Concentration

Revision as of 21:22, 6 July 2019

Host

Barry McQueen (1959)

Chris Howland (1960)

David Gell (1960)

Nick Jackson (1988)

Bob Carolgees (1989-90)

Co-host

Announcer: Malcolm Brown (1988-90)

Broadcast

Granada for ITV, 16 June 1959 to 7 June 1960 (70 episodes in 1 series)

TVS in association with Mark Goodson Productions and Talbot Television for ITV, 4 September 1988 to 2 March 1990 (23 episodes in 2 series)

Synopsis

Two people played against each other to solve rebuses covered by squares.

On a board were 25 squares and each person picked two at a time. If they matched, they'd win the prize they'd matched up. Those squares would also disappear, revealing part of a picture puzzle. They could keep going until they failed to match. Instead of prizes, three of them were 'Wild' squares, automatically giving you a prize under a square (if they matched up Two 'Wild squares, I think they won a bonus) and thereby revealing three pieces of puzzle. There were also four 'Take' squares where if you were jealous of your opponent's prizes you could take one.

It takes concentration to read an idiot board, too

You only won the prizes if you solved the puzzle and you could only solve the puzzle if you had just matched some squares. It was best of three puzzles. Whoever won went through to the end game where they would be given 45 seconds to match 14 out of 15 holiday destinations, 7 pairs, the one that doesn't match is the destination of the winners holiday. This was changed during the Jackson/Carolgees version, whereby the last destination correctly paired up was the contestant's holiday destination.

At least it's not a speedboat

There were several other changes that occurred during the show's revival. Firstly, the contestants won their prizes whether they solved the puzzles or not. Another change was that, during the Jackson-version, a contestant could use the 'Take' squares to take any one of the other contestant's prizes, while, during the Carolgees-era, the 'stolen' prize would always be the last one that the other contestant had won. Also, the latter era saw the arrival of 'Swap' squares, whereby the contestant could, if he/she wished, swap one of the prizes in exchange for picking one of 3 cards that Carolgees was offering them. One was worth £100, another £50 and another only £1 - inevitably the latter amount was won on occasions, which was no doubt rather annoying for the contestant concerned.

Perhaps more polished than the American version, but not as much fun.

Catchphrases

"The game that needs not only a very good memory, but lots of concentration!"

Theme music

Ed Welch composed the music for the 1988-1990 version.

Trivia

Nick Jackson used to be the voice of the Sun newspaper TV adverts.

The 1980s version of the show used graphics by Dick Burn. We kid you not.

The original version of the show had 30 squares on the game board.

It was notable that, during the show's later era, one contestant often seemed to be better at matching the squares, while the other one was more skilled at solving the puzzles. The inevitable result was that the puzzle-solver would get through to the endgame, but would not win the holiday, due to being less skilled in finding the pairs on the board. Having said that, though, there were certainly some who did get the holiday, and even if they didn't, at least they generally had a goodly number of lesser prizes.

When Bob Carolgees took over as host, he always amusingly told us how he was no good at solving the puzzles and would give us his 'alternative version'. On one such occasion, the answer was 'The Sky's The Limit', which included a pair of eyes, an eel and a leg (as in 'limb'). Carolgees claimed that he'd thought it was, 'When a snake runs up your leg, it makes your eyes water' - make of that what you will.

Merchandise

A board game based on the show was produced in 1990.

Web links

Wikipedia entry

Pictures

The gameboard from the early Granada version

Feedback

@@ Line 58: / Line 58: @@
 The original version of the show had 30 squares on the game board.
+It was notable that, during the show's later era, one contestant often seemed to be better at matching the squares, while the other one was more skilled at solving the puzzles. The inevitable result was that the puzzle-solver would get through to the endgame, but would not win the holiday, due to being less skilled in finding the pairs on the board. Having said that, though, there were certainly some who did get the holiday, and even if they didn't, at least they generally had a goodly number of lesser prizes.
+When Bob Carolgees took over as host, he always amusingly told us how he was no good at solving the puzzles and would give us his 'alternative version'. On one such occasion, the answer was 'The Sky's The Limit', which included a pair of eyes, an eel and a leg (as in 'limb'). Carolgees claimed that he'd thought it was, 'When a snake runs up your leg, it makes your eyes water' - make of that what you will.
 == Merchandise ==