Take Your Pick!

This article is about the game show. For the album, see Take Your Pick (album).

Take Your Pick!
Genre	Game show
Created by	Michael Miles
Presented by	Michael Miles (1955–1968) Des O'Connor (1992–99)
Starring	Jodie Wilson (1992) Gillian Blakeney and Gayle Blakeney (1994) Sarah Matravers (1996) Sasha Lawrence (1998-99)
Voices of	Bob Danvers-Walker (1955–1968) John Sachs (1992) Steve Jones (1994–99)
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language	English
No. of series	13 (Associated-Rediffusion) 5 (Thames)
No. of episodes	494 (Associated-Rediffusion) 74 (Thames)
Production
Running time	30 minutes (inc. adverts)
Production companies	Associated-Rediffusion (1955–1968) Thames Television (1992–1999)
Original release
Network	ITV
Release	23 September 1955 (1955-09-23) – 23 December 1999 (1999-12-23)

Take Your Pick! is a United Kingdom game show originally broadcast by Radio Luxembourg starting in 1952. The show was moved to television in 1955 with the launch of ITV, where it continued until 1968. It was the first game show broadcast in the UK to offer cash prizes.

The programme was later revived from 24 February 1992 to 23 December 1999. The show featured female assistants to accompany Des O' Connor. They were Jodie Wilson in the first two of the revived series, then Gillian Blakeney and Gayle Blakeney in 1994, followed by Sarah Matravers (1996) and Sasha Lawrence in 1998.

History

Take Your Pick! host Michael Miles.

The first version of the television show was produced by Associated-Rediffusion (later Rediffusion London), while the revival was made by Thames Television, whose arrival as the new London weekday ITV company had led to the demise of the original show.

During the gameplay, contestants would answer a series of questions without using the words yes or no in what was known as the "Yes-No Interlude". If they failed to answer all the questions, they would subsequently be gonged off the stage. If successful, however, contestants would answer more questions to win modest monetary prizes. At the climax of the show, contestants would be offered the choice of whether to "take the money" (take all money they had earned so far) or "open the box", which could contain good prizes such as a holiday or a washing machine. It could also contain booby prizes such as a mousetrap or a bag of sweets.

The first version was hosted by Michael Miles. After its demise, Miles hosted a similar show for Southern Television called Wheel of Fortune, not to be confused with the later Wheel of Fortune of the same title. Bob Danvers-Walker, who was the voice of Pathé News from 1940 until its demise in 1970, was the show's announcer. Alec Dane was on hand to bang the gong. Harold Smart was at the electronic organ.

Singer and TV presenter Des O'Connor became the host for the second version, which aired from 1992 to 1999. His future wife, Australian born Jodie Wilson, was one of the hostesses; she would later be replaced by former Neighbours twins Gayle and Gillian Blakeney, also from Australia.

The show was again revived for one night as part of Ant & Dec's Gameshow Marathon in 2005. This was a series presented by the Geordie duo, who presented classic ITV gameshows as part of the channel's 50th anniversary in their own style.

A similar formula was used for Pot of Gold, another game show hosted by O'Connor.

The game was played during the ninth series of Britain's Got More Talent. In June 2019, it was announced that Take Your Pick!, as one of the country's five all-time favourite game shows, is to be "supersized and rebooted" in a new series Alan Carr's Epic Gameshow filmed at dock10 studios for a broadcast on 13 June 2020 on ITV. Shaun Wallace makes an appearance in the epic supersized version.

Gameplay

Yes-No interlude

In this opening game, the host asked the contestant a series of questions in a 60-second span. The contestant could not say "yes" or "no", nor could they nod or shake their heads. If they did, the co-host would bang the gong and the next contestant would be introduced. Those completing the minute successfully were awarded a £1 prize. In the 1992-1999 version they were awarded £1 a second.

Box numbers and the prizes

There were 10 boxes numbered from 1 to 10. Three of them would contain booby prizes, one would contain a card awarding a star prize (e.g., a small car or holiday package), and six would contain cards announcing other prizes (e.g., appliances, furniture, or a "treasure chest" of cash (£50 in the Miles series, £500 in the first O'Connor series, £1,000 for the remaining series). No-one, including the host, knew which prize was in each box. However, the audience was given a preview of the actual prizes, shown on screen, and listed by Bob Danvers-Walker, from off-screen. The list always culminated in the announcement of "tonight's star prize".

Contestants would be asked general-knowledge questions. If they answered three out of four questions correctly, they picked a key from a set of ten, corresponding to one of the first ten boxes. The host would then try to buy back the key with increasing amounts of cash, up to about £50 (or, in the revival, a number of hundreds of pounds). One box also included a key to box 13, which would trigger another round of bidding while the contestant had to choose between their first prize, cash, or box 13 which could have an expensive household item or a booby prize.

Cultural references

A sketch in Monty Python's Flying Circus (called "Spot the Brain Cell" in a later audio version) has John Cleese playing an "evil" game show host, hitting contestants over the head with a giant hammer, which is clearly a wildly exaggerated version of Michael Miles (the game he is hosting is a parody of the "Yes-No Interlude"). An early version of this sketch appeared in At Last the 1948 Show. For a time, after Miles' death, the sketch was not shown by the BBC, but it has since been reinstated.

Also, in the Dirty Hungarian Phrasebook sketch in Monty Python's Flying Circus, a prosecutor (played by Eric Idle) plays the game with Alexander Yalt (played by Michael Palin). The prosecutor manages to gong Yalt "out" for answering a question with "yes" (although Yalt was probably unaware of playing the game in the first place).

A sketch in the BBC Radio comedy series The Burkiss Way featured a "Dinosaur-Cheese Interlude", in which contestants were required to answer questions without mentioning any species of dinosaur or any variety of cheese (besides Edam, which was "made" backwards). Naturally, all the contestants did accidentally mention them.

A fifth-season episode of the radio show Hancock's Half Hour (broadcast May 1958) had Tony Hancock appear on the (unnamed) show and win £4,000.

The British progressive rock band Hatfield and the North named one of their songs "The Yes No Interlude". It is included in their second LP, The Rotters' Club.

The 1970s radio programme I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again made frequent references to Take Your Pick! with phrases such as (in this case, apropos of a vampire rabbit and its coffin): "Stake the bunny!" "Hop in the box!"

Transmissions

Associated-Rediffusion

Series	Start date	End date	Episodes
1	23 September 1955	1 June 1956	36
2	21 September 1956	14 June 1957	39
3	20 September 1957	13 June 1958	39
4	19 September 1958	26 June 1959	41
5	18 September 1959	10 June 1960	39
6	16 September 1960	23 June 1961	41
7	15 September 1961	8 June 1962	39
8	14 September 1962	7 June 1963	39
9	13 September 1963	5 June 1964	39
10	18 September 1964	11 June 1965	39
11	24 September 1965	18 March 1966	26
12	30 September 1966	12 May 1967	33
13	29 September 1967	26 July 1968	44

Only 7 out of the 494 episodes from the Associated-Rediffusion era survived from the archives including episodes 1-2 of series 1, episode 39 of series 10, episodes 1–2 of series 12 and episodes 18 and 44 of series 13.

Thames

Series	Start date	End date	Episodes
1	24 February 1992	11 May 1992	10
2	8 July 1992	23 September 1992	12
3	12 July 1994	23 November 1994	20
4	13 May 1996	26 August 1996	16
5	5 June 1998	23 December 1999	16

External links

• Take Your Pick! (1955–1968) at IMDb
• Take Your Pick! (1992–1999) at IMDb
• Take Your Pick! (1955–1968) at British Film Institute
• Take Your Pick! (1992–1999) at British Film Institute
• Take Your Pick! at UKGameshows.com.