The year's in full square-eye swing with all sorts of new things hitting our TV's - one of them being the South African version of the reality gameshow Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader? (See the TVSA mini-site for how the game works)It's starting on M-Net at the weekend - on Sunday, 27 January, 2008 at 18h00 and last week I got swept into a blast from the past when I hotfooted it to M-Net for the launch of the show.Back to school
The M-Net studios were turned into a school and everyone at the shindig morphed into schoolers:
We got uniforms, teachers, tests and prizes for them - I didn't win a smidgen! - lunchboxes with marmite and peanut butter sarmies which we washed down with lunch bottles of Oros while we played games like hopscotch with real-life 5th Graders.
It all made me realise that I really enjoyed school and took me back to my very first day in Grade 1 and the trauma that went with it.
I went to Addington Primary on the Durban beachfront and I wasn't stressed to spend the day in a strange place 'cos the school was right opposite the flats I lived in but I had a major crisis at the end of the first day.
We had to line-up girls and boys next to each other and leave the school grounds holding hands - which we did for the full year - with the same set of hands:
The trouble with it was I got this dude:
He looks innocent in the pic but trust me when I tell you he was my ultimate helldog - he sat behind me in class and pulled my hair every moment he could.
The brain boxesIn between the trippy walk down schoolery lane I hooked up with the show's host
Soli Philander (
Celeb Q&A coming soon) and chatted to the 5th Graders.
These are five of the seven brainy classmates who appear across the show to help the contestants win as much cash as possible:
From left to right:
Simthe Shangase,
Adelaide Lendore, Laaiqah Bhika,
Danny-B Smith and
Tristan van Niekerk.
I also chatted to 55-year old Wayne Logan - no relation to Brooke. Wayne's one of the first contestants to try his luck on the show - he wore a school uniform to the auditions which got him discovered and he spent the whole of December studying 5th Grade books - which he went out to buy specifically:
Test your scholarly sass:As for the types of questions coming up - they're all based on the actual school syllabus and range in difficulty from Grade 1 to Grade 5.
To give you an idea of what they're like here are some for you to have a bash at. These are the actual questions used by the show in the audition process for contestants mixed with questions that come up in the show - click the Show button to see the answers:
1. XYZZYX is to 879978 as 887979 is to:
2. Sister is to brother as nephew is to:
3. Johannesburg is to Gauteng as Polokwane is to:
4. How many tines does an ordinary dinner fork have?
5. Which letter comes next in the following series: a - c - f - j - ?
6. Which fish is the world's largest fish?
7. In two years time my father will be exactly three times as old as I am now. My father is 37. How old am I?
8. Five boys write a test. Tim scores higher than Steve who doesn't have the lowest score. James has the highest score and Gerald scores more than Peter but less than Tim. Who has the lowest score?
9. How many legs does a scorpion have?
10. What's the next number in the series: 116, 58, 56, 28, 26, 13.
11. You are running in a race and pass the athlete in the second place. Which position are you in now?
12. Divide 30 by 0.5 and add ten. What's the answer?
13. The Reserve Bank headquarters are housed in which South African city?
14. The name of which colourless, odourless, tasteless chemical compound that occurs in three different states of nature can also be written like this: HIJKLMNO?
15. Which instrument isn't a percussion instrument: drum, oboe, cymbal?
16. Which country's name can be formed from the letters RAGAAADMCS?
17. You can get HIV from mosquitos - true or false?
18. Which three letters can be added before and after the letters ERGRO to form a word that can mean "covert" or "contrary to prevailing culture"?
19. Which South African province is first alphabetically?
20. What animal's on the front of a R50 note: rhino, buffulo, elephant, lion, leopard?
Fast facts:
The show received over 20 000 entries.
It's the first local production to be filmed in High Definition - it's going to be featured on DStv's new High Definition Channel that launches later in 2008.
The show cost 20% more to make than shows not filmed in High Definition. Considerations that needed to be taken into account included additional time and resources for make-up because of the clarity of HD.
The background of the set is a brick wall detail - each of the bricks is handpainted to make them as authentic as possible.
It's directed by Gavin Wratten (Idols, The Block, Temptation, Nokia Face Of Africa).
Each of the contestants gets introduced alongside a picture of them in Grade 5.
Casting for the classmates took place around South Africa. There are 7 classmates in total who rotate their appearances across episodes.
The school uniforms they wear don't belong to any particular school.
The studio audience consists of contestants waiting their turn to appear on the show, their family members and extras from Rent-A-Crowd. Each extra gets paid R150 per show.
The show's on in 33 other countries - over and above South Africa.
The US version of the show's currently on M-Net on Sundays at 18h00.
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PS: If you're in the mood you SO have to share the goss about your first day at school so we can have a chuckle.
PPS: My M-Net school report card read as follows: "You're too much of rebel without a cause but show a lot of potential."