Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

Owphh. Really, Chris? It's not cheating if one of The Syndicate was actually a long standing friend of yours. If not, it's blatant cheating.

Phone a Friend I.e someone from your family, work or social group that you know (and trust) and have known for a period of time.

Not someone who had tapped you up, or you contacted them, and will help you climb up the money ladder for 10-20% of the winnings.

To be fair to ‘The Syndicate’ / ‘The Consortium’ I don’t believe there are any set rules on who you have to call on ‘Phone a Friend’ and if the strict rule was that it had to be a friend - thousands of contestants would’ve technically broken the rule by calling family. I think as Chris said they were more using the rules/format of the game to their advantage.

Yes ‘phone a friend’ is the name of the lifeline, not the rules for the lifeline.

I think one of the points of changing to go to the auditions was to get away from that, personally I think it's largely been successful.

The FFF selection is a 50/50 gender split and a wide range of ages. Perhaps more men do get into the chair. Looking at the official Millionaire YouTube which uploads most players recent games it's far less than the old days, but of course the white Middle aged men are still there to some degree.

The reason Clarkson has given it a new lease of life is because it has gone back to being a quiz show. Towards the end of its original run, Millionaire fell victim to the sob-story culture, where the questions felt more like an after-thought to Chris hearing their life-story. I’m sure they even played videos from family members for some contestants.

As I said earlier nearly all the contestants on this Clarkson version, seem to have well paid jobs like legal ones or are at least very comfortable. A waitress earning £16,000 and being really excited will always be more interesting than a Doctor winning £125,000. The show doesn’t need sob stories but it does need people for who winning money means something.

But it does need to be a balance because you do need some people who can afford to take the occasional gamble.

Maybe ditching fastest finger again is the way to go to ensure they can strike a good balance.

I like the Clarkson version, but during his most recent runs he had started to seem a bit bored. Maybe it’s just on the celebrity one but he seems to be less excited to be there than on his earlier ones.

Not so sure removing FFF will help, if anything it may encourage the return of the clock, which came in at the same time as removing FFF back in the day.

I think he's not so interested for Celebrity editions because:
1) they're not likely to be gamblers (they will set the second safety net lower than civilians)
2) they will always win something because it's for charity, not the celebrity.

When is the new civilian Clarkson run airing?

FWIW I think Clarkson is fantastic on it.

For me the Clarkson era seems much more enjoyable then the later stages of the Tarrant years.

Maybe it's because of the break the show had, but it really benefits now from the quicker pace and less waffle.

Yes, the celeb ones are less interesting for all concerned and nowadays don't rate much better. Always more interesting seeing real people play.


I wonder whether extending the fastest finger pool to the whole audience would give us a wider range of contestants or just add to the problem. That would probably mean scrapping Phone a Friend though.

No basically the bigger you make the fastest finger pool, the less control you have on what characters get into the chair. If anything they need more control not less.