propelled by the invisible Chita, moved awkwardly on to the set. Barrett Doran, scooping up a little pile of printed cards from his lectern, moved across to greet them effusively.
‘Now first we have a very charming lady who’s come all the way from Billericay. Patricia Osborne is her name, but she’s known to her friends as Trish.’ He beamed the full force of his charm straight at her, and putting on a babyish voice, asked, ‘Can I be one of your friends and call you Trish?’
‘Of course, Barrett.’
‘Terrific. Now I gather, Trish, that you’re not the world’s greatest decorator. .’
‘Not really, Barrett, no.’
‘In fact. .’ He consulted the card, on which the researchers had summarised the answers to the ‘any amusing incidents that may have happened in your life’ part of their questionnaire. ‘. . I gather you once papered your bedroom with vinyl wallpaper and woke up next morning to find it had all fallen off the walls on top of your bed!’
‘That’s right, Barrett,’ Trish agreed over the audience’s hoots of delight.
‘And I bet your husband said, ‘Trish, that’s the vinyl straw!’
‘No, he didn’t actually.’ But Trish Osborne’s response was lost in the audience’s acclamation of their favourite epigrammatist.
The other three contestants were introduced with comparable wit, and then the rules for the First Round were explained. The four contestants were paired with their celebrity helpers. (A last ditch attempt by Tim Dyer not to be landed with Fiona Wakeford was brutally thwarted.) Then, to the sound of another jingle, the hamburger chef, the surgeon, the stockbroker and the actor moved into their pre-arranged positions. The hamburger chef was wearing the Tudor bonnet, the surgeon the bowler, the stockbroker the chef’s hat, and the actor the green hygienic cap. The camera moved slowly from one to the other, while the participants and audience tried to estimate which face went with which profession.
In turn, each contestant and celebrity team rearranged the hats to their satisfaction. Graphics superimposed over the picture recorded their guesses. It was all very riotous. Two out of the four contestants unhesitatingly identified Charles Paris as the hamburger chef.
To much oohing and aahing, Barrett Doran then gave the correct solutions. Contestants and celebrities responded with extravagant hand-over-face reactions to their errors. The four ‘professions’ smiled fixedly as their true identities were revealed. The stockbroker was asked if she really was a stockbroker, the hamburger chef was asked to go easy on the onions, and the surgeon was asked if the first cut really was the deepest. The actor wasn’t asked anything. The four were then fulsomely thanked for their participation and, as soon as the camera was off them, hustled unceremoniously off the set by a Floor Manager. At least one of them went straight to the bar and spent the rest of the evening there, risking topping up the earlier gins with Bell’s whisky.
Which meant that Charles Paris didn’t see the rest of that evening’s rather unusual recording.
Points and money prizes were then awarded to the contestants. They got?50 for each correct hat. Two had scored a maximum of?200. One of these was Tim Dyer, who congratulated himself on his tactic of having ignored everything Fiona Wakeford said. The other was Trish Osborne. A third contestant scored?100. The fourth, who had managed to get them all wrong, was thanked by Barrett Doran for being a really good sport and asked if she had had a good evening. She assured him it had been the best of her life, before she was consigned to the outer limbo off the set. But, the audience was told, she would not be going away empty-handed. No, she would take with her a special
The three survivors were then detached from their celebrity assistants for Round Two. The lovely Nikki and the lovely Linzi, still (for the most basic of audience-pulling reasons) dressed in bikinis, brought on four red-and- blue-striped hat-boxes which they placed on the long blue desk beside each panellist. Barrett Doran read out a list of five types of hat (one was a red herring), and asked the four celebrities in turn to read out a clue of mind-bending ambiguity about the contents of their box. The contestants then had to hazard guesses as to which box contained which hat. The celebrities responded to these guesses with much elaborate bluffing, double-bluffing, tactical drinking from their water-glasses and heavy gesturing. Again, graphics recorded the contestants’ final decisions and, at the end, Barrett Doran made his startling revelation of the truth. It was all very riotous.
Once again,?50 depended on each hat. With the red herring, that meant a possible total of?250, which Tim Dyer, much to his satisfaction, achieved. This win also earned him the portable video-recorder and camera. Trish Osborne had got two hats the wrong way round, so only won another?150. But she was still in contention. The third contestant, having identified only one hat correctly, departed from the show with?150 in winnings from his two rounds and, of course, with his
‘So,’ Barrett Doran asserted, ‘everything to play for after the break! See you in a couple of minutes, when once again it’ll be time to see. . if the cap fits!’
Barrett Doran left the set immediately the END OF PART ONE caption came up. Charlie Hook came forward to tell the audience what a lovely time they were having and what lovely people they were and how lovely the second part of the show was going to be. And weren’t the panellists lovely? And the contestants. Lovely, really, lovely.
Then Jim Trace-Smith came on to the set. The Producer, Charlie Hook explained to the audience, needed some ‘cutaway shots’. These were just reactions from some of the participants, which might have to be cut in later and would make editing the show a lot easier. Jim Trace-Smith only needed to do reaction shots with the two eliminated contestants; he’d do any others he needed at the end of the recording of Part Two. So the two failed candidates were hauled back on to the set, made to stand in fixed positions and asked to go through a variety of facial reactions — delight, annoyance, excitement, frustration, despair. Neither of them had much aptitude for it; they lacked the professional performer’s ability to switch expressions at will; so the recording process took longer than it should have done.
But at last all was set for the restart. A Make-up girl flashed in with a final puff of powder for the face of Tim Dyer, on whom the pressure was showing in the form of sweat. The designer, Sylvian de Beaune, leapt on to the set for one last check of the position of the blue lectern. A Floor Manager escorted Barrett Doran back from his dressing room or wherever he had been. Charlie Hook gave the audience one last reminder that they were lovely, the clock was again started and the jingle and caption for PART TWO appeared.
Round Three was a simple General Knowledge round, though it was dressed up in a way that conformed with the hat theme of the rest of the show. The lovely Nikki and the lovely Linzi, still in their inevitable bikinis, entered carrying a large red-and-blue-striped box with a small opening at the top. Each of the surviving contestants had to reach into this box and pull out a hat. The hat dictated the subject on which they would be questioned. Once they knew the subject they were entitled to choose the celebrity guest who they thought best qualified to help them answer questions on that subject. They had five questions each. An incorrect answer gave the other player a chance at the question. Each question was worth?40, offering?200 for five correct answers (or, in the unlikely event of one contestant getting all five wrong and the other getting them all right,?400 for ten correct answers).
Trish Osborne pulled out a nurse’s hat. This meant her questions would be on Medicine. Which of the celebrities, Barrett Doran asked, did she think would be best qualified to help her on that subject? Nick Jeffries volunteered his services, saying that he had always fancied nurses. Bob Garston said he’d got a badge for First Aid when he’d been in the Boy Scouts. It was all very riotous. Trish Osborne shrewdly chose to be helped by Joanie Bruton.
Tim Dyer’s lengthy scrabbling in the box produced an opera hat. Nobody knew instinctively what subject this suggested, and Barrett Doran had to explain that it was the sort of hat worn by a first-nighter, so it meant Tim would be answering questions on the Theatre. So who was he going to have helping him? Well, it didn’t seem too difficult to come up with an answer to that, did it. .
‘Right, so, Trish and Joanie, we start with you. And here’s your first question: Which part of your body would be affected if you were suffering from galucoma? Glaucoma.’
Joanie whispered to Trish.
‘Your eye.’
‘Yes, that’s right. Glaucoma is a disease of the eye. Well done. Forty pounds to add to your growing total, Trish. Over to Tim and Bob, and your questions, remember, are on the Theatre. Here’s your first one: Who was the first actor ever to be knighted? The first actor ever to be knighted?’
