The Amazon Prime of my life.

Flicking through Amazon Prime across the festive period I was absolutely thrilled to discover they are now streaming some of the early UK seasons of Deal Or No Deal. I couldn’t help put them on for a sneaky watch, despite the fact that this early in the run, I was still piecing every single ep together myself in the edit and so have already watched them dozens and dozens and dozens of times.?

I couldn’t be more proud of the show and particularly the format itself. I honestly think the joy and raw energy of these shows still stands up, almost two decades later. Take a look if you get time and let me know what you think…

Also I thought, for those interested, I’d give you a potted history of those famous red boxes…

As a caveat, I should say at the outset that almost every TV format that ever existed is a hugely collaborative effort. I unfairly get the the bulk of the credit for Deal or No Deal but every single person who worked on the show contributed hugely and it was shaped and formatted by ALL of us as a result. I owe so much to that show and consequently to everyone who worked on it. I’m grateful to every one of you.?

As I say, I couldn’t be more proud of the format. I remember, it was an extraordinary risk to make the version you can see on Amazon, ie our original UK format that we used from the beginning in 2005 until I left seven years later, when a number of format changes were then made. It was a risk because a successful version of the show previously existed in a couple of countries such as France and Italy but I wanted to take this basic premise and do it very differently.?

Changing a winning formula is usually a bad idea. We made big, big changes and Channel 4, Adam MacDonald and the utterly brilliant Richard Hague were absolutely incredible in having the courage to allow a then 30-something kid with zero studio experience try and make his fever dream a reality.?

Some changes were fairly small. We changed the number of boxes and the monetary amounts themselves - in fact I still have the napkin from a Shepherd’s Bush cafe where I wrote the 22 cash amounts for the board and the new round structure that would support it. Richard Hague and I often plotted like this over lunch. We also took away all the existing general knowledge qualification questions players had to face to earn the right to play the game, preferring instead just to let everyone wait their turn to play. Plus I loved the idea of a cold open that said “22 Boxes. A quarter of a million pounds. And JUST ONE QUESTION….” (Occasionally “and no questions …. except one” until we settled on a favourite).?

Also, we wanted physical boxes that were memorable instead of the ordinary shoeboxes used in France and saw some boxes in the window of Fortnum and Mason’s that were being used to display picnic food and cutlery. They were green but were hinged and a lovely size and we went in to ask where they were from. Plus, could they make them in a more striking red? The same guy made the boxes until the very end. I suspect he is very glad we happened to be walking along Piccadilly that day!

Then, rather than a piece of string or a lock to seal the boxes as per existing formats, I wanted a theatrical moment of release; so drew a blueprint for the kind of backwards-folding sticky seal that would go on the front of the box. This meant people had to put one hand on top of the box and reach forward with the other to remove the seal with an unavoidably dramatic flourish. Then we put the value on the underside of the lid so it felt like a punchy reveal. TADA!!!! You can actually see an evolution of the format from season one to season two when we realised that making the box figure red or blue to match the board gave an instant visual touchstone of good/bad for the viewer.?

The most sweeping and significant changes however were the following three….?

Firstly, we changed the way the offers were made. The existing spreadsheet was an entirely mechanical system based on a rising percentage of the mathematical average. I hated it. I wanted to use a much more flexible algorithm that gave a fair, consistent basis for each offer by using instead the squared average of the remaining square roots (yes I’m a maths nerd) BUT critically, also took into account the volatility of the board and, most importantly,?the attitude to risk of the player themself. This final part therefore was down to a gut feeling and not a fixed calculation. So then, to make sense of this much more personal, real and individual approach, we established the character of The Banker as a proper HUMAN opponent on the end of the phone. Watching everything and determined to destroy the dreams of everyone who faced him. A real person capable of calculation and callousness but also occasionally kindness and respect.?

The contestants could now influence him. Scare him. Trick him. Beat him.?And he could do the very same to them.

A notorious villain was born. And my own phone bill got exponentially larger. ;)?

To underline this sense of an old school, curmudgeonly baddie, I wanted a suitably evocative telephone and so I found and bought one on eBay. That’s right, that famous black phone with the twisted brown cord that ended up being the very image of the show and on thousand and thousands of Bingo sites and One Armed Bandits was my own bargain basement eBay purchase for under ￡15. The model number was a Post Office 312L for anyone interested; they are MUCH more expensive now they are famous however! We ended up buying two more as identical spares and they remained in use until the very end of the show, well after I left.?

FYI The original phone bought by me off eBay and used exclusively in all the early seasons of DoND went mysteriously missing when I left the show and it absolutely is not in my downstairs toilet.?

Secondly, we planned NOTHING. To underline the absolute unpredictability and genuinely random nature of the show, we improvised everything. Noel would see something or say something or I would phone up with some obscure observation and we would run with it as the theme of the episode. We ran it absolutely like a live show.??A camera guy falls over? Keep it in. There’s a power cut? Get torches. Keep it in. A light fitting explodes? Keep it in. Maybe it’s a sign? A box is empty and there’s nothing inside when a vicar is playing? Keep it in. An act of God.?

We showed every moment. Every mistake. These days people would say we “owned” everything. We pulled in people off the street. We sent runners off to flower stalls, grocers, pubs and sandwich shops based on a tiny offhand comment an audience member made, to then surprise them with an impromptu gift. We even made an episode based entirely on a fly that happened to land on the desk well before Breaking Bad did it. ;)) Everyone contributed. In fact in many ways, this was the most collaborative part of the show. If you had an idea, all you had to do was say it to me over the intercom and it could instantly become part of the show. The ideas were brilliant and came from everywhere. Runners, producers, lighting, cameras, sound, Mark Olver our incredible warm up .. you name it, the ideas came from all departments. A true collaboration. It’s a great lesson for trusting your peers, not overthinking and just saying ‘yes.’??

It felt visceral and unpredictable and real. Just like the show itself. It made it often terrifying to produce as you were always working off your instincts and the seat of your pants but I have to say it was also thrillingly exciting. It felt genuinely dangerous, never more so than when we made a week of live shows which in many ways are the proudest moments of my career. There’s a particular moment I remember where we pranked the viewers into thinking that an audience member, played by our brilliant producer Helen Finnimore, had got over excited and rushed the stage to unmask the Banker live on air. You can still see it on YouTube. The entire nation bought it. It was a hell of a thing to pull off completely live and the entire week was full of brave and original moments like this. In fact the live shows themselves won number of separate awards on top of the dozens of awards the daily show did.??

Thirdly, everyone getting to play automatically rather than answering qualifying general knowledge questions meant everyone had to wait their turn daily and simply open the boxes for everyone else.?This was a big shift.

I was absolutely determined that would not be the disaster everyone said it would be….?

Because everyone thought this part was terrible idea. They said, if they have to wait their turn they’ll be SO BORED standing there for two weeks just watching other people play. They would be disinterested and so uninterested as a result. They said we HAD to have them compete with questions or why would they show up for other people? They said they would not give a toss what happened to the person playing each day. They don’t know them so they won’t care.?

But we refused to believe that.?

So we cast people who were kind, good, decent and deserving who rarely had holidays or even any time of their own. We put them up in a nice hotel and organised games, trips, meals, entertainment and made sure that they had the time of their lives whilst staying with us. We even hired runners who’s main job was closer to being a Redcoat than it was a TV role. The players grew very close and ended up caring PASSIONATELY about each other’s games. And those feelings were real. They were totally organic. In fact I remember a visiting BBC executive saying to me “How on earth do you get them to say that they’ve had the time of their lives?”??I looked at him straight in the eye and said flatly “ By giving them the time of their lives. “

This ended up being the absolute defining characteristic of the show. The players genuinely loved each other and many became friends for life. Every game was infused with this desire from the wings for the person in the chair to succeed.?In fact, we all ended up wanting every single player to win big. Myself included. I had to compartmentalise my brain to be a fearsome opponent, even though the real me wanted the best for them all. Perhaps that’s why I did a voice for the Banker, to keep the two of us separate! ( If you ever meet me, I’ll happily do it for you. It’s like a cross between Churchill and a hung-over Boris Karloff).

Then of course, you have Noel. None of what I have said here would matter even for an instant if it weren’t for him. Noel was the key. A genius, in the truest sense. He took all of this melee, all of this madness, all of this unplanned, naive, unpredictable morass and wove it into an impossibly perfect narrative, day after day after day. It was a pleasure and a privilege to watch it happen.?What a broadcaster he is.

Best of all, it looks like 2023 could be the year DoND makes a triumphant return with a truly brilliant and even more talented team than even we had back in 2005. I couldn’t be more excited to watch them take it to even greater heights. A little bird tells me they may even be using the original format from these early eps now streaming on Amazon, stripping away a lot of the embellishments that were added after I left the show. Obviously I am HUGELY biased, but I do hope that is true and I cannot wait to see it!!! It would be wonderful to see it back in what a naturally believe is its best form.?

It’s such a special show with such a big heart and I think the world needs a bit of that! Fingers crossed it gets green lit. From what I’ve heard on the grapevine it’s a very special team who made a totally brilliant pilot so I think you just might get the best DoND version yet. Come on ITV!!!!!!!?

Again, despite the plaudits the format has received and the difference it is made to my life, there are so many other people who deserve the credit that is always unfairly biased towards me. Richard Hague in particular but also Jim Connelly, Nick Cramp, Alex Jupp, Robbie Williams, Helen Finnemore, Simon Horne, Kirk Brightwell from Lumina, Olivia van der Werff, John Clark on Steadicam, Dick De Rik, Richard Osman, Gus Bousfield, Tim Hincks, Jane Atkinson, Lesley Davies, Liz Davies and Anna, The Farm, Steve Boodhun, Nathan Lindley, Richard Van Reit, Ollie Bartlett, Zoe Tait, the lovely Aaron Paul, Phil Ingamells, Pete Johnson, Julie Dolphin, Cas Casey, Mark Olver, Rudy Thackray. Dear and deeply missed Darryl Noad. Many many more. Special mention to Matt Gee and Amy M and the entire art department -we pioneered costume specials and did full on Halloween make up and costume well before anyone else did it. So very many others too. I suspect I’ll keep editing this post as I remember, horrified, that there is a name I forgot that MUST be on this list!!!?

I spent around eight years working on DoND starting with the frustrations of the pitching stage (it got turned down everywhere twice) and seeing it through to the delights of its huge success. It took me all around the world for almost 40 international versions, including the USA and fundamentally changed my life.

As The Banker, I had the most incredible experience where I was like the Stig on Top Gear. Extraordinarily famous, but totally unknown at the same time. I loved it. It allowed me to do to have all sorts of fun with fans of the show, or anyone who I bumped into, because no-one knew that I was the Banker. I used to carry Banker business cards with me and then secretly buy any fans I overheard discussing the show tea or coffee in cafes and then leave a card behind just to increase the mystique of the show itself. Those anecdotes alone could probably fill a book! Even though it’s now an open secret, I still feel strange talking about it. But I can’t pretend I’m not proud to see my name next to Noel’s on the Amazon Prime “starring” credits.

It was my first ever studio show but ended up being career defining for me. In fact, it will probably say Deal or No Deal on my gravestone. Or perhaps my coffin will have a number between 1-22 on it and when you open it up, you’ll discover my will written on the underside of the lid…… :)

It’s on streaming Amazon Prime here - https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/video/detail/B08CS5BKLS/ref=atv_dp_share_cu_r

#dealornodeal #amazonprime #glennhugill #thebanker