Busman's Holiday

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Revision as of 22:22, 27 March 2006

Synopsis

Basic premise here is that three teams of people from different professions battle to win an exotic holiday where they have to work.

These three groups (probably swimming pool attendants, vicars and electricity meter readers, always dressed in their normal work-clothes) compete in quizzes based on the worlds of travel and occupations in order to win a working holiday. Cracking.

There were terrific sound effects for the buzzers, something like 'diddle-eh!' and the sound for an incorrect answer, sounding like an electronic Tellytubby 'Eh-oh!' Before Tellytubbies existed, of course.

The first round was a multiple-choice round on world geography. The second round involved the teams being asked questions on each others' jobs. In the early Julian Pettifer days, two team-members from two of the teams would simply answer questions, while the remaining two would attempt to complete a clever practical brainteaser (such as, relating to the driving instructors, watching a film of a driver deliberately committing driving-errors, and deciding which three would cause him to fail his driving test). This round was always very entertaining, and should not have been changed. Later versions of the round simply involved watching the team in question doing their job, docusoap-style, and questions being asked to both the other teams. The third round involved all three teams being asked questions on their own jobs (and no doubt feeling embarrassed if they failed to answer correctly, as Sarah Kennedy was always keen to point out!) The final round involved asking questions all about one particular destination. Hilariously, the teams were told that the particular destination was going to be one of four places that they'd been informed about some days before the recording, so the team that did best was the one that did the most research into that destination.

The winning team had already won an European holiday. In the Julian Pettifer-era, they would return the following week to try to win an additional world holiday. In the Sarah Kennedy-era, this changed to an end game, which involved trying to convert the European working holiday to a world holiday by putting forward one team member to answer questions on a random place as chosen by the departures board. In the final series, hosted by Elton Welsby, the end game changed to 'Around The World In 80 Seconds', which involved answering questions on various locations in order to upgrade to a world holiday.

And of course we got to see how last week's winners got on on their holiday, which is, y'know, nice. In the early Julian Pettifer days, the winners of the European holiday would be seen back in the studio, doing just what they were doing at the end of their holiday (such as the dentists playing with clockwork teeth, or the Royal Navy team saluting). Another clever touch that should not have been changed! Like another excellent Granada quiz, namely 'The Krypton Factor', 'Busman's Holiday' thoroughly deserves to be revived!

Trivia

A celebrity special in 1991 featured TV detectives against sports commentators and Home and Away actors. An gladiatorial battle of intellects, I'm sure you'll agree.

During the Julian Pettifer and Sarah Kennedy eras, there were three teams of three. For the Elton Welsby-series, this changed to two teams of three.

Julian Pettifer used to give the scores with references to the teams' jobs - such as 'The driving instructors are just getting into gear', or 'The coach drivers are, at the moment, slowcoaches!'

On at least one of the Sarah Kennedy series, both Sarah and the team-member competing for the world holiday were, for some bizarre reason, raised high up on an elevated platform - for dramatic effect, perhaps?

Pictures

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