- Gerard de villiers sas 170 professional#
- Gerard de villiers sas 170 series#
- Gerard de villiers sas 170 tv#
When this happened in an Australian edition in 2004, a "gifted" player walked away with just 20% of what dumb luck would typically achieve. So far the UK has been spared the delight of watching psychics playing the game. Noel Edmonds's idiot belief in cosmic ordering seems to conspire against his contestants.
Gerard de villiers sas 170 series#
However, the desire for security means that contestants settle for measly deals - on average players in the first series won £16,000, whereas they would have won an average of over £20,000 if they had refused the Dealer's offers and stuck with their original box. The notorious Dealer makes stingy offers, particularly early on in the show, to encourage contestants to continue playing, so mathematically there would be no reason to deal. In addition to the maths, there is a huge dollop of psychology, which leads to players making sub-optimal decisions.
Gerard de villiers sas 170 tv#
Indeed, it has much in common with an ancient American TV show called Let's Make A Deal, hosted by Monty Hall, which resulted in the Monty Hall paradox, one of the most famous problems in probability theory. It is a beautifully simple game which touches on areas of mathematics such as probability and game theory. Even more ridiculous, when there is a commercial break, the programme solemnly informs the viewer, "Whatever you do, don't try this at home." Do they seriously think people would?īetween the guilty pleasures of Countdown and Richard & Judy is the guiltiest pleasure of all - Deal Or No Deal. Do they hate one another as much as they seem to, or are they buddies behind the scenes? I don't know. On the other hand, the wrestlers sometimes do serious damage to one another and the losers surely can't always agree beforehand to lose. Wrestling isn't a real sport and the contests are in some large part staged. I can't really work out what is going on, which is part of the reason it's addictive. It is Americana at its most extreme, although put on in a knowing way and with a definite element of self-parody. Watching it is certainly a guilty pleasure because the programme is politically incorrect in more or less every way one could think of.
Gerard de villiers sas 170 professional#
It is a cable TV offering, featuring American professional wrestling. I'm a fan of a very disreputable sports programme, one that I like because of its absurdist nature. They could not see how things had changed and how they had become potentially redundant in the brave new world of mass communication to which they had exposed their own pitiful inadequacies. The girls were often the crueller, when putting down their artificially selected partners, and it was hard not to feel sorry for the inarticulate and pathetically boastful young males. In fact its true awfulness and the glimpses of young macho-macha life in this country proved utterly gripping. This prototype for many far worse versions of humiliation television took my mind off the hamster-wheel boredom of static, indoor exercise. I sometimes thought of him when I indulged in my own curious vice, which was to watch Blind Date when working out on the rowing machine. It won't do I must change my life.Īrthur Koestler's satire of academic conferences, The Call Girls (1973), included an extreme leftwing French professor whose secret comfort was to lock his door and retire to bed to read The Three Musketeers while eating chocolate truffles. But do you know what I drive? A VW Passat estate, with a 1.8-litre engine and a piddling 170bhp. At 40, I still sometimes do that, though to less effect, alas. I still can.Īs a child, when I couldn't get to sleep, I used to roll my head from left to right on the pillow, and imagine taking a long journey in a fast car - a Jensen Interceptor, a Triumph Stag, a BMW 735i, an MGB V8, a Jag XJS.
At 13 I could tell you the 0-60 times, the top speeds, the cubic capacity, the brake horsepower of all the fastest and most exciting cars. I was one of those children who hoarded facts, and few facts delighted me as much as those about cars. I moon over the lavish shots of the car interiors - the excitement of all those dials, which stare back like multiplied images of one's own excited face. The writing is perky, sybaritic, deliciously technical.
There is much talk of hairpin bends and switchback Alpine roads, and slight but manageable understeer. A typical feature in Car seems to involve taking a BMW, a Mercedes and a Jaguar for a triumphantly gratuitous spree across France, Switzerland and Italy. Whenever I am over in Britain, I pick up the best one, which is, appropriately enough, just called Car.