I’ve won exactly three things in my life:
1. 50c – that I found on the beach while beachcombing. I was six when it happened so it was worth about five bucks.
2. An iron.
3. R1000 from Absa. It just suddenly appeared in my bank account one day and I was too stressed to call to find out where it came from in case it was a mistake.
Once I’d spent it I called them up and was relieved to discover that it was legit and I’d lucked out on some monthly sweepstake thing they run.
As you can see, my luck is iffy when it comes to competitions and I know it. After entering competition after competition and never winning I don’t bother any more and stopped playing the Lotto after a year of not getting one single number on my slip. Not one. How is that possible??
I lurve watching other peeps win though and always enjoy seeing a good game show so I was tickled when M-Net invited TVSA to their studios to preview their new game show Deal Or No Deal.
The show launches this coming Sunday (4 February at 18h00) and the key to winning a million bucks in it is being stuffed with luck. For a full, explanation of the game’s format, please check out TVSA’s showpage for it which explains it clearly: Deal or No Deal (link below in tags).
So I go along to scoop out what’s up, tuck into the tasty treats up for grabs for the audience and next thing I find myself thrust into the centre of it all - on the stage, facing Ed Jordan, playing for a million bucks and my life.
I promise you I was such a mess you have noo idea. I’ve always marveled at contestants in game shows and finding myself suddenly doing it freaked my brain - and it wasn’t even for real cash.
To give members of the press an idea of what the game’s like M-Net got us to play a full episode with imaginary mula.
They divided us into five groups of about six people and each group played a round with one person being the contestant and the others pretending to be their family and friends - who give advice through the game.
I was up in the third round, had four family members with me and my ankles and knees went beserk. It was the kookiest thing ‘cos I got into position behind the pedestal thing and no matter what I did to try to control them they refused to stop quivering.
Ed welcomed me, told me to shake my booty and within moments I was fully into things, facing my grisly fate in the knowledge that I never win anything.
The thing that’s so trippy about playing is that you really do come face to face with how you view fate and all the chaos surrounding whether or not you have any control over it.
I kept feeling that I just
might have some mind-control over the cases and constantly tried to access some sort of sixth-sense to see what was inside them. I also kept looking for different “signs” to tell me what I should do.
Turning to my family and friends was one obviously but also, I thought back about my past and numbers that have been good for me and conjured up some complicated patterns of numbers - like I thought about 13 being an unlucky number and decided that maybe it’s the luckiest to choose.
The schmodels who hold the suitcases also made an impact on it all.
As I was busy deciding on my final case, I glanced across all of them and one of them had such a glint in her eye she made me feel that choosing her was the perfect thing to do.
I’ve subsequently found out her that her name’s
Zongie Mtshontshi and that I’ve seen her before - she was a contestant in that
Revlon Supermodel reality thing from last year.
With all this stuff coming at you in a game that isn't even for a proper million bucks I can only imagine how killer it is when you're really playing and have so much to lose and gain.
By the end of it I was chuffed with how I’d done - I opened a couple of small amounts and got them out of the way for the team, the banker raised his offer (which was for a pathetic amount) and I had a blast dramatically declining it by calling out “No Deal!”
Rounds four and five went on and by the end we ended up far away from the million bucks. The trouble is I can’t actually remember the exact final twenty-thousand-ish amount we ended with because all the numbers I have in my head belong to the real contestant from the first episode coming up this week - which we got to watch on big screens.
His name’s Andrew Erikson, he owns a crocodile farm and has a daughter who goes everywhere with her snake, that talks to her. I *bleep!* you not.
The process he goes through in the episode is very funny, tense and surprising. You can’t believe that you’d get so worked up for someone choosing from a bunch of suitcases but you do and everyone in the audience ended up hollering mad advice as to what he should do next.
As to what he does and how lucky he is or
not - that I can’t reveal of course. I also can’t tell you whether he’s the only contestant in the episode or you’ll know how long he plays for. The way it works is that if someone ends up taking a deal early in the episode, a second player starts a new round.
All in all the show’s light and fun and has moments of being excellently stabbing - plus a million bucks really can be won, numerous times across the episodes.
There’s no room for any manipulations of the cash from anyone whatsoever so it really does come down to the luck of the moment. The bucks are sponsored by Virgin Money who suit the show well - they’re also included in the footage unobtrusively and tastefully.
The fact that there’s no skill involved in winning could be a disadvantage for it’s long-term success so it’s gonna be dependent on who they’ve cast across the epsiodes and how they respond for it to be constantly enticing. That said the prospect of seeing anyone - no matter how much of a wake-up they need - winning a million bucks is always fab.
Be sure to catch it on Sunday and see what you think.
PS: I was thinking - it’s a perfect show to set up a syndicate for - so everyone you watch with could put money on how much they think the main case contains and the person who’s closest to it wins the pot.
PPS: I’m open to bribes for Sundays episode.