Latest news with #GuyMontgomery
ABC News
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Guy Montgomery's here to befuddle, bamboozle and bedazzle in Guy Mont's Spelling Bee
Will we be laughing at you, or with you, as you put your spelling skills to the ultimate test? Guy Montgomery and Aaron Chen are here to befuddle, bamboozle and bedazzle. Will you (and the left hemisphere of your brain) rise to the occasion? Over to our quizmaster. Now, let's get spelling! Stream the new series of Guy Montgomery's Guy Mont Spelling Bee free on ABC iview or catch it tonight at 8:35pm on ABC TV.
Daily Mail
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Chaos erupts on ABC as heckler interrupts live TV game show
An ABC TV quiz show recently descended into chaos when an overenthusiastic audience member spoiled the episode during a live taping. New Zealand comedian and host of Guy Montgomery's Guy Mont-Spelling Bee was left flabbergasted when a contestant got the unexpected lifeline from the audience. Fellow comedian He Huang was struggling to identify (and then spell) the name of a country represented by one of four international flags. 'Does it start with G?' she asked Guy, after being given the 'fun fact' prompt: 'This country has a lot of world's heaviest animals because a lot of them are still carrying the psychological weight of World War Two.' ' Poland!' a voice from the crowd yelled out, shocking everyone on the stage. From A-list scandals and red carpet mishaps to exclusive pictures and viral moments, subscribe to the DailyMail's new showbiz newsletter to stay in the loop. Fellow contestants Emma Holland and Rove McManus were left visibly shocked, with Emma covering her mouth with one hand to stifle a genuine gasp and Rove freezing with his jaw open. 'That is absolutely illegal,' a stunned Guy reprimanded the audience member, prompting a round of raucous laughter. Co-host Aaron Chen sprung into action. 'Don't worry Guy, I'll go sort this,' he yelled, before pretending to run into the audience to apprehend the audience member. Not to be outdone, Rove made eye contact with the audience as he said, 'Before I go, can I just check, are any of my "ancestors" out there?' 'That is generally discouraged,' Guy responded. The host was adamant that the real-life blooper not be taken out of the episode in the final edit because he enjoyed how 'incredibly unusual' and 'kind of funny' the moment was. Speaking to Guy said he felt the social contract between a live audience and TV quiz show contestants was 'pretty clear'. Which is, of course, not to participate in the game show unless you're actually a contestant. 'To be fair, no one was requesting spelling assistance,' Guy laughed. 'The show does draw an audience of word nerds or people who believe in themselves as spellers, so there is a sense of excitement and frustration that can occur when they're watching a contestant who is so close to approaching a word.' The stand-up comic and TV host attempted to unpack potential underlying motivations that may have pushed the helpful heckler to break that unspoken contract. 'One might be sympathy and that you're wanting to help them. You think "I can get them over the line here",' he theorised. Guy came up with the idea for The Guy Mont Spelling Bee in 2020 during the Covid lockdown in Auckland. He invited some of his comedian friends to join him on a Zoom for the silly spelling contest and uploaded the results to YouTube, creating an informal pilot for a stage show. Joseph Moore came onboard as a co-writer and pitched the idea to ABC, with Aaron Chen attached as a co-host. Guy has previously said the series has developed 'quite an intense fandom,' thanks its rotating roster of top Aussie and Kiwi comedians. Previous guests have included the likes of Melanie Bracewell, Urzila Carlson, Geraldine Hickey, Nazeem Hussain, Demi Lardner, Zoë Coombs Marr, Luke McGregor, Tim Minchin, Rhys Nicholson and Steph Tisdell.
NZ Herald
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- NZ Herald
Guy Montgomery's spelling bee show interrupted by audience heckler
She eventually locked in 'Austria' as her answer, before a heckler in the audience quickly corrected her and yelled out, 'Poland!' The contestants could not believe it. '[That's] absolutely illegal,' host Montgomery said to the audience member, much to the amusement of others in the crowd. Speaking to about the hilarious incident, Montgomery said, 'it was just a moment of, not madness, but something got away from them [the audience member] where they had to pitch in'. He continued: 'The show does draw an audience of word nerds or people who believe in themselves as spellers and there is a sense of excitement and frustration that can occur when they're watching a contestant who's approaching a word or so close to being able to spell it'. When asked if he had any words of advice for future audience members, Montgomery joked: 'Keep your mouth shut! Pull your frickin' head in!' Roll with the punches Whereas most taped TV quiz shows would have edited the moment out, Montgomery was adamant he wanted to leave it in the final episode. 'I like that in the world of the show, we can just sort of roll with that,' he told 'It's like, 'well that is incredibly unusual and kind of funny and I guess builds on the lunacy and the madness of the universe that we're trying to have inside the spelling bee.'' Other contestants As mentioned, Guy Montgomery's Guy Mont-Spelling Bee has featured some of Australia's favourite personalities as contestants. Tim Minchin, Wil Anderson, Urzila Carlson, and Tony Armstrong are just some of the big names who competed in the show's first season. When asked which contestant he was most excited about in the upcoming second season, Montgomery named Hamish Blake. 'I grew up a fan [of his] … he's such an influential Australian television comedy figure.' Others who'll feature in season two include Julia Morris, Rove McManus, Denise Scott, Becky Lucas, Josh Thomas and Dave Hughes. Guy Montgomery's Guy Mont Spelling Bee returns for season two tonight on ABC TV, with all episodes available to stream on ABC iview. –
News.com.au
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- News.com.au
TV quiz show host shocked as audience member yells out answer
A TV quiz show host was visibly shocked when a member of the studio audience yelled out an answer to a contestant. The bizarre moment happened on the hilarious ABC show, Guy Montgomery's Guy Mont-Spelling Bee, which returns to screens tonight, Wednesday June 4 (with all episodes to be available on ABC iView from 8.35pm). The program, hosted by comedian Guy Montgomery, tests the spelling prowess of some of Australia's favourite personalities. But one of the contestants, Chinese comedian He Huang, got a little bit of unexpected help while filming an episode for the soon to be released second season. In the clip, which you can watch in the video player above, Huang was struggling to answer a question about flags. She eventually locked in 'Austria' as her answer, before a heckler in the audience quickly corrected her and yelled out, 'Poland!' The contestants could not believe it … '(That's) absolutely illegal,' host Montgomery said to the audience member, much to the amusement of others in the crowd. Speaking to about the hilarious incident, Montgomery said, 'it was just a moment of, not madness, but something got away from them (the audience member) where they had to pitch in.' He continued, 'The show does draw an audience of word nerds or people who believe in themselves as spellers and there is a sense of excitement and frustration that can occur when they're watching a contestant who's approaching a word or so close to being able to spell it.' When asked if he had any words of advice for future audience members, Montgomery joked, 'Keep your mouth shut! Pull your frickin head in!' Roll with the punches Whereas most taped TV quiz shows would have edited the moment out, Montgomery was adamant he wanted to leave it in the final episode. ' I like that in the world of the show, we can just sort of roll with that,' he told 'It's like, 'well that is incredibly unusual and kind of funny and I guess builds on the lunacy and the madness of the universe that we're trying to have inside the spelling bee.'' Other contestants As mentioned, Guy Montgomery's Guy Mont-Spelling Bee has featured some of Australia's favourite personalities as contestants. Tim Minchin, Wil Anderson, Urzila Carlson, and Tony Armstrong are just some of the big names who competed in the show's first season. When asked which contestant he was most excited about in the upcoming second season, Montgomery named Hamish Blake. 'I grew up a fan (of his) … he's such an influential Australian television comedy figure.' Others who'll feature in season two include Julia Morris, Rove McManus, Denise Scott, Becky Lucas, Josh Thomas and Dave Hughes.
The Guardian
03-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘The fandom is quite intense': Guy Montgomery on the strange success of Guy Mont Spelling Bee
Guy Montgomery was an extremely annoying child. Each night at dinner, he would attempt to get his younger sister to laugh so hard she snorted out her food. One evening, when his parents had friends over, he spent the whole meal pretending to be a South African exchange student. 'My mum was like, 'He's not, he's my son,'' Montgomery says. 'She was chasing me around the table, laughing, and I ran to my bedroom. When she came in later I was asleep.' He once read a joke book out loud all the way from Blenheim to Christchurch, a four-hour trip, telling zingers such as this one: 'How do you keep an ugly monster in suspense?' 'How?' I ask. 'I'll tell you tomorrow,' the now 36-year-old Montgomery says, and I don't know if I'm grinning because it's kind of funny or because he's so obviously delighted. Needling loved ones to the point where they are frustrated but laughing – 'so that the annoyance has no power' – is a comedic styling that has propelled the New Zealand comedian's career and powered his popular game show Guy Montgomery's Guy Mont Spelling Bee, kicking off its second Australian season this week on ABC. The irreverent and absurd show contains various segments that give guests – including Rove McManus, Hannah Gadsby, Hamish Blake and Denise Scott – the chance to tell jokes while failing abysmally at spelling tasks that range from basic to impossible. Montgomery reigns over the resulting chaos like a kind of encyclopedic svengali. 'I describe myself as the protagonist and antagonist of the show,' Montgomery says. 'It's designed to be enjoyable to watch and irritating to take part in.' Raised in Christchurch, Montgomery dipped into standup aged 22 when he was 'idling around' post-bachelor's degree. During the day, he worked as a mascot at agricultural shows, with stints as a popsicle, an orange bull and a peach-flavoured Bundaberg; at night he hit up local comedy clubs. He was already funny by then, he tells me, devoid of the self-effacement Kiwis are known for. 'I was funny basically the whole time,' he says, deadpan. 'I just didn't take it seriously. I got drunk and told a story and it went well, and I did the same thing again and it didn't. I had no control.' Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning He needed to get better, but he didn't want people he knew watching, so he went to Canada – randomly chosen for ease of visa access – and hit the standup circuit in Toronto while working in hospitality, tallying his gigs in the same notebook he wrote his jokes in. 'It was kind of an extreme form of self-discipline,' he says. That's when he started to learn how to get people to laugh. 'When I first started I was just copying Rhys Darby; they were my jokes, but I was in his cadence, and you overlay all of these influences until your own voice emerges,' he says. 'You're not being funny on your terms. You don't necessarily believe in what you're saying because you're just chasing the ability to make people laugh, and that's the addictive feeling. Over time, it goes from saying something you hope the audience will laugh at to saying something you know they'll laugh at.' Returning to New Zealand in 2014, he won the Billy T award for the country's top emerging standup comedian. This led to a series of TV hosting gigs, during which he met and vibed with local comedian Tim Batt. Their podcast together, The Worst Idea of All Time, gave an indication of the kind of cult following Montgomery's comedy inspires, with 350 people filling a New York theatre in 2016 to watch him and Batt talk about Sex and the City 2, a film they had watched every week for a year. Montgomery conceived The Guy Mont Spelling Bee in Auckland during Covid lockdown in 2020, inviting comedian friends and acquaintances – including Ayo Edebiri and Rose Matafeo – to join in on Zoom and stream the results on YouTube. 'I was always intrigued with the idea of spelling bees – there's all the pomp and pageantry,' he says. 'You'd watch the moderators reading out these quite ornate sentences just to get the word in there, and that's a pre-existing joke format.' It spiralled out to a stage show, and in 2023 it was picked up by New Zealand's channel Three, after which Montgomery and co-writer Joseph Moore pitched it to the ABC with comedian Aaron Chen attached as co-host. Montgomery says having two seasons of the New Zealand show under their belt was an advantage, in that producers have mostly left them alone. 'Because it arrived fully formed, it means it's an accurate and total expression of a comedic instinct.' Some returning comedians are invited to help brainstorm new games for the show, but Montgomery and Moore are still the lead writers. The recipe has proven a hit, generating rave reviews and lengthy Reddit threads. 'When people fall in love with the comedy format like this, the fandom is quite intense,' Montgomery says. Sign up to Saved for Later Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips after newsletter promotion Fans often speculate how much work must go into the show's preparation. 'You do drive yourself crazy writing this many jokes,' Montgomery admits. 'But also I love that … I want it to feel like it's brimming or overstuffed, and for people to want to know what the joke [was] for a certain word that we didn't get to say.' The handmade, retro feeling of the set is also intentional, to spark nostalgia and a childlike desire to walk in and touch everything. 'There's a comfort food quality to these shows,' Montgomery says. 'They don't reflect any of the crazy stuff that's happening, it's pure escapism.' This might also account for the intergenerational audience, with kids coming to the show with their grandparents. 'I used to know what my audience demographic looked like but in Australia now it just looks like everyone,' he says. Staff in this Wellington cafe recognise Montgomery because of his partner, the New Zealand actor Chelsie Preston Crayford, who was filming nearby last year. In Australia, people now stop him on the street; audiences for his standup shows have tripled. 'I'm experiencing success,' he says. 'In New Zealand, no one knows or cares.' Initially, that popularity brought on anxiety and a kind of guilt, which he has talked to his therapist about. 'She said: 'You're looking over the ledge of what would happen if it went wrong and you think you're going to fall all the way down, but you've got all these years of practice and experience,' he says. These days, he exudes the quiet confidence of someone who has found not only their calling but their gift: 'What I'm really good at, the means I have of helping the masses, is by being funny.' Season two of Guy Montgomery's Guy Mont Spelling Bee premieres on ABC TV and iView on 4 June. Guy Montgomery is touring Australia through June and July.
