Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

It actually happened during the 20th Anniversary run:

I've often wondered, are any rules/guidelines given to the audience off-camera about Ask the Audience?

E.g. Are they encouraged to vote only if they have a reasonable 'hunch' with some logical basis, but to abstain if they haven't got a clue?

Or is it compulsory to pick a random answer even if they haven't got a clue?

I always assumed the latter to be true, but that assumption has no grounding in fact.

When I was in the audience during the final couple of Tarrant episodes I don't think we had to vote as such, but if you're sat in the audience for Millionaire it is one of the highlights of the experience anyway! There was a phase where the audience voted on every question anyway as Tarrant would often refer to the % of the audience that thought it was a certain answer, or their family/friend in particular.

It is quite impressive that not a single person went for D, that is quite rare for an answer not to even get 1-5%!

I thought it was funny when he described the lifelines, and called one of them Embarrass the Host instead of Ask the Host!

And sure enough, yet again that lifeline proved useless. Is it worth using it at all unless the question is about cars?

That wasn't live either though.

It's a LOT more expensive to make it live, where you only do one show per day, than it is to pre-record three or more shows a day.

If the show is TX-ed weekly that makes it even more expensive still to do live compared to recording in a block.

I also suspect there is a lot of boring contemplation over the questions that is edited out. They only really got away with live editions because of the clock format and then once the clock ended at £50,000 there was a lot of hurrying them up which ruined the original premise of the show.

When it first started am I right in saying that they used to record the programmes on the same day and edit them for airing in the evening, therefore getting rid of any press spoilers?

If I were on the show I'd use him early for a question I'm about 80 to 90% sure I know the answer to but need to make sure. (especially before £1000)
One thing I noticed Jeremy didn’t do that Chris would certainly have done was remind the contestant she didn’t have to play, she could walk away with the quarter mill and the wrong answer would cost her £125,000. (imagine, it could have been £218,000)
Broadcast wise, it's interesting to see that The former TV3 Ireland, now Virgin Media One, get sent their own copy of the programme to play out rather than live link to ITV playout like UTV and STV do.
This became obvious when I switched from VM to UTV to see the latter were about 2 minutes behind.

Im sure he actually did say once she did not need to play.

I went to a recording where the audience had to vote.

There were no off-air instructions. We were just given a handset when we arrived, and then during recording when the contestant chose ask the audience, we were asked by Chris to vote. What you see on air is exactly what happens.

I'm guessing it's not compulsory to vote, and if some of the audience don't vote, they would just work out the percentages from the members of the audience that did vote.

Pretty sure the first series in 1997 was recorded the night before.

There may have been a live insert at the end of the show, but I think because of the potential ponderous nature of thinking of the answers even that may have too much of a risk to even tighten up in the edit in less than a couple of hours.

(Edit - as pointed out it started in 1998, however, as it's been quoted, i'm correcting it here, and leaving the original incorrect.)