Why ‘Have you had a lovely day?’

The six words ‘have you had a lovely day?’ are the cover-all for a consummate game show host.

It doesn’t matter if there have been technical problems on the set, it doesn’t matter if the contestant’s not even leaving with their bus fare home (BFH), it doesn’t matter if they made a complete arse of themselves on national television. Just ask: “Have you had a lovely day?” and the contestant will smile sweetly and say yes.

Because, at the end of the day, they have had a lovely day. A chance to Appear On TV, a chance to Meet A Well Known Television Star Of The Day, a Free Trip To London. The great unwashed should be fucking grateful for this, frankly. Yes, game shows could indeed be that patronising and insincere.

Well Steve, you’re not going home with any prizes, your friends, family and colleagues are going to put this tape on every Christmas and rip the piss out of you mercilessly and your car has just been impounded outside – but have you had a lovely day?

The late, great Bob Monkhouse once said that “the secret to show business is sincerity. Once you’ve faked that, you’ve got it made.”

Monkhouse once told of a frightening practice employed by a well known, unnamed American game show host to control excitable contestants down, known as the ‘mouth tear.’ If the contestant was talking too much, the host would put his thumb into their mouth and pull.

On camera, it looked like the genial, sincere host, was just putting a comforting hand on the contestant’s shoulder. In reality, it’s a different story altogether. Some hosts wouldn’t even bother with the pretence. Fred Dinenage, in his idiosyncratic role of hosting Gambit, would simply tell contestants to stop talking.

“You’ve got to sympathise without patronising them – and it’s a terribly difficult thing to do.” – Bob Holness

What a shame, sometimes things don’t go your way. Still you’ve had a lovely day, and you’ll stay for a drink afterwards, won’t you?

Stories abound of peculiar happenings at game show tapings, from having ‘minders’ who follow contestants everywhere – including the toilet – to drunken debauchery and sex games on the student sets of Blockbusters, to one poor chap on a Fifteen to One audition who was never nominated by the other contestants in a mock run-through, prompting the host to say in a less-than-surreptitous manner ‘ask number 15′.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Bullseye was a wonderful source of bizarre anecdotes, as Jim Bowen often recounted on the after-dinner circuit. In one edition, an Irish duo had won the grand sum of £10 in the first round and got knocked out, spending the rest of the episode drowning their sorrows in the studio bar and not realising they might be called back for the gamble if the other couples declined it – which they did..

Noticeably inebriated, they returned only to tell Jim that they’d had a lovely day, but wanted to take the money. £10. After Jim reminded them that a) if there was no gamble there would be no show, and b) they’d probably spent far more than their winnings at the bar anyway, they went for it – and won the top prize, pissed out of their skulls.

With contestants like that, it’s not a surprise that Bullseye stretched things a bit. Famously, it was later revealed that there were two top prizes round the back for the final – a speedboat if the contestants won, and a car if they lost.

“For some unaccountable reason, it ran for 14 years. And at the end of 14 years, the joyous thing about it was that it was still crap. The difference was we drove home in a Bentley, and bollocks to ‘em.” – Jim Bowen, 2001.

So close, but here’s what you could have won. Have you had a lovely day?

Having said all that, most gameshows are designed so that contestants who perform terribly at least get something for their troubles. The Bendy Bullies on Bullseye, Dusty Bin on 3-2-1, and the infamous Blankety Blank chequebook and pen.

Indeed, some hosts will try the boundaries of their producers’ patience to ensure this would be the case. Michael Barrymore was famous for it on Strike it Lucky, hitting a few buttons himself for losing couples, or waving contestants through in the charity end games even after they’d hit too many Hot Spots.

But sometimes even the best will in the world won’t work – and so back to Fred Dinenage. He once recounted the story of an episode of Gambit where a couple just couldn’t get a question right. To use a card term, he rigged the deck – scouring the set of questions for the easiest one so they could at least win something. He found what he thought was the easiest one. Unmissable.

“What vegatable helps you see in the dark?” he confidently asked.
“A banana” came the reply.

But have you had a lovely day?