WITH the sparkling lights, star hosts and endless new formats, it’s easy to forget that at the heart of a TV game show is a quiz.
This means questions, answers and a winner — and many have huge prizes up for grabs, while others seem almost too easy.
But now boffins have deduced the simplest, the most lucrative and the best-avoided quiz shows out there.
If being crowned champ is the name of your game, then apply for Ben Shephard’s Tipping Point.
A study found there is a 93 per cent chance of taking home cash, with average winnings of £4,172, on the ITV show, which is based around a classic penny arcade game.
But you’ll need to be a brainiac to leave lucky on Channel 5’s Eggheads — where just nine per cent of teams are successful.
Jeremy Vine’s show, which aired on the BBC for 18 years before moving last October, has always bragged about its formidable quiz team.
So if you are in it for the money, then don’t look to Alexander Armstrong’s Pointless.
The BBC One programme has the lowest average winnings at £2,825, according to the study by mathematicians at Gala Bingo.
Instead, head to The Chase for the big bucks.
The average winnings on Bradley Walsh’s show are a whopping £21,924 — more than double the average handed out on Eggheads at £9,364.
Bradley also oversaw the largest single win of the four big shows analysed — The Chase, Eggheads, Pointless and Tipping Point — when Eden beat new Chaser Darragh Ennis in August 2021.
The 20-year-old answered 18 questions correctly to take home £75,000.
Sara Jolly of Gala Bingo said: “We’ve all watched quiz shows and fancied our chances at winning some money, and now we know which to enter for our biggest chance of success.”
The data may have suggested Eggheads is the hardest show, but the quiz team have been beaten by amateurs three times in recent weeks.
Last Wednesday, the professionals could not say which member of the Kardashian family had dated basketball star Tristan Thompson.
Even I know that’s Khloe!
PAMELA Anderson might look like she’s in the pink but viewers will see all is not well when the final episode of Disney+ biopic Pam & Tommy screens today.
The action sees a pregnant Pamela, played by Lily James, audition for a role in hit film Basic Instinct.
But the raunchy sex tape scandal scuppers her chances yet again.
The news feels like the final straw and Pammy packs to leave – until husband Tommy Lee, played by Sebastian Stan, persuades her to take a trip with him to Las Vegas.
But she later finds rocker Tommy downstairs in a casino bragging about the tape to some drunks.
Find out how the story ends today on Disney+.
BY now you’d think we’d have learnt everything about fat Britain.
But a new programme on the UK’s rise in obesity will this week shock once more.
Steven Mitchell is a coffin-maker who has earned a stack of cash creating supersized caskets and burial plots for obese corpses.
In Michael Mosley: Who Made Britain Fat?, Steven reveals that his company’s XL package – which costs £500 extra – now makes up 20 per cent of his orders.
Steve said: “When I’m speaking to people now, quite often the widest part of the person is no longer the shoulders, it’s their waist.”
Watch tonight on Channel 4 at 9pm.
NEVER let it be said that Lorraine Kelly doesn’t land the A-list guests.
On today’s Lorraine, she will share a pre-recorded chat with Hollywood actor Ryan Reynolds.
She asks about Wrexham FC, the Welsh football team he co-owns with fellow US actor Rob McElhenney.
Lorraine jokes: “You’ve brought glamour and excitement to football.”
Ryan replies: “Wrexham had its own unique brand of glamour and excitement before I got there.
“Football has been both the best and the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.
“I understand the beautiful game as much as I can understand it at this stage and it’s a unique brand of gorgeous torture. I love it with all my heart and it also breaks my heart on a regular basis.”
Watch the chat today on Lorraine from 9am on ITV.
VIEWERS will be taken from Patagonia’s frozen Andes to the plains of Zambia and beyond in BBC One’s Dynasties II.
This second series of the nature show features some lesser-seen heroes of the animal world, including the puma and the hyena, when it returns on March 20 at 8pm.
YOU will soon be seeing a lot more of Great British Pottery Throw Down presenter Ellie Taylor.
Channel 4 has signed the comedian to host two new entertainment programmes.
One is quiz show You Won’t Believe This, which combines aspects of Would I Lie To You? with Line Of Duty – yes, really.
Members of the public will hear unbelievable stories as “suspects” are put through police interrogations.
The second show, Let’s Make A Love Scene, will see singletons act out a famous moment from a romcom to see if their on-screen chemistry turns into real love.
Ellie said: “I jumped at the chance of getting involved.”
CLAUDE Littner had to bow out of The Apprentice when he was laid up after a nasty bike accident, but will return for the series finale on March 17.
And he says what he misses most is fans saying hello, adding: “Even if I may come across as a bit mean, I get a lot of pleasure meeting people.”
