3. A new kind of game show

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Also:  It's Saturday Night 2. An autograph before you go 3. A new kind of game show 4. A rising exasperation with the quantity of dirt 5. The whole thing suddenly fell apart 6. Synthetic propensity 7. It was destined to be an anti-climax 8. This is your show now 9. The awesome scale of our wastefulness 10. Hands up those who couldn't care less 11. Together We’ll Be Ok 12. Decide the shape of ITV in the 1980s 13. Alan is too commercial 14. It worked like a dream 15. Older men, doing school boy tricks 16. Killing the Golden Goose 17. People love us to be sexy 18. The manure is worth more than the cattle 19. They were big in the States and we noted that 20. I’m still aggressive and I’m still handing out the insults 21. A new style of lunatic humour 22. The Habitat-bean-bag-hessian-wallpaper brigade 23. Thoroughly sinful 24. All carrots should be scraped, sliced and cooked 25. Back then it was radical stuff 26. Whatever they do, we can do it better 27. You'll have to take us as you find us 28. Entertainment that keeps on the move 29. It's the public that has to pay 30. The last we saw of either of them was their sad faces 31. Just shoot the bastard 32. Britain could clearly be facing its darkest hour 33. Any enthusiasm we may have had for continuing discussions is waning 34. It was considered by LWT and then put in a bottom drawer 35. Watch the redoubtable Terry take off 36. I thought it might be terrible and I wouldn’t enjoy it at all 37. Kamikaze Mastermind 38. We haven’t moved into luxury 39. We are investing in people 40. Delivered impeccably 41. He has to allow you to do your bit 42. All the anticipation of the great emotive point 43. If you want Russ Abbot to do it, then you have to accept me and my ideas 44. Let’s get straight into this 45. Unedifying Greed 46. We’ve got the fucking lot! 47. Scope for humour and danger 48. Pure Megablast 49. There’s lots of killing, but not much else 50. I wanted to make sure it was going to be disastrous 51. Oh dear – Auntie’s playing bingo! 52. A Shrivelled Little Thing 53. I shouldn’t have accepted it 54. We would be the spoilsports 55. The Most Sexless Person In Television 56. They’d have strung me up if I hadn’t chosen him 57. Is there some way to play with the internal constituent parts? 58. The most important entertainment programme of my time 59. The plumply pretty female duo 60. The audience just sort of started to freeze on him 61. More pilots than British Airways 62. There's going to come a time when you'll have to go to the BBC 63. A slightly pretentious manifesto 64. Things Look Very Precarious 65. It’s no good doing all the same old people all the time 66. That’s just not funny Bobby, it's corny - just don’t do that 67. Well bottom’s not funny 68. We Are The Funnymen 69. The powers that be listened to Denis 70. Stretchers never go up stairs 71. I was in obscurity until this series 72. I don’t care if he doesn’t like me 73. There’s such a passion for nostalgia right now 74. I Heard A Seat In The Stalls Go ‘Gerdonk!' 75. This is your show, folks, and I do mean you 76. There’s good news for perplexed fans of 3-2-1! 77. Taking on Blind Date would be a real challenge 78. You wanna bet on it? 79. The yarns worked their tried and tested magic 80. The Charge-And-Shout Brigade 81. I sat for a moment in silence, then turned in my chair and left the stage 82. We just weren't allowed into UK terrestrial television 83. Beadle’s A Prick 84. The interviewer always has to know when it's best to keep his or her mouth shut 85. Can you come up with a good solution for the Murder Weekend mystery? 86. He's not a goody- goody hero 87. The Sexism, The Dolly Birds, The Catchphrases 88. The feel of Saturday night 89. 1990 Who would employ an ex-alky with lowered self-esteem 90. It were a right smack in the face 91. Look Straight Into My Eyes And Everything Will Be Alright, That's A Promise 92. That's the last thing I was expecting, Jim 93. The characters and situations are real 94. Oh Man, There Go All My Women Fans 95. A Double Order of Talent 96. If there is an air of spontaneity about it, it’ll be genuine 97. NTV brings you ... empty rooms! 98. You’re BBC, you shouldn’t be here 99. If this doesn’t work out, we’re both snookered! 100. The humour of Beadle comes through humiliating people! 101. To allow such bilge on TV is an insult to the audience 102. Like a cup of cold sick 103. A litre of gin, ecstasy and crack cocaine 104. A reliable tent pole for Saturday evenings 105. It is in the cutlery drawer 106. Welcome to the new Saturday night 107. Congratulations, you have got the fucking Gen Game 108. The programme has done extremely badly and will be dropped after this series 109. Building the excitement and tension to a crescendo 110. He gives us our spirit of unity; we’d all like to strangle him 111. The worst programme currently on terrestrial television 112. I award the city state of Milton Keynes 100 credits! 113. There’s nothing that makes people scream, ‘Did you see that?’ 114. It was of a standard frankly well below what the public would want 115. Waxing An Ape Is My Ambition 116. Don’t Get Mad, Get Even 117. The penalty shoot-out is the greatest ever endgame 118. 200 black boxes are strapped to the back of a cross-section of the nation 119. Better For You, Better For All Of Us 120. I mean who on earth thought that was a good idea? 121. I’m sure the tune was in there somewhere 122. This Time, You Decide 123. King of trash, that’s me 124. It’s about rejection now 125. They lost what Popstars was all about 126. Win the ads 127. A name in search of a series 128. Getting grief from the papers 129. I’m so pleased to be back on television 130. Saturday nights haven't been this interesting for 10 years 131. It’s the Usual Nonsense 132. The trip of a lifetime Epilogue: Why Haven't You Written a Series of Articles on Tuesday Night Telly?

By the late 1960s, Bruce Forsyth had been a big star for a long time. Since coming to prominence in 1958 as compere of Sunday Night at the London Palladium, the show biz all-rounder (also known during his career as ‘Boy Bruce’ and ‘the Mighty Atom’) had danced with Sammy Davis Jnr. and performed a double act with Nat King Cole. However, it was for his interactions with the audience and ability to turn the game show spot, ‘Beat the Clock’, into one of the evening’s highlights that Forsyth had forged a formidable reputation. Such was his confidence that once in 1959, he successfully attempted a challenge that no one else was to be able to match over the next 18 weeks; namely to bounce a ball off a bass drum on to a snare drum and a cymbal, to then be caught by an assistant.

Although Forsyth invested a lot of energy in attempting to broaden his appeal (he appeared in the 1968 Julie Andrews film Star! and would later release a double album including excerpts of his live performance, plus a disc of songs), his innate ability to insult members of his audience and have them love it seemed to have a British-only appeal that condemned him to a life of audience participation entertainment.

Bill Cotton recalls a visit to the 1970 Montreux Festival in which he came across a Dutch series called One out of Eight. Instantly recognising the potential of what he saw as a “new kind of game show” he made its creator, Mise Bowman (a Dutch housewife inspired by ‘Beat the Clock’), the not altogether generous offer of 25 pounds a show for the copyright. “Still,” Cotton recalls, “she did do well. Once the format became a success in Britain she was able to offer it to German television for a thousand pounds a throw.” One out of Eight allowed members of the public to participate in a number of silly games, yet it marked a departure from previous shows in that, the reaction and behaviour of the contestants was the focus of the programme, rather than the outcome of the game. The general public would not only be allowed to demonstrate their pot-making skills on television, but would be given an opportunity to make a fool out of themselves by acting in mini, comic playlets. Cotton knew he needed to prune some of the elements (out went the chat show section), but more importantly, he needed someone with a proven track record for dealing with the public; he had no hesitation in deciding that Forsyth was the man for the job.

However his quarry was in the middle of a period of angst and self-analysis. Forsyth was insistent his talents as an all-round entertainer were being wasted, and claimed he was becoming typecast as a game-show host. It took the persuasive powers of agent, Billy Marsh, to finally get him to accept the job. Marsh had immediately recognised the appeal of One out of Eight and was determined that Forsyth was to be at its helm. With Bruce on board Cotton asked for a pilot to be made.

He remembers that it “worked well. The producers over-recorded in order to try out as many games as possible and get the scoring system right … I saw the recording and loved it.” The first programme proper was recorded on the Thursday before the show’s opening night. Cotton was unhappy with it, claiming it tried to recreate the magic of the pilot and failed dramatically. So, Cotton took the decision to re-edit the pilot down from its current duration of 80 minutes and broadcast that instead. Forsyth was initially aggrieved by this decision (the editing made a mockery of the scoring), but as soon as the unanimously positive newspaper reviews began to roll in all was forgotten.

The Generation Game (as One out of Eight was re-christened) is still the most successful British game show of all time. Bruce was voted TV Personality of the Year in 1976 and 1977 and the show featured in the top 10 most watched programmes of the week right throughout the 1970s. Coinciding with the irresistible rise of Morecambe and Wise, by the end of 1971, Bill Cotton could give pause to reflect happily upon what he had achieved for the BBC, and in particular for Saturday nights.

Next: “A rising exasperation with the quantity of dirt”