Nice to see you, to see you ... well it would be nice to see you if you weren't so thick! You two been together long?  That long?  Looking at her, they should give you a bloody medal mate ha ha!  Have you seen what I'm married to?  And me with a chin like this! That's because I'm a game show host and you're a ... sorry, what did you say you did for a living again?  Something shit and insignificant I seem to remember?  Loser!

Ah game shows, who'd be a contestant on one?  You're humiliated, have the piss taken out of you something rotten, and are made to look like a complete moron!

The hosts are wisecracking smart-alec comedians (or in the case of Ted Rogers - maybe not - but most are.)  Oh yes, you'd think they were the fucking Brain of Britain!  The Brain of Britain?  Jimmy Tarbuck?  Les Dennis?  Max Bygraves?  Ted fucking Rogers?  Oh aye - IQ of at least 2!

So here are TVCO's favourite game shows from over the years, the game shows that we love, because they're an institution, and a great deal of the participants belong in one!

Mr and Mrs ITV  -  70s,80s

Who can forget that nice Derek Batey (hey think about it - when he was younger he'd be Master Batey!) and those nice married contestants who knew bugger all about each other, as it turns out.

One of the couple would be led off into a soundproof booth and put on some headphones while the other would be asked a series of questions about the other's favourite things i.e.: favourite colour of socks or something equally trivial, then the other would be brought out to try to duplicate the answers so they'd win stuff.

The most puke-inducing thing about it was the theme song: 'Mr and Mrs, be nice to each other ...' excuse me while I empty the contents of my stomach!

321 ITV  -  70s,80s

Who can forget Ted Rogers and Dusty Bin, Ted's clever finger flicking (ooh-er - not that kind missus!) and the clues in rhyme that were bloody undecipherable!  Couples had to guess the clues read to them by the crap cabaret guests they had on, and then have to choose which objects to reject, if they rejected the wrong ones they missed out on a great prize such as a dream holiday to the South Caribbean.  If you lost you won a small replica of the shows mascot Dusty Bin.

Highlight of the shows cabaret turns was the obligatory dance routine performed by the in-house dancers, The Brian Rogers Connection, or later, Lipstick and The Gentle Secs (with names like the last two you'd expect Hot Gossip, but what you got was more like the Lionel Blair Dancers!)

After three clues, a tiebreaker question was read out and the winning couple would go on to receive a further two more objects, attached to which were two more baffling clues!

Family Fortunes ITV  -  80s - present

(Host Knickerless Parsons with some knickerless ladies!)

And now from Norwich (ha, not exactly Las Vegas is it?) it's the quiz of the week!

And back then it was (mainly because it didn't have much competition!) Introduced by Knickerless Parsons or whatever his name was, who would later develop a fetish for wearing women's tights and appear in the stage version of the Rocky Horror Picture Show!

John Benson the announcer always stole the show though, and they had a bloke who used to play with his organ when the prizes were revealed (I bet that wasn't just all that was revealed eh!) Blokes playing with their organs? Clergymen without their panties? What kind of family show was this!

Pets Win Prizes ITV  -  90s

Originally presented by Danny Baker, then later Dale Winton.

Owners bring in their pets to participate in games of skill, and would you believe on one occasion snail racing, it was slow but - hey, we have the whole show to fill! They had an animal expert called Terry Nutkins (oo-er missus - his wife wouldn't need a pet name for him in their intimate moments, she'd just call him by his surname!) Every time a game was won, the owner would pick from two envelopes, in one of them was a prize for themselves and in the other was be a prize for the pet.

In the final for the winners it was ready on your buzzers for a quick -ire quiz (or in the case of the snails owner a slow-fire round - geddit?) Every time an owner got one right their cardboard cut out animal would move forward on a racetrack (wow - the excitement!) The winner being the first one at the finish or the person nearest after three minutes. Their overall prize was decided by a cat, The Professor. There was this board with six different sections on it, six different prizes, you see? One could be £1000 or a holiday in foreign climes, others would be crap like some shitty animal encyclopaedias, or a pet portrait! The cat would be placed on the board and wherever her front paws were at the end of thirty seconds - that would be the prize the owner won. The contestants could coax the Professor in any way they wanted, but they couldn't actually touch her. .

Show lowlight: One pet one week was a tarantula and Dale Winton was egged on by the audience to pick it up to much hilarity, ho ho!

Bullseye ITV  -  80s

Super, smashing, great ... load of bollocks!

You can't beat a bit of bully! So said the hilarious host of this darts orientated game show, Jim Bowen. Jimbo had done the rounds of the workingmen's clubs around Britain, and appeared on The Comedians. This was his first stint at hosting a TV show.

In it three pairs of contestants (consisting of an amateur darts player and a non-darts player - usually the cross-eyed niece!) would compete in three rounds.

The rounds would consist of darts playing and answering questions etc etc blah de blah!

The consolation prizes were a toy version of the show's Bully mascot, darts and tankards (wow - tankards!)

Bowen is famous for saying the immortal: 'So let's take a look at what you would have won,' just to piss of the incompetent contestants good and proper, then we'd see exactly that: the speedboat, the car, the holiday, the ... er ... caravan!

The Generation Game BBC  -  70s-90s

Three generations of presenters presented this family game of incompetence (as that whet the contests usually were - they made right arseholes of themselves! The first to present the show was Bruce Forsyth, who formed most of his catchphrases at this time: 'Let's look at the old scoreboard,' and, 'Didn't she do well,' and, 'Give us a shag afterwards Anthea!' Yes Bruce was married to Anthea Redfern, a woman young enough to be his daughter's daughter! Bruce has always attracted the young ladies (a bit like an aging Rod Stewart - but with out the leopard skin trousers!) Must have an enormous nob we think, to always get the young ladies!

The contestants would watch someone make clay vases or something and then have to do it themselves, to much hilarity. And at the end they would have to enact a play with the words written on cue cards to read, and then of course at the very end of the show was that great institution (no not us catching sight of Brucie's chin) the conveyor belt. Where contestants would have to sit behind a conveyor belt and watch a number of desirable prizes, such as a rotissomat, lawnmower and cuddly toy, whiz past and then have to try to remember as many as possible and whatever they remembered they got to keep. This was a lie anyway, as when you saw what they'd won at the end, everything that had been on the conveyor belt seemed to be there!

After Bruce Forsyth came Larry Grayson, who had his own camp style and catchphrases such as: 'Shut that door,' and, 'What a lot youve got,' (the joke was that he was gay, and that was hilarious in the 70s!)

After this Jim Davidson resurrected the format and introduced it in his own chirpy cockernee comic way, but is hardly worth mentioning, as we hate the Tory supporting tosspot!!

Now let's look at what you could have bedded, if you'd been Bruce Forsyth ...

(Wow!! - Bruce Forsyth used to be married to this?!!)

The Price is Right  ITV  -  90s

What were the contestants of this Leslie Crowther hosted game show on? I guess they gave the entire audience E's before they went on air! They really wet themselves when old Lezzer told them to: 'Come on down!'

The game was all about guessing the price of different prizes, if they got the price right (hey - clever!) they won it, if they didn't, they ... er ... didn't.

Four lucky people are picked at random from the audience and invited to, 'Come on down!' They'd line up on Contestant's Row and try to guess the price of stuff.

Some involved a bit more than just guessing the price though, such as the "Hole in One" bit, where they have to putt golf balls into the hole, every time they guessed a price correctly they could move closer to the hole.

The audience's enthusiasm was the subject of much discussion and ridicule, cries of where they plied with booze before air where shouted!

Bruce Forsyth took over from Leslie Crowther later on..

Catchphrase  ITV  -  80s,90s

'Say what you see,' and, 'It's a good answer but its not right.'  We love the original with Roy Walker, of this "duh, they're so dim why don't they know the fucking answer" teatime quiz! The catchphrases where so blindingly obvious and the contestants so unbelievably thick, that you wondered where they got them from. The look on Roy Walker's face when most of the answer was revealed and they still weren't guessing it even though a child of five would know, makes it obvious what he was thinking ('You thick twat!')

Ran for years and years, and the dimwits came in their droves and went away in droves, after making themselves look like right pratts!

Julian Clary's Sticky Moments  Channel 4  -  90s

The audience gave him a big hand on his entrance, somehow that was funny; as everyone pissed themselves every time he said it. The master (or the mistress - we're not quite sure) of the double entendre and the bloke who fisted former chancellor Norman Lamont backstage at the British Comedy Awards. Guests would cue up to be humiliated and insulted by the witty camp pouf!

You can wear a joke thin and Julian proved this as he stretched it into infinity on this Channel Four game show (well you didn't think this crap was on any other channel did You?)

Celebrity Squares / Blankety Blank   ITV and BBC respectively  -  70s,80s

Celebrity Squares was a similar format to Blankety Blank, well ... exactly the same format to Blankety Blank actually, or almost. Nine celebrity guests sat in a huge grid of squares and the contestants would ask them to help them with the questions, the dim celebrity guests who usually consisted of the same celebrity guests as Blankety Blank, i.e. Mollie Sugden (with her usual pussy jokes) John Inman, Frank Carson etc.would often get the questions wrong and the look on the contestants faces said it all ('You stupid overpaid celebrity has been wanker!') Luckily Bob Monkhouse hosted it so it wasn't all bad, just mostly!

Blankety ;Blank the BBC's late rival (i.e. rip off!) was hosted by none other than Terry Wogan, probably because no one other than Wogan would have hosted it. It was revived later by Lilly Savage, but of course a pouf in a dress could never equal the professionalism and Irish charm of our Tezza now could they?

Winner Takes All  ITV  -  80s

Tarby's finest hour (well - a very long half hour!) The lovable sharp-witted cheeky scouser hosted this show in the early 80s, Ho-oh!

Geoffrey Wheeler was the voice (a bit like the voice of the balls on the lottery - well Wheeler was the voice of this balls!) that would read out the questions, answers and commentate on the progress of the contestants, and Tarby would take the piss out of him in his usual Tarby way, ho-oh!.

The grand prize of £1,000 (wow!) was displayed to the winning contestant in one thousand one-pound notes in a briefcase (Tarby probably earned ... ooh ... twice as much as that for each show!)

Geoffrey Wheeler took over hosting the show when they'd had enough of Tarby, and then things went from bad to worse in the 90s when Bobby Davro took over!

Wheel of Fortune   ITV  -  90s

(Carol Smilie shows off her knockers!)

Nicky Campbell was the original host and former model (and yes we've seen those photos!) Carol Smilie (phwoar!) the hostess, who would uncover the letters and bring the contestants on, etc! Jenny Powell would take over from Carol when Carol got too big for this crap, and it would be later hosted by Bradley Walsh and Ulrika's friend, John Leslie!

You know the game, you had to guess the words or phrases that were slowly uncovered on the board and spin the wheel (the Wheel of Fortune - you see what they've done there?) to decide the number of points youd play for.

The lucky contestant would win £20,000, or a car, depending which envelope they opened (ah but that was in he days when it wasn't on at peak time, later the prize money would drop to a measly 2000 quid!)