It wasn’t broke — so why fix it?

IN the words of TV junkie Jim Royle — it’s “the best gameshow, bar none.”

The agonising intrigue . . . toil, drama and suspense. More twists and turns than a slalom skier on the piste. That’s exactly where whoever devised new “Millionaire” must have been as ITV’s flagship big money quiz limbered up for a long-awaited comeback, only to take a decidedly downward slope.

Years of flawlessness and a spellbinding format has spanned the globe and brought untold riches for Chris Tarrant and the team.

But the think-outside-the-box bods behind the big computer at “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” HQ saw fit to take on the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mantra and said — we don’t want to give you that. They clearly didn’t ask the audience.

Couch potato Jim was spot-on as “The Royle Family” tuned in to what was a new concept in TV quiz programming all those years ago. When “Tiswas” Tarrant burst on to our screens in his new guise as quiz master extraordinaire back in 1998, “Millionaire” was what everyone watched. You just did.

But time has caught up with the show that made ITV — and the clock’s ticking in more ways than one.

Everything is so rushed. A visible 15-second stop-watch to answer the first few gimmes, upped to 30 seconds for the tricky ones, almost makes “Countdown” look contemporary.

Add to that the chance of a new lifeline at £50,000 and all of a sudden this once-indestructible brand has been rendered impotent quicker than you can say fastest finger first.

Anonymous phone-a-friends at the other end of the line now have faces, draining the romance still further in a speed-dating sort of swirl. The show’s looking dead and buried. Chances of making the next lifeline? I’d say 50-50 at best.


Soap roar: Barmaid Shirley asked battered Peggy what she’d done to her face in “EastEnders”. “Walked into a door,” said Peg. “I’ve walked into a few of those,” came the response. And with a boat like Shirl’s, not many would doubt it.


Soap bore: Blimey, does John Stape know how to tell the odd porky. In fact, asking Corrie’s resident body-snatcher if he knows anything about telling fibs is like asking Branston’s if they’ve ever heard of pickle . . . exactly what Stape is in, up to his neck after doing away with Colin Fishwick.