December 2011 Archives

Image via Wikipedia

This was the moment on game show Bullseye when host Jim Bowen rubbed salt in the wounds of the defeated contestants by showing them the prize they'd missed out on. It's a phrase that has become part of popular culture.

Even if the participants were lucky enough to win, they often didn't come away with anything very useful. The ranged from the cheap - a remote-controlled toy car - to the superfluous, like the couple from Walsall who won a speedboat.

This was all part of the appeal of the 'super, smashing, great' darts game show, and is what makes the news that Bullseye is making a comeback in America so surprising. The Stateside producers are offering a huge jackpot of $1 million.

Warning

The Yanks have realised that 'you can't beat a bit of Bully' and the show is being re-made by the team who took The Weakest Link across the Atlantic.

Apparently, darts is much more popular in America than we might expect.

Bullseye was a Sunday afternoon treat that pulled in up to 19 million viewers and was, for the most part, made in Birmingham.

The first nine series were recorded at ATV, and then Central's, Broad Street studios. Then in 1990, production moved to Lenton Lane in Nottingham.

The show featured three pairs of contestants, each of which had a player good at darts and one good at general knowledge.

In the final round, the pairs were faced with Bully's Prize Board and the warning: "Keep out of the black and in the red, there's nothing in this game for two in a bed."

They won a prize for each red segment they hit, but if they hit that segment twice, the prize was lost.

The winning pair were then given the chance to gamble for the star prize, hidden behind screens, which they won if they scored 101 or more with three darts.

The consolation prize was a set of darts and a rubber doll of the show's mascot, called a Bendy Bully. If they lost out on the star prize, Jim also offered to throw in their BFH - bus fare home.

The show also featured a celebrity or professional darts player, who threw nine darts to raise money for charity. Some were better than others - a clearly drunk George Best managed to miss the board completely.

Darts commentator Tony Green kept score throughout.

Jim became known for his gaffes, such as this exchange with a contestant. "What do you do for a living?" "I'm unemployed, Jim." "Super".

Bullseye reappeared in 2005 as part of Ant and Dec's Gameshow Marathon, with celebrities Vernon Kay and Bill Roache taking part in an hour-long show with Eric Bristow and Andy Fordham.

Following this success, Bullseye was revived by digital channel Challenge.

Dave Spikey hosted two series of the show in 2006, using the original theme music and set.

ROZ LAWS

If you didn't quite get what you wanted for Christmas but you have money from grannies and aunties you didn't know existed burning a whole in your pocket then there is a solution.

I'm not one for endorsing products but when it comes to Last Exit To Nowhere I make an exception.

Without a doubt the makers of the coolest t-shirts on the web my wardrobe is full of these t-shirts and little else.

The ethos of the company is to take key products, companies and locations from famous films and put them on a shirt in very subtle way.

You never see the name of the film, always a subtle reference.

For example I have a Hill Valley High t-shirt (Back To The Future), an Amity Island Police shirt (Jaws) and Mighty Mick's Gym shirt (Rocky).

Recent inclusions to my collection are a Nostromo shirt (Aliens) and a Walley World (National Lampoons) shirt.

The shirts are not only clever they are also fantastically designed and very desirable.

They are the ultimate geek movie shirt but one for fashionable geeks!

Constantly updating their range visit the website here...

A Doctor Who fan has turned her house into her very own Tardis.
Erica Quinn has recreated the famous time machine from her front door in Glasgow.
She even matched the paint from an original 1960s police box that still sits a stone's throw away at the corner of the city's Botanic Gardens.
Life-sized cardboard cut-outs of the Tenth and Eleventh incarnations of the Doctor, as played by Matt Smith and David Tennant, companions Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) and time agent Captain Jack (John Barrowman), and a Dalek peer out from behind the curtains of the flat-turned-Tardis on Clouston Street.
Mrs Quinn dresses them up on special occasions like Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween and Easter - giving each a costume.
The Captain Jack figure even spent last year wearing a black armband in mourning for the regeneration of the tenth doctor, played by Scottish actor David Tennant.
The 39-year-old rearranges them throughout the year - currently the enemies and companions are grouped together, with the two Doctors occupying her bedroom, and a solitary Ood in the hall vestibule.
Mrs Quinn, who shares the house with her husband Quinn, two daughters, Joan and Alice and cat, Lucy, said: "They switch around and sometimes they come out of the windows," she said.
"They are an excellent deterrent against having your house broken into because it looks like someone is watching".
The house has become a local landmark, with passers by stopping to take pictures of her tribute to the show.
She said: "I call it my double take door. People walk by and just stop and stare. People have started calling me the Doctor Who House Lady.
"Once I was getting a taxi on the other side of Glasgow - and I went up to the taxi rank and asked to go to the West End.
"One of the drivers said: 'I'll take you, because I want to go past the Doctor Who House. I was like, "That's my house".
"There have been so many people that I have run into in different places and discovered that they knew about my house. People use it as a point of reference to tell people where they are.
"I think it's great that people love to talk to me about it. You often here people stopping and talking about it outside the house. Everyone under the age of five loves Amy the most."
She said her tribute to the cult show began as a joke, but rapidly expanded.
"I'm no more of a Doctor Who fan that most people in Britain - I watch it and I enjoy it, but I'm not obsessed," she said.
The couple, who originally hail from California and Australia, bought the main door flat in 2003 and have been painstakingly restoring it.
It is next door to where the Scottish Colourist JD Ferguson once lived - but no planning permission was needed for the work.
Mrs Quinn said: "It's just when we came to redo the front door, I thought it should probably have a theme. Doctor Who seemed as good a theme as any - it became a bit of a running gag.
"The front door was really terrible. It was brown UPV. My husband hated it more than life itself."
Mrs Quinn is now making plans to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the show next year.
She hopes to build a replica console room in the hall vestibule to complete the effect.
And she's hoping John Barrowman might admire her handiwork this year.
The Glasgow-born actor is in the city to star in pantomime Robinson Crusoe and the Pirates with the Krankies.
Last year, she contacted the actor's agents inviting him to come and have a look - but he was struck down by a chest infection.
Later she was sent a goodie bag addressed to "The Doctor Who Fan".

AN extra on the new Batman movie The Dark Knight Rises has died on set.

The male extra died from a heart attack during rehearsals.

It is not the first time tragedy has hit a Dark Knight film - actor Heath Ledger, who played arch villain The Joker - died in 2008 at the age of 28 after shooting the second film in the trilogy.

A spokesman for studio Warner Brothers said: "The studio can confirm that a male extra passed away while on a break during an off-set crowd rehearsal for a sequence with several hundred extras in early November.

"The production crew fully cooperated with the authorities' investigation, which established that he died of natural causes."

Universal Studios have announced on their Facebook page that the legendary Jaws ride is to close.

I for one am GUTTED! I was only on it three months ago and it was as great as I remember. A sad day, here's the statement:

Hey fans, we want you to be the first to know... JAWS! and the Amity area will o

fficially close on January 2 to make room for an exciting, NEW, experience we're planning for you.

We know you love JAWS! and we do too. It has been an amazing attraction and after terrorizing the waters of Amity here at Universal Orlando for 20 years, it's a VERY important part of our history. So, we've got a couple things planned to ensure we always remember and honor it. We know it's hard to say goodbye, but we can't express how EXCITED we are about the new, innovative & amazing experience we're going to be bringing you.