I’ve found myself awake into the small hours for the last couple of nights, and have been staggered by the number of phone-in quiz shows that appear to have mushroomed across all channels – and not just the low budget satellite offerings, ITV are getting in on the act too. On Monday night, at 2am, a youthful male presenter, fair of face, was desperate to get shot of 500 quid by asking people to complete the phrase sun ______. This will be a familiar game to those people who grew up being mesmerised by the skills of contestants on Blankety Blank, but younger viewers seemed to be having a spot of trouble getting a handle on it. There were five top answers, of which one had been guessed – I think it was “cream” – and subsequent callers were ringing in with such mind-bending suggestions as “lounger”, “day school” and “ny”.

With time up against him, the presenter decided to drop some clues.

“OK, for the next caller, I’m going to give a hint. The word you’re after fits in between ’sun’ and ‘tomatoes’. OK, so if you leave them out in the sun, they get…. OK? Who’s on line 1?”
“It’s Tom.”
“Hello, Tom! So, Sun, something, tomatoes?”
“…”
“OK, so if you got wet, and you used a towel to dry yourself, then you’d be what?”
“Dry?”
“Yes…. dryyyyy…”
“Dry.”
“Sun something tomatoes?”
“Sun dry tomatoes?”
“Not dry, dryyyy…”
“Dry?”

I had to turn off at this point. The caller couldn’t get the word. The presenter couldn’t think up a good way of defining the word “dried”. They were at a complete impasse. A perfect case of constipated communication. I haven’t dared turn on ITV since, in case they’re still there. Maybe the two of them should go to Relate, or something.