Wisdom of the Crowd

So yeah. I was on a game show.

For a very surreal few days back in March, I was up in Manchester filming a brand new Saturday night game show for the BBC called Wisdom of the Crowd presented by John Bishop.

Appearing on a TV game show has been a bucket list thing for me. I can't really explain why (it's all just a bit cheesy really, isn't it?) but I've always liked the TV production side of things and playing along at home - who doesn't love a quiz?

I always just assumed being the most average man in Britain is going to be a disadvantage. There's only so many 30-something white men with beards the nation can take. However, it turns out this was the perfect show to apply for...

The premise

Wisdom of the Crowd pits two thousand people from across the UK against one contestant. We all answer a question nobody would realistically know the answer to, such as "How much does the average engagement ring cost?". The theory is that the average of "the crowd" will be closer to the right answer than the best individual guess, with the contestant winning up to £10,000 if they manage it.

There's two hundred people answering the questions in the studio alongside the contestant, and I was one of them. We're there largely to boo the contestant, laugh at their terrible answers and generally just look like an idiot for money.

The contestant gets three chances to beat the crowd and win the money. They lose £2,500 for each attempt they fail, which gets put into the crowd fund for us to take home at the end of the series. On their third attempt they can risk it or they can take a seat in the crowd in place of the worst person in the crowd along with their share of the prize money. It makes more sense when you watch it, I promise.

At the end of each show the best performing member of the crowd can come and have a go at stealing all the money for themselves in a set of true or false questions. It ultimately comes down to luck at the end, which is a shame, but it makes it very gripping!

Applying for the show

If this show is brand new, how did I hear about it in the first place? In December I got an ad on Instagram for contestants for a brand new show and given the whole air of new year's resolutions and after a few umms and arrs I thought I'd just give the application form a try.

They asked things like "Are you a lucky person?" and "What's the most competitive thing you've ever done?" and they're just looking to hear more about who you are. I gave some fun, quippy answers and swiftly moved on.

The thing that's always put me off applying for TV shows is the dreaded "tell us about yourself" question. I need no help in overthinking simple things. I actually bailed on the application form because I couldn't think of an answer that didn't make me cringe. I only came back to it late January because they wouldn't stop emailing me to finish filling it out.

A couple of days after I get a call from their production team inviting me to a group audition. This was a run-through of the show on a group Zoom with some other potential contestants to get to know you a bit better and to see how you talk through your answers. It was all very laid back and great fun getting to play a game with a bunch of strangers that was new to all of us.

There are so many people writing online about what you should and shouldn't do if you want to be successful in one of these applications. Should you make yourself the centre of attention, or have a quiet confidence? Should you give the best fun fact you've got, or make up something wild and memorable? Should you try and get every question right, or every question wrong?

In short, it doesn't really matter. Just be smiley, likeable and engaging. Make yourself the easy pick. These people are going to need to spend hours with you in a confined space on the day and they don't want someone who's going to get on their nerves.

After the audition it was a few weeks of waiting until I got another call from the production team inviting me on to the show! I figured I had more of a chance being a brand new show, but I never thought I'd get on one with my first application!

From then it was mostly just admin. I needed to be DBS checked, get some outfits sorted and to practice my answers (more on that to come!). Time to get excited!

Recording days

Filming took place at Dock10 in MediaCityUK Manchester. That's quite a long way from Poole, so they put me and many of the other contestants up in a hotel. Every day we would get a coach to and from the studio and it's there we all got to know each other, talk about each other's backgrounds and eventually start talking strategy for the show.

The first day we got signed in, given our numbers and had our photos taken. What they neglected to mention was that this cheesy grin they asked us to make was going to be plastered on giant screens every time they asked a question. It's used to show how everyone else answered. My giant head rolls in last, on its own, every single time. Super cringe.

We filmed eight episodes over four very long days. While the actual shows only took about two hours each to film, there's lots to do behind the scenes that thankfully didn't involve us. What it did mean for us was a lot of waiting around! I mostly filled that time eating snacks and talking nonsense with Shannon and Michelle - my neighbours for the show.

What this all meant was that we all got to know each other very well over the four days. Over time, this led to us all choreographing dance moves to the various music that plays during the show. You'll see it evolve over the series as more people relax into it. I'm in a giant WhatsApp group with a lot of them now. As I speak they're all still talking about the show and reminiscing over the fun we all had together. It's lovely to see!

Most of all I was amazed just how into it everybody got. I naively assumed most people would be here to make some easy money and be on their way, but I had lots of conversations about tactics, about silly answers and whether it was best to risk it all to potentially win big. Plenty of people had done their homework.

One crowd member - Lee - even got a signed picture of Norman Wisdom to give to John as a gift for doing the show. It got passed around the crowd as we waited for the next recording and we all signed it with our crowd number. It was a lovely touch and clearly meant a lot to him and to John. It was lovely to see.

Now I'm allowed to talk about it - what a great first show! We built up a good chunk of money for the crowd fund to set us up for a great payout at the end of the series.

At the end of each episode we all have to decide if we want to take the chance to steal that episode's slice of the crowd fund and the highest ranking player gets a chance to do it. I will never know if I was ever in contention, but there was no chance I was going to potentially leave this experience so early, so I decided against it at that point.

Kris only went and won it for himself though! Disaster. £21.5K for a couple of hours work. We're all there booing the guy, but I think we're all secretly wishing we had gone for it ourselves.

If you want to see if I either win loads of money or make an idiot of myself on prime-time TV, then the first episode is on iPlayer right now, or you can catch it every Saturday night on BBC One. The next episode is broadcast Saturday at 8:45pm.