Good news for winners Five - at last
Much drunken shenanigans at a telly quiz to launch the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival at Bafta HQ in London last night. Channel Five's brainboxes were named the victors by a country mile and were given a standing ovation by the other quiz goers, given the run of trouble the broadcaster has had just lately what with all of those execs leaving and its new boss not starting for roughly a year. The broadcaster doesn't normally win much during telly awards season, but wags suggested it could maybe use the tagline "Five: Quiz Team of the Year" on its channel idents in future.
Murray's mint job
Radio 1 DJ Colin Murray was a late stand-in as host, but did a stellar job in keeping the rowdy crowd under control. There were many accusations of cheating, not least at the MediaGuardian team who, as title sponsors of the festival and quiz, were accused of knowing the questions in advance. However, a sixth place finish put paid to such scandalous rumours.
Ruth Settles for just the one raffle prize
ITV PR boss Ruth Settle was perhaps the luckiest - or unluckiest - winner of the night when it came to the all-star prize raffle. Settle was named the winner of the Channel 4 goody bag, although she wasn't too impressed, claiming the collection of DVDs was "disappointing". Her name was then pulled out of the hat again by raffle master Tim Hincks from Endemol, the MEIGTF executive committee chairman, as winner of two tickets to the Uefa Cup final in Manchester tonight - donated by ITV. Hincks promptly ripped up the ticket and tried again. And the lucky winner this time? One Ruth Settle. Just how many tickets did she buy? After the ticket was drawn for a third time, the prize was eventually awarded to someone from Five. Phew.
The joker's on BBC Worldwide
The two BBC Worldwide teams thought they were being clever when they saved their joker - which doubled a team's points when used in a particular round - for the section on international telly, no doubt thinking there would be plenty of questions on stuff like how many territories Jekyll had been sold to. Unfortunately for them, the questions were more along the lines of "Who is the captain in Battlestar Galactica?" prompting confused faces amongst the beeb's commercial teams.
Quizzical looks from Endemol
The use of a joker also confused the team from Endemol, who couldn't understand why everyone else had used it in the final round, until it was pointed out to them that this was because there were 10 questions in that section compared with six in all of the others. And of course points win prizes - something the company should know about seeing as they make, er ... quiz shows.
