenger(s) failed? Well, it's a little different with Bruce because the audience have the power to decide his fate and the one with the highest percentage, Bruce will always go with the higher percentage of the audience vote whether. If the one with the highest audience percentage gets it wrong (and yes, even if the challenger(s) succeed), Bruce would have to do a forfeit. However, unlike the three celebrity guests who pick their forfeits before the show, Bruce pulls out three envelopes and then picks out a member of the audience to pick one, Bruce doesn't know what the forfeit is going to be in the envelope until he opens it up and reads it out loud.
+So, you're probably thinking right now "Four challenges? But there are three celebrity guests backing three challenges." A-ha! This is where we bring out the host of the show [[Bruce Forsyth]] plucked straight out of his comfort zone on [[Play Your Cards Right]]. Now remember when we said that the celebrity guests had to do a forfeit if the challenger(s) failed? Well, it's a little different with Bruce because the audience have the power to decide his fate and the one with the highest percentage, Bruce will always go with the higher percentage of the audience vote whether. If the one with the highest audience percentage gets it wrong (and yes, even if the challenger(s) succeeded), Bruce would have to do a forfeit. However, unlike the three celebrity guests who pick their forfeits before the show, Bruce pulls out three envelopes and then picks out a member of the audience to pick one, Bruce doesn't know what the forfeit is going to be in the envelope until he opens it up and reads it out loud.
 The first series was received so well with audiences, it was given an extended run of ten episodes the following year mostly because audiences were blown away by the variety of challenges that ordinary members of the public were challenging themselves to do and partially because of Brucie being the Bruciest he's ever Bruce'd the Bruce.
@@ Line 59: / Line 59: @@
 When the year 1990 came, Bruce was called by the BBC to host the revival of [[The Generation Game]], which was filmed around the same time as ''You Bet!'' meaning he would no longer host the show.
+=== The Kelly Years ===
+Perhaps the host that many viewers associate with the show is Mr. [[Game for a Laugh]] himself [[Matthew Kelly]].
+The show went through a number of changes when Matthew took over hosting:
+*For any challenger(s) that failed their challenge would now get a scroll for taking part in the show, which is a positive step up from when Bruce hosted it because they weren't awarded anything at all if they failed their challenge.
+*The celebrity guest that failed to back their challenge they were sponsoring would now have to choose one from a list of six forfeits that have very cryptic clues written on the screen and Matthew would then reveal what the forfeit is.
+*Matthew's fate for when he is backing a challenge he was sponsoring got the same treatment as the celebrity guests as in he would do a forfeit if the challenge he was backing failed.
+*The challenges were increased from four to five, which meant that Ellis Ward also got in the act of doing a forfeit if a challenge she backs fails.
+*Matthew also got involved with filming outdoor challenges as well as Ellis, but Ellis only got to film some outdoor challenges if she was backing a challenge.
+The format tweaks and Matthew's own fresh unique style of hosting have certainly helped make the show must watch television peaking in at 12.78 viewers on one episode during the Spring of 1991 and was given an Autumn series six months later, but this time in a new time slot of Friday nights at 8pm.
+Sadly, the Autumn 1991 series would be the last series we see Ellis Ward co-hosting as the following series in 1992, the celebrity guest panel was increased from three to four and the forfeits were now held by six chosen members of the studio audience and they would have to read out what the celebrity guest or Matthew would have to do for their forfeit. Also, every challenger from now on got a medal no matter what outcome of the challenge was.
+The 1993 series was given a bumper commission of sixteen episodes due to how popular the show was becoming and the amount of challengers wanting to show of their unique skills and talents. The forfeits was now concealed in six envelopes guarded by Matthew himself and they all have the letters Y-O-U-B-E-T printed on them. The 1993 series was originally supposed to have a continuous from September up until Christmas Eve where the Celebrity Special would be shown, but was taken off the schedules after the seventh episode and was replaced by a new series of ''Beadle's About''. During that time, Matthew was hosting another ITV show but this time from Granada called [[Stars in Their Eyes]]. He was initially hired as a caretaker for [[Leslie Crowther]] who had a car accident the year before, we'll get back to that later. The remaining episodes of the 1993 series were shown during the spring of 1994 back on Saturday nights and for some reason were sponsored by the Daily Mirror.
+The 1994 series was filmed during the Autumn and shown during Spring 1995. This series had a couple of massive changes to the format, the first big change was that the celebrity guests and Matthew would no longer be backing challenges they were sponsoring, which meant that there are "no more forfeits", instead the celebrity guest that scored the lowest on the panel would have to do a challenge themselves and the outcome would be shown the following week, the second big change is that during the celebrity challenge, there would be a phone-in vote for viewers at home to predict whether the celebrity would succeed or fail their challenge and one lucky winner picked at random would be donating £1,000, by the production team, for the charity of their choice. And for this series only, the challenger(s) that succeeded were given a special trophy called "The Kelly", which is a silver model of Matthew Kelly on a black podium with the ''You Bet!'' logo below it.
+But sadly after the completion of filming for series 8, [[Leslie Crowther]] announced that he would be retiring from showbusiness and Matthew was made a full-time host of [[Stars in Their Eyes]], meaning that the eighth series of ''You Bet!'' would be his last, which is quite sad because Matthew was really dedicated to hosting the show both in the studio and on location, he was very entertaining to watch as host and he was always fascinated about the challengers backstories on their skills and talents, especially with challengers who were children because he asked them questions the same way as he did with the adults.
+"What do you mean?" you ask? We'll explain. Let's have a look at how Bruce chatted to the kids, he would always ask them questions where they would always give them a one word answer (which is "Yes" or "No"), which is quite off-putting because we know that there are some children out there who are smart and are on the same level as adults, which is where Matthew did a better job in chatting to the kids than Bruce did where he would ask them questions where they would have to answer in a sentence because Matthew's very open-minded and interested in what the kids were saying as well as adults.
+Viewers would often call the Kelly years the defining era for the show and we agree on that, which is more than we can say for his successor the next year.
 -->
 == Key moments ==
@@ Line 118: / Line 144: @@
 [[Annabel Giles]] was the most frequent celebrity guest, appearing five times.
-The show originally aired on Saturday nights for the first four series, it was then aired on Friday nights from Series 5 until the first half of Series 7 and was finally moved back to Saturday nights from the second half of Series 7 until the show's end.
 == Web links ==