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Daily Mail
21-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE I took on Bridge Of Lies and was left red-faced by a mortifyingly simple blunder - there's a reason the quiz is NOT as easy as it looks
Sat on the couch with a bag of popcorn and a glass of wine in hand, I have often dubbed myself a confident TV quiz player. But during a behind-the-scenes visit to the set of Bridge Of Lies, hosted by Ross Kemp, I was quickly served a slice of humble pie. As I routinely sit and shout answers - usually the right ones - at the telly box, I have admittedly been left in disbelief by some simple answers the public gets wrong. And after watching the filming of an upcoming celebrity episode, I was in a frenzy when well-established music icons couldn't spout simple trivia about the UK top 40s. In hindsight, this should have been my first clue that when you are put face-to-face with Ross in the studio, your confidence, knowledge and ability to think simply wash away. But no, after I watch the fabulous group of celebs barely get through with some cash, I still felt confident as ever ahead of my turn on the bridge. But during a behind-the-scenes visit to the set of Bridge Of Lies, hosted by Ross Kemp , I was quickly served a slice of humble pie For the fan-favorite game show, I was put in a team of five to complete the final bridge. I stood along the railings as I watched my first two fellow competitors take on the wave - and all was plain sailing until we got to the third row. Faced with three lies and one truth, we were given four statements: 'Singer Dionne Warwick was born in Warwick', 'the poop deck is located at the rear of a ship', 'adults have more canines than incisor teeth' and 'the Madagascar character King Julien is a flying squirrel'. Our first teammate chose option four and was sent off the bridge to make way for our third contender. By now, I would usually be screaming at the TV, begging people to use their common sense. But instead, I felt like a deer in headlights. I stood still and quietly suggested to my remaining team mates that the answer was the boat. My third teammate chose option three and was also sent packing. After Ross called me up, I no longer felt like a deer in headlights, but more like a domestic cat on a rubber dingy. As I stood under the studio lights opposite the documentary creator, my legs started to buckle as I waited to be called. Thankful to be wearing a long dress, I could feel my knees shaking away as I nervously crossed the brightly-lit stage. Contemplating my decisions, I questioned where I ever got the audacity to shout at the TV for the last ten years. Feeling a glimmer of assurance, I told Ross I was going with my gut feeling about the boat statement. Alas, the team moved on, and I soon moved on to the next level, which I passed with ease. But, it was the fifth row that really caught me out and it really shouldn't have. I was faced with four statements, 'the all-time best-selling film soundtrack is 'Dirty Dancing', 'a cryptograph measures Bitcoin value', 'bats have belly buttons' and Lenny Henry found fame on Opportunity Knocks'. Feeling the pressure, my team and I ran through each option. With my fellow teammates collaborating answers and the wave quickly coming down, I ran to the final choice. As I walked over to the glaringly-obvious wrong choice, I asked myself, 'have I seen a bat with a bellybutton?' To be transparent I have never seen a bat in person - and I don't recall ever seeing a movie, other than Scooby-Doo, that featured one either. So why I used this as my reference point of knowledge, I have no idea, clearly common sense had deserted me. To clarify, a bat is a mammal and does not lay eggs, so it obviously has a belly button— this is primary school knowledge, if not nursery. It is safe to say I was utterly embarrassed and I hung my head in shame. In fact, I was so ashamed that I couldn't even look Ross in the eye. I must admit that the whole experience was exhilarating, but it is impossible to think when Ross lifts an eyebrow and smirks at you while your wrack your brain. After narrowing down the options from four to three, our fourth teammate tackled the question - but also got it wrong. If this were a traditional game, our team would have gone home with no money, no victory and no glory. But we had a fifth contestant who was given a 50/50 chance and thankfully chose the bat option. before going on to answer the final answer correctly. After the very humbling experience on Bridge of Lies, I think I will be sitting quietly sipping a cup of tea with a biscuit in the future. It is not, I repeat, NOT as easy as it looks and I will forever remember that bats have a belly button... useful information, I'm sure.
Telegraph
13-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Johnny Ball on Playschool: ‘I dropkicked Humpty through the round window'
'Last night, somebody in the pub told me I'd changed their life.' Apparently this sort of thing happens to Johnny Ball frequently, but perhaps it's no surprise. For three decades, the presenter was one of the most recognisable faces on children's TV, charming toddlers on Play School, and then breaking new boundaries by bringing maths and science to a wide audience on shows such as Think of a Number and Think Again. But as his new memoir My Previous Life In Comedy explains, it could have all been very different. Ball was a stand-up comedian for 17 years, before finding his niche in the nation's living rooms. Ball tells me he inherited his sense of humour from his dad. 'He was a comic, but he never had a chance in life, he never even had a car. I couldn't think of any better career than making people happy, which in a way is what I've always done.' Chatty and energetic, Ball, 86, welcomes me into the cheerful sitting room of his large Buckinghamshire home of 46 years, where his wife Di is sitting in on the conversation just in case he says something he shouldn't. 'We call her the manager,' he quips. Two dogs tumble about, while photos of his family – three children (including, of course, presenter Zoe Ball) and six grandchildren – line every surface. Despite a lack of money, Ball says his childhood was happy. He was an academically engaged child, pouring over encyclopaedias and, unsurprisingly, a whizz at maths (although he only got 2 O-levels), before joining De Havilland Aircraft Corporation where he shone in accounts and then spent three years in the RAF as a radar operator. Following a stint as a Red Coat at Butlins in Pwllheli, he tried to launch a career in comedy. 'I was very shy. So, for my opening, I used to come on shaking a paper bag – 'bag of nerves' – and it always got a laugh,' he says. He was invited to appear on the BBC talent show Opportunity Knocks several times, but always turned it down. So instead he toiled away in a world of sticky-floored clubs, watching the likes of Bob Monkhouse ('The best technician in the world') and Frankie Howerd, learning the tricks of comedy. He also compered shows by the Rolling Stones and Dusty Springfield ('Fabulous, a tomboy'), and worked at big venues of the day including the City Varieties in Leeds. 'A sh–thole,' he mouths. Indeed his was a Zelig-like existence saw him rub shoulders over the years with stars including Matt Monro, John Profumo, Val Doonican, Bud Flanagan, Muhammed Ali, the Duke Of Edinburgh ('I told him I had a crush on his wife'), Scott Walker and Freddie Starr. Starr, he says, was 'anti-social but sheer genius. He was trying to get Brian Epstein to sign him, but he didn't want to know. Two years later I gave him my agent's number – and bang!' Ball himself, however, still wasn't getting the breaks. Was it bad timing, bad luck or bad agents? 'I always blame the agents,' he says. 'I always ended up at loggerheads with them. It's a very up and down life.' And then, in 1967, he was offered a job on the relatively new Play School at the BBC. 'At first, I didn't take to it. They said, 'You're brilliant but when you're doing something you think is beneath you, you're terrible. So do you want this or not?' The money wasn't great but was keeping me out of the rougher clubs.' And what about those toys – Big Ted, Little Ted, Humpty, et al? 'We were never irreverent on screen, but as soon as it was a wrap I'd dropkick Humpty through the round window.' He was also writing and starring in other BBC Children's shows such as Cabbages And Kings and Play Away, but off-screen, life was tricky. Ball had married Julie Anderson, nine years his junior, and in 1970 they had Zoe. But he was travelling all over the place for work and cracks were beginning to appear in the relationship. While doing a summer season in Blackpool in 1973, a fortune teller told him there were two women in his life. He rubbished it then, 45 minutes later, met Di. 'Then I went home, and my wife told me she was leaving me,' he says. 'But the marriage was totally dead in the water anyway. I was really half a person. It was a clean break, there was no animosity. But I'd met Di and I knew she was very special.' At this point in the mid 1970s, Ball had to endure both personal and professional upheaval. He called time on his stand-up career and started to think big. 'I didn't enjoy being in other people's shows, I wanted my own.' Did he think he'd failed? 'No, I feel circumstances failed me. I got the mucky end of the stick. And then I had to think again. So I started writing…' Then came the big successes: Think Of A Number, Johnny Ball Reveals All and Knowhow, each demystifying maths and science with Ball's warmth and slight zaniness offsetting the sometimes complex subject matter. His own children – broadcaster and presenter Zoe, Nick, who works in the arts, and Dan, a structural engineer – were no great shakes at maths. Regardless, Zoe became one of Britain's (and the BBC's) highest-paid stars, which he says he could never have predicted. As her career began to flourish, he explains that: 'People started saying things like, 'Isn't your Zoe lovely?', and it seemed to be more marked than just casual. She's a great broadcaster, and the girl is still going full tilt.' He doesn't agree with what's happened to children's TV, now a fragmented digital force, and victim of horrific budgetary cuts, although a cough from Di shuts down any expansion on that. Despite the BBC's denuded children's coverage, he says that the Corporation still has a place in his heart. 'It's worth its weight in gold,' he says. 'It's a stabilising influence on society. I've got so much trust and faith in the BBC, and it's got to be supported.' Ball has found himself at the heart of several controversies. There was the knotty incident in Strictly Come Dancing in 2012 when his professional partner Aliona Vilani withdrew after an injury which, in a subsequent interview, Ball said was faked which Vilani then denied. Now, Ball will only say that he shouldn't have left the show when he did. At around the same time, he was also accused in some quarters of climate change denial after questioning the theory of man-made climate change. He later said that he had been turned into a 'global-warming heretic'. Today Ball seems, if not exactly mellow, then contented. 'When you're happy within yourself, then you're capable of anything,' he says. 'But you've got to strive to get it right, because when you do, you can't imagine what it was ever like being wrong.'
