I missed the start due to zipping home from working on the weekly email to try and catch it. I always hate watching myself and rarely do (do I sound like that? Talk that quick? Gabble that much? Sit like that?), but as the programme was recorded six months ago (see original millionaire blog) I wanted to see how it looked.
The main difference is how much is edited out – it showed about 40 minutes, but we were actually doing it for double that. There’s no time limit on answering in the studio.
Thought I would note down a few things that jarred with my memory as I watched…
- Angela and phone a friend. While it was hinted at, when discussing which phone a friend to use on the ‘Kangaroo Island’ question, it was a good few minutes before I said “none of yours are Australian are they?” and Angela then realised one of hers was.
The reason was we’d split up our phone a friend by subject and so her friend was actually a Doctor and there as our medical person; it took a context shift for her to remember he was Australian too.
- The last question took 20 minutes. We literally spent 20 minutes going through every minor angle of the final “what’s Greek for pebble worm” question – at one point we almost went for Anaconda, but then we pulled back from it. The pressure was quite intense, as you don’t want the experience to end, and you’re desperate to get more from the charity.
It was remembering a comment someone had written on the forum warning about getting carried away for personal glory which is what made me say “I’m worried we want to carry on for glory but need to think about the charity” – and we pulled back.
- Angela knew the violinist. It made it look a touch like the violin question was a guess, though actually Angela – as a former chair of the English national ballet – has great classical knowledge and knew it instantly.
- Why did Angela whisper? If you watched you’d see I asked Angela to whisper me her thoughts on the Poldark question. That was because I suspected we may need to ask the audience… I then explained to Chris that I asked her to whisper so we didn’t lead the audience as often that skews the voting – which means it’s not a reasonable result
In fact what Angela whispered, very correctly, was that Poldark was Cornish and Ross was a Cornish name – I was just concerned that was too much to gamble on at that point.
So there are my trivial notes, but thought you may enjoy it.
