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    #26
    Have we done "Pointless"?

    Yeah, I wonder about the identity of the 100 people too – not just because of anomalies like the above but also because sometimes the numbers actually seem to be too high for an average cross section of the population (but much more plausible if it’s a specific subset, eg people aged 18-30).

    One of my favourite sets of wrong answers was from the question ‘Name a US state with a coastline’. The first of the pair – a teacher! – said ‘Mexico’, and his partner followed that up with ‘Orlando’.

    Also, is it just my imagination or does the show attract a higher than average number of gay contestants?

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      #27
      Have we done "Pointless"?

      One of the final-round categories I most enjoyed was 'Mercury Prize Winners', because anyone from the BPI would have been watching in horror; a couple of points for Elbow, a couple for the xx, and that was it - the vast majority of the winners had been completely forgotten. It was especially entertaining because the contestant, a painfully trendy vicar, dredged his memory for alternative recording artists he'd once heard mentioned; and plumped for Aphex Twin and... Cud.

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        #28
        Have we done "Pointless"?

        With regard to the gays, don't forget that contestants have to audition, so it's not necessarily a repressentative sample.

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          #29
          Have we done "Pointless"?

          I saw a bit on youtube and thought it was great. I too want to understand more about the 100 people surveyed and exactly how that went.

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            #30
            Have we done "Pointless"?

            It's enjoyable, with a clever concept and good presenters, but I agree that it's padded out too much.

            The format also leads to the problem that the finale can fall flat on its face. On the one I've just seen, the contestants had to get a pointless answer for an Audrey Hepburn film, and (like me) the only one they knew was Breakfast at Tiffany's. They might just as well have binned the last ten minutes of the show.

            As has been said elsewhere, nothing beats University Challenge.

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              #31
              Have we done "Pointless"?

              Yeah, they should perhaps display the questions rather than just the categories, or at least make the categories slightly more specific. It was the lovely Lucy too, she won my jackpot.

              The whole jackpot accumulator thing is a bit off too, actually, since some couples come away with a measly return on their endeavors.

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                #32
                Have we done "Pointless"?

                I've noticed the ubiquity of gay couples, as well.

                I don't agree that it's too padded out, except perhaps at the beginning. It helps that both presenters are actually capable of spontaneous wit, though inevitably that side of it's kind of hit and miss. And I like the arbitrary, and by today's standards piddling, nature of the jackpot; it's a pleasing quirk.

                My theory about the final round is that you have to go either (a) highbrow or (b) nerdy with your category choice, because that's the only way to stand any chance of finding instances you know that other people don't. There's no point picking popular culture, unless you have some particular obsession within it*, because mostly, the things that are known to you will also be known to others.

                (* Such as, oh I dunno, Doctor Who.)

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                  #33
                  Have we done "Pointless"?

                  I don't know why, but I have a feeling that the guy who ran them close on Grease characters wasn't half annoyed when Audrey Hepburn came up.

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                    #34
                    Have we done "Pointless"?

                    And more recently, someone thought Gordon Brown was a Conservative.
                    That particular answer made me swear at the telly, although the contestant concerned already had my dander up as she claimed to be a psychic. Fortunately my daughter, who is at the stage of parroting most things, hasn't repeated the phrase I used. Yet.

                    As has been said elsewhere, nothing beats University Challenge.
                    Word.

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                      #35
                      Have we done "Pointless"?

                      oscar mike wrote:
                      ... although the contestant concerned already had my dander up as she claimed to be a psychic.
                      Except that that was hilarious, don't you think? The gentle piss-takes from the presenters, and so on: nothing really malicious, but sending up her vanity a bit. I think they could scarcely have handled it better.

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                        #36
                        Have we done "Pointless"?

                        frontier psychiatrist wrote:
                        I love Pointless, we record it every day. 45 minutes is quite long, but we fast forward through the banter, and pause to brainstorm after the questions. Takes about three-quarters of an hour all in all.

                        Some of survey results dumbfound me though, especially in the head-to-head round where there are usually ten or fewer* possible answers. Where the hell did they find 3 people who'd heard of Celtic but not Rangers? Or the 3 people who couldn't name the pound sterling as a currency? World Cup Final goalscorers and Carlos Alberto was pointless?

                        What I'd also like to know is whether the 100 people surveyed can only offer as many answers as there actually are. Otherwise a category like Colours of the Olympic Rings would've scored 100 points for all five answers, as the questionees who didn't know all five would use the 100 seconds to guess every colour they can think of.

                        My all time favourite answer on this was on Countries with a Mediterranean Coastline: Dominican Republic – the contestant had recently been there. And more recently, someone thought Gordon Brown was a Conservative. Although I think I laughed the most when nobody could name a U2 single.

                        *That reminds me, who else thinks Armstrong is instructed to say "You're looking for 25 or less", and hates himself every time.
                        The only time a person gave a correct answer that scored 100, it was bizarrely, by giving "Parmesan" as an answer for types of cheese, so quite what that tells us about the audience demographic, I'm not sure.

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                          #37
                          Have we done "Pointless"?

                          The most frustrating thing about Pointless is that I've missed three and a half series. Come on the BBC, hurry up with the box set.

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                            #38
                            Have we done "Pointless"?

                            I saw a rerun of this for the first time yesterday on that "Challenge" freeview channel. It's very good, but Jesus, where do they find these people?

                            "OK, so we have to think of a Commonwealth country, but we don't want to choose an obvious one that everyone will have named because then we'll get loads of points and get knocked out of the game and look really stupid on prime time telly"

                            "Australia!"

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                              #39
                              Have we done "Pointless"?

                              Why at Last! wrote:
                              oscar mike wrote:
                              ... although the contestant concerned already had my dander up as she claimed to be a psychic.
                              Except that that was hilarious, don't you think? The gentle piss-takes from the presenters, and so on: nothing really malicious, but sending up her vanity a bit. I think they could scarcely have handled it better.
                              Oh, they handled it beautifully. It was just me being overly annoyed by a numpty.

                              Comment


                                #40
                                Have we done "Pointless"?

                                tratorello wrote:
                                they could easily chop at least 5 minutes off the beginning of the programme as it's just a load of faff of Alexander talking to the contestants (perhaps I should just tune in 5 minutes later).
                                They do that so that you can watch the vote on Coach Trip, then switch over without missing any of the questions.

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                                  #41
                                  Have we done "Pointless"?

                                  "Working" at home, are we?

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                                    #42
                                    Have we done "Pointless"?

                                    Special 200th edition of Pointless today.

                                    They're celebrating by inviting back four of the most unsuccessful teams in the programme's history, teams who crashed out with maximum points on previous appearances.

                                    Brilliant.

                                    Comment


                                      #43
                                      Have we done "Pointless"?

                                      Gangster Octopus wrote:
                                      "Working" at home, are we?
                                      "Watching" on "iPlayer".

                                      Comment


                                        #44
                                        Have we done "Pointless"?

                                        Purves Grundy wrote:
                                        I saw a rerun of this for the first time yesterday on that "Challenge" freeview channel. It's very good, but Jesus, where do they find these people?
                                        There was a rather good gag about that yesterday, one of the rounds was about Ewan McGregor films, and having mentioned that Moulin Rouge was released 10 years ago, Richard quipped "And if you're watching on Challenge, fourteen years ago, imagine!"

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                                          #45
                                          Have we done "Pointless"?

                                          I remember a similar gag during Danny Baker's tenure on Win, Lose or Draw. "And if you're watching this on UK Gold" "look - hair!"

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                                            #46
                                            Have we done "Pointless"?

                                            I've just watched one of these on YouTube from the first series, and my word yes. It's brilliant. I agree about both who the hell they're asking the questions to, and where they find the contestants, though. One of the couples who went out on the episode I've just seen decided to 'play it safe' by guessing USA and Australia, when the question was 'countries whose flags have stars in them'. The fact they thought this was playing it safe suggests to me that they've misunderstood the concept of the show at a very basic level, yet they weren't even the first to be eliminated.

                                            I endorse the above comments about University Challenge, and wish the latest series was as easy to find on YouTube (or for download) as this is. But I'm going to watch another Pointless right now.

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                                              #47
                                              Have we done "Pointless"?

                                              Just have to say, please watch today's episode (at least I think it was on today; it's episode 28 on the iPlayer) for no other reason than to hear Richard's joke at the end of the first round.

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                                                #48
                                                Have we done "Pointless"?

                                                Bit sad yesterday, with the lovely Welsh couple going out on a question about public schools, for fuck's sake.

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                                                  #49
                                                  Have we done "Pointless"?

                                                  The hardest final round question I can remember seeing was 'Colleges affiliated to the University of London' - the pointless answers were institutions so obscure that anyone who didn't work in the University's administration department would have had practically no chance.

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                                                    #50
                                                    Have we done "Pointless"?

                                                    Sam: I think the couple you cite, though certainly not very clued up on flags, were perhaps less tactically naive than you say. The first two rounds are about survival: about doing just enough. And if you're not sure about a topic, there's a good chance others are not sure either. If you go for a well-known example, you not only score less than 100, you remove that safety net from anybody following you. If you're playing early in the sequence, it can be quite a sound tactic.

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