Television
Off their trolley
Simon Hoggart
Supermarket Sweep (ITV, weekdays) is described as cult daytime viewing, which usually means that, students watch it if they're up in time. It does have a grisly fas- cination. Any show which begins with the news that the answer to yesterday's ques- tion was 'fabric conditioner' is clearly not obsessed with culture, or glamour, or the life of the mind, or anything much at all.
It's terrifically simple. Three teams of two contestants answer easy questions (What country does advocaat come from?') posed by Dale Winton, one in the long line of camp British game show hosts. Refusing some points to a young black woman, he said mincingly, 'Sony, but I'm being firm, and butch, and macho!' And the studio audience went, '000h!' He added, - 'I'm being ruthless, but you're so beautiful, it's very hard!'
The show has made Mr Winton a star, and he now appears on prime-time BBC, even presenting the Lottery on Saturday nights. 'Dale. Winton's come out,' my nephew said the other day. `He's confessed to having a wife and two children.' This is not true.
By getting the right answers, the 'gor- geous trolley-dashers', as he calls them, get extra time for shopping. So after the com- mercial break they `go wild in the aisles', loading up with goods from a large, faked- up supermarket. There are bonus products and extra money for performing menial tasks, such as sticking price labels on tins of gravy granules. The pair who assemble the most valuable goods and bonuses go on to the last round when they have one minute to pursue a treasure hunt round the store with the out- side chance of winning another £2,000. Given what television game show hosts are paid these days, that's a pitiful amount, and, in any case, it is rarely won.
However, the show is all quite jolly, and Dale Winton's apparent good humour keeps it rolling along. Yet .there's some- thing nigglingly mean-spirited, too. I noticed that the viewers' question was to guess what '-H-E L-C-S' stood for, with a clue: 'No tripping if these are tied up prop- erly.' The real clue was the line in barely legible type: 'Calls should cost no more than 50p.' Since the daily prize is only £250 (though they give away a nasty-looking small car once a season), the competition must turn a tidy profit, possibly from the sort of people who have trouble tying their shoe laces.
My sense that it was more manipulative and tight-fisted than it seemed on screen was confirmed by Rea Mason of London, who appeared as a contestant with her friend Penny O'Hare. First they had to attend an audition in London and conduct mock interviews with other candidates, Then they filled in questionnaires, presum- ably to make sure that they would be lively and amusing.
Having heard that they had passed these stringent tests, they went up to Notting- ham, where the shows are mass-produced, with a week's worth — five — being taped in a day. They were told what questions Dale would ask them on air, though he actually asked something quite different, perhaps to make their replies appear spon- taneous. Rea felt that Dale, who was as camp off screen as on, didn't greatly care for them and wanted another couple to win, though he was not obviously rude, just distant.
When the time came to rush round with the trolley, they discovered that it was far from the free-for-all depicted. There were notices on several goods saying, 'Do not touch' and 'No more than two of these'. After their time was up, they were ushered out of sight while their trolleys were totted up. It would, of course, be disgraceful even to think that the producers might be fid- dling the results, though suspicious contes- tants might be reassured if they could actually watch the stuff going through the scanner, like in a real supermarket.
In Rea's case, the couple which Dale appeared to like won the main game, but, since they failed the treasure hunt, left Nottingham with only £91 each for all their efforts. For Rea and Penny, the final humiliation came that night when the pro- duction company phoned them during din- ner at the hotel to say that they had no intention of paying for the meal, 'since you've already done the show'. In the end, the embarrassed hotel paid instead. They got nothing except a Supermarket Sweep sweat shirt and a promised 'present', which turned out to be cheap lime-green watch and which arrived some months later.
I am sure nearly all television game shows are like this, designed to get maxi- mum jollity at minimum cost, and sod the viewers and contestants who exist only to be manipulated in different ways. Nobody is forced to appear, and most people only go on for a lark, or to say they've been on television. They get some excitement though Rea said she was very disappointed with the whole thing — and the production company gets lots and lots of money. The production company, you'll not be sur- prised to hear, is Carlton.
Dale waves contestants away with his glad cry of 'come and see us again, won't you?' I'd love to see what would happen if somebody took him up on it.
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