Hannah's Pointless Experience

To be honest, it was a pretty good laugh, and if you’re going to appear on a quiz show it’s always better to find one where you play in pairs or in a team, then at least you’re not the only one who looks silly.

Endemol – the company who produce and cast for Pointless, the show to which we’d applied, also produce Big Brother and Deal Or No Deal, so we felt vaguely smug that we probably weren’t the craziest people that had ever walked through those doors. One of the couples in our audition met on Total Wipeout, and now presumably were doing the round of BBC shows. This is one thing we learnt – some people are quiz show junkies. Once they’ve appeared on one, the lure of the studio lights proves too much and they inevitably return. Probably one of the things that endeared the producers to us was that one of us had never been on television of any kind before, so we were quite green.

Then came the call that we’d been selected to appear on the show, and we headed to the Beeb’s studios for filming day. Everything is planned to the nth degree, all set out for us in a preparation pack that was the size of most political manifestos. The part that everyone immediately skips to is the wardrobe section, i.e. what the hell should I wear, which unfortunately was the part that caused us the most problems. The rules were so restrictive that basically everything apart from red, green and yellow had been ruled out, running the risk of us all looking like traffic lights. The list went as follows: no white (it strobes on camera), no black (it washes you out), no blue or purple (it would blend too much with the set), no stripes (they also strobe on camera), no busy patterns (in fact, no patterns at all) and no logos, no matter how small. For people who know me, one rule in particular caused me serious problems, forcing me to introduce a whole new colour into my wardrobe.

Television and film production mostly consists of waiting around, so we spent the majority of our day at the studio in the green room (it’s not actually green, rather a ‘70s shade of brown) being ‘prepped’ for our recordings. The conversations we had with some of the other couples were enlightening. One woman from Newcastle told me that she’d never seen the show but had applied anyway, and in her spare time she wrote chick lit novels for Mills and Boon. Ironically, given that we were at the BBC, the TV in the green room was stuck on ITV, whose daytime schedule is enough to encourage anyone to go out and find a job. Four out of the five programmes we watched were people sitting around giving their unqualified opinions about the issues of the day, and the other was an antiques programme with David Dickinson. Needless to say we were glad when it was our time to film.

Each couple is given two chances to reach the final, and luckily we were able to film both of our shows on the same day. The producers are constantly restructuring the line-up for each show like a couple arranging the seating plan for their wedding reception, as each show needed to have a delicate balance of genders, ages and ethnic minorities. There’s a lot goes on behind the scenes that you’d never consider.

We had our hair and make-up done, which made us feel a bit like film stars. The lady who did my make-up also does Claudia Winkleman’s, so I feel connected to her through blusher. Walking onto set was nerve-wracking, not least because there was a live studio audience. It’s easy to forget about the cameras when you’re on set, but when there are other people in the room watching, it reminds you that they’re only a fraction of the amount of people who are going to see it when it’s broadcast.

Alexander Armstrong and his “pointless friend” Richard (who’s really tall) came to talk to us before recording began and, although it sounds a cliché, they were both really nice and seemed genuinely interested in us, which is quite a feat given that they must film at least three or four shows a day and therefore meet hundreds of couples a week. The make-up people ran up and threw some more make-up on us just before the cameras rolled and then filming began.

The actual filming was quite fun, but the pressure to think of answers is a lot greater when there’s a whole studio of people watching you and it’s not just you sitting on a sofa at home. Nevertheless we made a pretty good go of it and didn’t disgrace ourselves too much, minus a few humiliations. We came away with our heads held high and, despite not winning any money with which to pay off our student debt, we got to spend a day watching how a television programme is put together. Now we just hope we don’t look stupid when it airs...

We've promised Hannah we won't tell you when her episodes air, but Pointless airs every weekday at 4.30pm on BBC2 and is always worth checking out!

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