Deal or No Deal

This was in the press recently, there genuinely was a power cut as it knocked out quite a lot of Bristol, apparently.

It's actually not the first time it's happened on the show (it happend very early last year), but it's the first time they've showed it. It didn't look like Noel's mic was working, he was speaking loudly and the camera picked it up.

There won't be a microphone on the camera.

If it was a power cut everything would have gone out.

I don't mean to be rude, but sometimes you might want to listen to the comments from people who know how things work rather than what you read in the papers.

No offence.

I know Noel is calm and acceptable when anything happens, but once the lights went.. didn't it seem liked he planned what he was saying? It was like it was scripted.

Meh, I take your point but watching it last night it certainly didn't sound like he was using a proper microphone and it seemed like the most obvious explanation. I'll ask the producer, then we'll know.

The producer ? I said "people who know how things work".

ROFL I kill me!

Man!

It probably was - there are procedures and Noel would be aware of them - and the most effective way of communicating them to the audience would be through Noel rather than the floor manager or whoever.

I live in Bristol, quite near to the studios and I haven't had a power cut for absolute ages.......

Now that's more interesting. It would have been filmed end of January/beginning of February.

Actually I've just done some research, I've confused myself, the general Bristol power cut was the last time it happened in January 2006 but this story was in either The Sun or The Star last week, so it must be true.

Or on a 3-phase supply with monitoring that sends the racks to a safe state when the mains goes funny, or that has its control power sourced from the phase which went down. Dimmer racks pulling studio levels of power running off two phases when they're cabled / designed for three would cause all sorts of nasty-ness back up to the supply point, probably causing breakers and the like to also shut off. Our dimmers at work will shut down if any of the three phases are lost, and emergency lighting will illuminate.

whooosh.

is there a way to explain this simply or do i just stay in the dark - to pun appallingly.

There's no easy way to explain it. It would make you wrinkle your smooth brow.

415 volts and every one of them dull dull dull.

Meh - it's a living.