Call My Bluff
Contents |
Host
Robin Ray (original host)
Joe Melia
Peter Wheeler
Co-hosts
Team captains: Frank Muir (1965-94) versus Robert Morley (1965), Alan Melville (1966), Patrick Campbell (1970s), Arthur Marshall (1980-8), Joanna Lumley (1994).
Later captains: Alan Coren (1996-2005) versus Sandi Toksvig (1996-2002) or Rod Liddle (2003-5).
Broadcast
BBC2, 17 October 1965 to 22 December 1988 (c.300 episodes); one-off special 16 April 1994
BBC1, 13 May 1996 to 17 July 2005 (469 episodes)
Synopsis
DING! And the word is 'Call My Bluff'. Vic?
"Well, in prehistoric times, fish used to be able to talk. In English! They also used to keep pets, one of which was called a 'Bluff'. Now, when a friend fish says 'Hello fish! can you call my bluff for me?' he wants you to call his pet. Sadly, fishes have lost the ability to talk nowadays."
Coren, Holness and Toksvig. Not pictured: Harold the Hedgehog.Very good Vic. Sandi?
"'Ha ha ha! I'm Danish! Anyway, one day, a synonym for someone's agent was a 'Bluff', thereby, ha ha! when you got someone to call your agent you quite literally got them to 'Call My Bluff'. Ha!"
And finally Phillippa?
"Actually it's none of those, in fact it isn't a word, merely a phrase. It is a saying, originating from Sweden, for your best friend's wife-in-law."
A modern incarnation of the team, no doubt photographed in a sunny corner of BBC TV CentreSo is it a way of calling fish pets over, a synonym for an agent or a word game on the BBC? Nick?
"Well actually I wouldn't have written this if I didn't know what it was, and I'm quite sure it's Vic's."
Pictures
Picture 1 - From left to right - Robert Morley, Robin Ray, Frank Muir
Picture 2 - Box cover from a vintage board game, featuring Marshall, Robinson and MuirInventor
Based on an American Goodson-Todman show of the same title. According to Frank Muir in his memoir A Kentish Lad, the American show "was a bit of a shambles, mainly because the bluffs... were so obviously false that it was painfully easy to spot the trues. The show proved not to be to the taste of American viewers and only lasted one season."
Theme music
Ciccolino by Norrie Paramor
Trivia
Call My Bluff was the second UK game show to be broadcast in colour, on 1 October 1967. The comparatively obscure Crossword on 2 beat it by two days.
The 1994 special was part of a theme night called "An Evening In with David Attenborough", marking BBC2's 30th birthday.
The show was officially axed in 2003, only to be revived a few months later with a new host. The last run went out on Sunday mornings, between the god slot and Countryfile. It may not have been the most thrilling of shows, but it deserved better than that.
In 2007, Rod Liddle admitted that he once cheated on a show by texting his girlfriend who was standing by with a copy of the OED. He claimed that he did so to get back at Alan Coren, whom he believed was also cheating. Coren, however, denied the charge, telling the Daily Mail "I haven't ever cheated at anything. And unlike Rod I haven't cheated on my wife". As Linda Papadopoulos would charge a packet for saying, it looks like there's a bit of tension between these two.
