PresentTense: Maybe you were feeding the baby in the middle of the night. Maybe you were enjoying a post-pub batterburger in front of the TV. But if you have channel-surfed during the small hours recently, then you are likely to have come across ITV's The Mint.
It is a phone-in quiz show at the dreg-end of the schedule, presented by Brian Dowling, the Irishman who won Big Brother. Dowling was formerly cabin crew on a budget airline. You might think that, compared to serving scratch cards and over-priced soft drinks to disgruntled passengers, any television gig would be an improvement. You haven't seen The Mint.
Viewers are presented with what might seem like a straightforward enough question: to add all the numbers in an equation, say, or to name one of a dozen famous comedians, each answer worth a different cash prize. And then Dowling or one of his co-hosts will wait for you to call. And they'll wait. And wait. And you'll be at home, with the baby/batterburger in hand, screaming the answer at the television. But Brian will be filling the time with endless small talk. Occasionally he will implore you to call, to not think about it but do it. And he'll do it with an enthusiasm that makes Bob Geldof look bashful.
And finally, a caller will appear on air. After such a wait, it might be Godot. He will guess an answer. He will most likely be wrong.
And on it will go, although sometimes there will be a glut of calls and the small talk will shrink a little. And, occasionally, somebody will get a right answer, but mostly they will not. Because there is a breathtaking ambiguity in the questions. It might ask you to "add all the numbers in 51 plus 435 x 7 minus 24" but the answer may ultimately appear entirely unrelated to the question, and have no reference to any known mathematical model.
Meanwhile, the word games demand such extreme degrees of lateral thinking that Edward de Bono himself would snap the remote control in frustration.
At 60p per call, whether you make it on air or not, that's some profitable ambiguity.
It is oddly addictive, as you delay your bedtime in the hope that someone will hit upon the answer, marvel at the presenters' ability to maintain a perfectly pitched level of inanity, and resist the gnawing temptation to pick up the phone and have a go. There are enough people for whom the temptation proves irresistible, sometimes hundreds of times over. It means that the makers of The Mint are making a mint.
The show is not alone. There are currently 18 digital stations solely dedicated to quiz shows. At any time of day or night, surfing through the channels you will find young presenters chattering away to themselves, talking about their holidays, or just staring vacantly at the camera for minutes on end, having exhausted every tiny thought in their mind.
It costs up to £1.50 (€2.16) per call, depending on the channel, and for all the lengthy gaps between contestants, there appears to be a lot of people trying to get through. ITV Play has proved a handy moneyspinner at a time when ITV's advertising revenue plummets. Channel 4 has a station called Quiz Call, which turned a profit after just eight months. Other channels include Avago and Big Game TV.
There is one show called Bikini Beach, and as you watch it two thoughts go through your head: first, you wonder if the digital television revolution was supposed to be about young ladies in bikinis begging you to win £50 by naming a well-known tinned food; and secondly, you wonder why nobody has suggested tinned peaches yet.
It helps that the shows are cheap to make, but not cheap to call. So, as you watch these programmes, it quickly occurs to you that, with all the ambiguous questions, long pauses between contestants and enormous profits from the phone calls, you might suspect that all may not be as straightforward as it seems.
You wouldn't be alone. Ofcom, the British television regulator, received a 1,700 per cent rise in complaints about these programmes over a two-year period. This week it announced an investigation after receiving 72 calls in June alone. There is a second investigation into whether these shows are rigged.
And in May, the offices of Big Game TV were raided by police and the station subsequently dropped by NTL after it was accused of not answering its 75p-a-call phone line for two hours. Add all the numbers in that paragraph, and the answer could be troublesome.
Currently unregulated, the stations are now in danger of being watched by as many investigators as viewers. They could ultimately be forced to make quizzes fairer and the answers more straightforward; to ensure that the public will get through in the order in which they called; that the riddle won't always be mysteriously solved just before the end of the three-hour show.
Although, if contestants can get it right in the first go, it would leave hours of television to fill. Even Brian Dowling might run out of small talk. Perhaps he could serve some soft drinks.
