Make Mine A Million (Who Wants to be a Millionaire?)

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Product:	Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
Date:	28/11/00 (15 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Tension galore

Disadvantages: Getting boring

I suppose that everybody loves a quiz and I am no exception as we sit in the comfort of our own homes and answer those "easy" questions much to the amazement of our nearest and dearest. "How come you knew that?" Is an often stated query. It is usually followed with, "You should be on there." Well we are all clever dicks at home. But out there in the middle????

In that respect Who Wants To Be A Millionaire is no different to all the other quizzes on TV. But no other quiz dangles the magic million pound carrot in front of the contestant.

The French have their own version for a million francs which is much less than a million pounds as do the Americans with their million dollars but that too is less than £1m. I suppose it is only a matter of time before we get a million Euros just to cement this EU thing. I wonder is there a currency in the world where its million thingies are worth more than a million pounds? Can't think of one off hand.

Now surely there cannot be many people in this country of ours who haven't watched the programme at some time or another so I won't bore the reader with the details. Then on the other hand it would be just my luck to find the only person in the country to never have seen Who Wants To Be A Millionaire as my first reader, so I'd better say something about the programme for their sake. Everyone else who knows the programme well can skip the next few paragraphs, unless they want to look for spelling mistakes and typos. I might put one in deliberately just to see if you're paying attention.

People from all over the country are invited to ring a premium phone number to volunteer themselves to take part in the quiz if they answer a fairly simple question first. The call now costing 60p per minute must attract tens, if not hundreds of thousands of callers each week only too eager to be in with a chance. That must rake in the programme makers a pretty penny s
o the programme could be running at an actual profit just from the phone calls.

Then the lucky few, ten actually, will be selected to take part in the programme but not necessarily to be centre stage. First they have to answer a relatively simple question and the person who gets it right in the fastest time wins the right to go for it. So the odds of getting yourself onto the hot seat are tens or maybe hundreds of thousands to one, which is still better than the chances of winning the major Lottery prize.

Answer the next fifteen general knowledge questions correctly and you walk away with a million quid. Along the way you can get the audience to help you out, or you can get the computer to remove two of the four answer choices, or you can phone a friend for their advice. Now is the time to seriously get to know and make a friend of the school swot who new everything there was to know about everything there is. S/He used to go home and complain to her/his mother that nobody liked her/him at school and s/he hated it. "Never mind dear" she would reply "one day they'll all want to be your friend." Little did she realise at the time how true her words could be.

If you reach question five and answer it correctly it is worth £1,000 and come what may after that you are guaranteed to keep that bit of pocket money. Answer question 10 and the guaranteed sum is £32,000, which is no longer pocket money.

I won't even go into how terrifying an ordeal it must be for someone to be watched by upwards of 8 million people as they don't know the answer to what most people regard as a simple question. Imagine the shame! Actually I'm with those people who think that there are no easy or difficult questions, only questions that you know the answers to and those that you do not. But there are those questions which you can work out the answer to by a process of elimination and a wing and a prayer.

Now we all kno
w that the magic £1,000,000 has been won but my warped outlook poses the question, has anyone fallen at the first hurdle and gone away with nothing? Or what is the smallest sum anyone has walked away with? I really do want to know that because one day I may be on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and it will be just my luck to have those two as questions.

Millions find the programme a must watch and in the beginning I too felt that way. But very quickly I got bored with the same old repartee week in week out from the presenter Chris Tarrant. "You've just won £32,000, but we don't want to give you that" as he snatches away the cheque. "Final answer" must go down into the annals of history as will the quizzical look accompanied by "sure?"

The programme has got BORING!

However with deference to all those who enjoy Who Wants To Be A Millionaire I will have to recommend it to a friend and give it top billing. I won't ask the audience first because the only audience I have is Spike my cat and he couldn't care less. I won't phone a fiend (<----typo) because it is now 3.32am precisely and he'd tell me to get knotted. So the decision is mine and mine alone. Yes it's compulsive viewing but not for me, except from time to time.

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