Odd One In

Bradley Walsh & Jason Manford interview

TV Times magazine talks to Bradley Walsh and Jason Manford about the new series of ITV1's Odd One In and why it's never been tougher to make it in comedy...

Bradley Walsh interview

Bradley Walsh is back with a new series of his game show in which celebs try and spot who's the Odd One In...

I'm not even sure it can be described as a comedy: it wasn't even vaguely funny. Jason Manford made a few valiant attempts to shore up the laughter quotient but, on the whole, no luck. The basic premise was that two teams of two (in this instance, regulars Manford and, inexplicably, Peter Andre versus guests Lorraine Kelly and Julian Clary) compete to see who was better able to spot the "odd one in" of four strangers. For instance: who here really is a cockney? Which animal can actually skateboard? Who's not just pretending to hula-hoop? A bit like spotting the odd one out, except the other way around. Clever! Not really: Never Mind the Buzzcocks has been doing this for years, only for them it's a throw-away round, not the basis of the entire programme.

You know when gameshow hosts make that tired old joke that goes along the lines of, "We called up the biggest names in showbiz ... but they were all busy"? Well, that's no longer a joke, more something they are legally obliged to declare. Jason Manford and Peter Andre are among those picking the "Odd One In" from up to four possible candidates, such as guessing who is the real hula dancer or cockney from a lineup. Gameshows are supposed to kill time, this one makes time run backwards.

Odd One In is a new game show with a disarmingly simple premise: spot the authentic person in a line-up of frauds. A format arrived at by the disarmingly simple process of pinching the most popular segment from Never Mind The Buzzcocks.

Edition one saw host Bradley Walsh invite two celebrity teams to identify the real nun, glider pilot, rollerskater, man married to pineapple and, in a cunning reverse, fake beard.

The celebrities, who included Peter Andre and Laurence Llewellyn Bowen, were allowed to interrogate the contestants before making their decision but that didn't seem to help much.

And I have to say, the show works. Walsh is in his element, the banter is amusing and the categories suitably eclectic and imaginative. Plus, viewers can play it at home without exercising more than 25% of their brains, which is what you want on a Saturday evening.

Television at this time of year is a bit like my lawn at this time of year - patchy, barren, brown, cracked; you get the idea. Weekends are especially desperate. If you don't like sport, you're screwed - lost in a parched desert of nothingness (as opposed to one of those deserts that are full of stuff). Hell, you may even have to drag your fat arse off the sofa and do something different - go and water the garden, perhaps. Sprinkler - it's a nice word isn't it? It has some lovely consonant clusters.

What's this, then? Odd One In (ITV1, Saturday): yet another new gameshow. I see, so of these four nuns, only one is a real nun, and the teams - Peter Andre and Jason Manford v Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen and Katherine Kelly off Corrie - have to guess which one. Same with the guys with the beard; three are real beards, one is a fake. Which one, though?

So it's basically the odd one out round from Never Mind the Buzzcocks stretched into a whole programme. Hmmm. Oh, and made a lot more rubbish, because Bradley Walsh is no Simon Amstell; and Pete, Laurence etc are nothing like the funny people they have on NMTB. I predict a short life.

I'm not convinced that Odd One In is going to do much for ITV's viewing figures. Bradley Wiggins hosts a comedy game show, involving a lot of noisy orchestral brass accents and flashing blue and red lights (are they an Ofcom requirement for game shows?). The idea is that the panel identify the genuine eccentric or oddity in a line-up of fakes, an exercise which - like the similar section in Never Mind the Buzzcocks - offers a modest opportunity for comic improvisation ("Have you ever smuggled children out of Austria in wartime," one panellist asked one of a line-up of nuns, in an attempt to identify the real thing from the forgeries). The audience in the studio can take part by means of electronic handsets and the one who performs best gets the chance to go up on stage and win £5,000, once the celebrities have finished. Unfortunately, the creators of the format have neglected to come up with any kind of incentive that might persuade the audience at home to stick around till the end.

Well, we said it was light entertainment silly season. First in a double bill of new gameshows is this, hosted by Bradley Walsh. The "Home Team" of professional nice guy Peter Andre and likeable One Show recruit Jason Manford, plus an "Away Team" of two guest celebrities (first up are Coronation Street's Katherine Kelly and daytime dandy Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen), try to pick the person with a skill or secret out of a line-up by asking probing questions.

One of the best bits of Never Mind the Buzzcocks is the round in which the teams have to work out from a parade of similar-looking characters who's the obscure pop star of yesteryear. Odd One In ploughs a similar furrow, with lashings of Saturday-night razzmatazz and a round of applause every 20 seconds. Host Bradley Walsh introduces us to a series of line-ups - nuns, men with beards, record-breaking glider pilots - and the fun comes from playing along at home with the celebrity guessers. You'll be surprised how convincing four different men can be when explaining how they came to marry a pineapple.