Spanish Practices - Real Life in Spain
Society & Culture:Documentary
Today Quiz and Crazies
Day Thirty two of the Spanish Lockdown, the sometimes amusing, diary of a Brit in southern Spain under the 'Alarma' - normal life has stopped.
To find out more: https://www.thesecretspain.com
Day 32 Quiz and crazies
It is day 32 of our Spanish lockdown, three good legs cat managed to have at least a couple of his fits before breakfast. They have the look of an epileptic fit but are caused by him catching the painful part of his hip.
Last night we watched a great deal of television, we don’t usually binge watch anything. We caught a bit of Paul O’Grady looking after some poor sick dog that seemed to have a similar problem to three good legs cat. The dog had an operation to remove the piece of hip that was causing him pain, and was much better.
Normally we would go to the vet and sort out an operation, but only emergency visits to the vet are allowed and our neighbour Lena was stopped by the Guardia taking her dog to the vet as she went to the vet in Almuñecar which isn’t our local town. So the cat will have to wait to restrictions are lifted enough to get him to the vet.. it is a daily worry though.
The ITV drama “Quiz” was on, fascinating and well produced, it told the story of the Major and the coughing cheat that might have won him a million pounds on Millionaire back in 2001.
It did remind us both of the days on radio when we wrote quizzes. I must have written at least ten thousand questions over the year we did a daily quiz. The cheats, the quiz crazies and the downright stupid took part. It was a hard job to research the questions, get the mix right of different types of questions on a wide variety of subjects.
Contestants had to answer as many questions over sixty seconds as they could, highest score went on to a £100,000 prize live in the studio. The prize was insured by one of those game companies. It consisted of 300 envelopes and the contestant had to think of a number and that numbered envelope would be opened with a one in three hundred chance of winning.
On one particular evening we had a listener who had done very well and was through to the final. I greeted him at reception took him upstairs to the studios, got him coffee and ran through the process with him. We also videoed the whole thing for security and to use on the, then new social media of YouTube.
We encouraged contestants to talk over their decision making process, he had two choices in mind, number 32 which was the door number of his childhood home and number 24 his girlfriend’s lucky number.
In the end he chose 32 – he opened the envelope and bad luck no prize. The Host, the lovely Gary King said “Why don’t you open envelope number 24, your girlfriends lucky number.”
He tore the envelope open and just stared at it. I was behind the glass watching and notice him go ashen grey and start to sway. He was quite a big guy and the thought of him passing out under the studio table was quite a worry.
“Are you OK?” said Gary, the guy pushed the paper over to him .. it read congratulations you have won £100,000.
It made great radio, we went to an ad break and I had to physically help him out the studio by now he was a mass of sweat, I got someone to get him some water.
I felt terrible, this poor guy, I knew our Programme Director would be thrilled because it was such good radio. But in the process, we had pretty much ruined this man’s life.
I asked the crumpled wreck that was now sitting in the sofa if he wanted anything. He murmured “need a drink, need a drink.”
“Here you go.” I said passing him the water.
“No I need a f**** drink, C**** she will kill me, what am I going to do?” he started whimpering.
“I will get you a car and you can go anywhere you want in London and drown your sorrows.” ..more whimpering but he nodded his head. I called Lewis Day, “get me a cab asap.” Within five minutes a Mercedes was waiting outside. I helped him into the cab… and never saw the poor chap ever again.
Looking back I should have felt bad for him, but over the months we had, had some hideous contestants who frankly ruined my baby. It was my mechanic.. the rules of the quiz, and I received a constant barrage of Emails from listeners correcting, usually wrongly, the answers on the card.
It was a real insight into the dark world of the quizzers.
Day 32 and I haven’t achieved that much, despite sitting here at the computer all day. I have managed to listen to The Ryan Pyle Podcast our new clients work, he is a very interesting man who spends his life as a nomad; extreme trekking around the world.. well nomadic except for a BBC TV film crew in tow with him.
I am really looking forward to working with him, he is stuck in a hotel room in Istanbul at the moment trying not to go too crazy.
I spoke to our lovely Spanish neighbour this morning, shouting from our garden to her window, she says. “The kids are going crazy, they go from running around to total boredom, I don’t know what to do.”
It is sending us all crazy but if the world can hold its breath just a bit longer we can at least prevent the health services collapsing. In the short term drugs that can help treat the virus are starting to be trialled and maybe we are only a year or so away from a vaccine.. before we all go crazy.
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