Michael Barrymore

Alot of gameshows were killed off because of WWTBAM, there really shouldn't have, Catchphrase has come back with £50'000 top prize, I bet if Wheel of fortune or Stirke it lucky had that there would do fine ( you would need an off the wall pearson for lucky)

Going by the DS post, there would have been NO way anyone could have manipulated the screens, the IBA/ITC would have had a fit and ITV would have entered second scandal like to the one from the 50s/60s. I think that alone would have lost Thames is franchise., maybe not straight away but at the next round...

Finally someone has said it, Alot of people who stopped getting tv work like in the ealry 90s went on to do BIG things in theatre, but of course if there not on TV there must be dead...

I never really got Barrymore, even in his prime....didn't find him funny or likable.

I would have thought that if there was a demand for Barrymore back on our screens, somebody would have found a way to do it.

There is plenty of new talent emerging from previously unheard of routes, like YouTube etc, why would you want to bring an old dinosaur back who has never been able to completely shake the cloud of suspicion?

Ken dodd?

And you could still never got a ticket, and he would work 5 hours... making sure the audience learnt a lesson especially when there go walking out the door saying " well that certainly taught me"

I don't believe ITV itself was affected by the Twenty One scandal. The original format was heavily tainted in the US but by the time that came out the show had ended over here anyway. Twenty One was effectively dramatised from head to foot and the entire charade in that show was scripted, the reactions, the questions, the outcome, the entire saga was planned. It affected the entire quiz show format both in America and over here when the truth came out.

Of course on the issue of integrity of Strike It Lucky, its probably more than the job of the producer, and Thames as a whole, was worth to blatantly fix the show. It would have been common practice to tip the balance in the favour of the show, otherwise everything would get given away and cost Central/Thames/LWT or whoever a fortune and you wouldn't tune in to see if Fred and Daphne are going to win the car on Bullseye this week. But that's different from "fixing".

I suppose there were any suspicions the IBA would have said something to Thames at the time. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. It may have been all above board and totally random. After all if the regulator of the time, which was far more hands on than anything that's replaced it since, wasn't happy the show wouldn't have stayed on the air in that form surely?

Deal or No deal has to be the best case as everything was radom.

Do you think Michael would have continued to get golden handcuff deals with ITV had the whole Lubbock incident not happened? What shows would he have presented for them? Could you see him as the host of upcoming shows they had planned like I'm A Celeb or BGT? (Actually he would have possibly suited BGT given his variety background). Would his act have evolved in line with the way television went in the 00's and 10's, would he even still have been such a presence now or would he have bowed out or resigned to acting roles/documentaries or the likes instead?