Telly Addicts Online

'Telly Addicts' started at roughly the same time as the second season of L.W.T.'s 'We Love T.V.', hosted by Gloria Hunniford. Glo's show was inexplicably axed after only two seasons, despite being the superior of the two, while The Bearded Wonder's feeble effort dragged on for what seemed an eternity.

Neither was an original idea; I.T.V.'s 'Those Wonderful T.V. Times' beat them to the airwaves by a decade. The 'Telly Addicts' set resembled a doss house in Croydon, with two sets of contestants facing one another, perched on moth-eaten sofas. Had anyone fallen asleep on air as a result of meths fumes inhalation, it would not have been surprising. The contestants had to answer questions about old television shows. Some of the answers were truly mind boggling; for instance, replying to 'What was the premise of 'The Time Tunnel'?', an idiot said: "N.A.S.A. Control.".

Another round had contestants making berks of themselves by singing theme tunes while another required the identification of shows through old props. Particularly good were the Pain ( sic ) family who won every edition of the first season. They seemed pleasant enough but a number of 'Points Of View' correspondents claimed their questions were easier than anybody else's. Really! How cynical can you get!

What made 'Telly Addicts' a turn-off for me personally was Noel himself, tightly clutching his 'hoofer-doofer', and bestriding the set like 'Talos' from 'Jason & The Argonauts'. He never missed a chance to rubbish old programmes - particularly old sci-fi shows such as 'Twilight Zone' and the Irwin Allen series. I got the impression that sci-fi is not Noel's favourite viewing. Yet these were vastly superior to the majority of his television output.

In a moment of madness, some fool at the B.B.C. sold the rights to Noel, meaning that if say Outer Mongolian T.V. wanted to put on a telly quiz, they first had to pay him a king's ransom. A 'Telly Addicts' board game was later issued. I never bought it, but I bet it was more fun than watching the show. At least you could use the cardboard lid ( bearing Noel's grinning chops ) as a dartboard.

Telly Addicts ran from 1985 to sometime in the late 90's (I'm guessing 1996 or 1997 but I could be wrong) and it was a reasonably entertaining show.

Each week, teams of four would battle it out to find out who were the bona fide telly addicts. There were various games in the show ranging from general TV knowledge to games where the viewer would view a scene from a show and answer questions about it. Everyone on the show had a good time and it was all good fun.

It wasn't the greatest quiz show in history but it was fun whilst it lasted.

You have two teams of four people that are made up of friends or families that are asked questions about television programmes. If you win you have to come back to the next round until one team finally wins. A friend of mine was on the first series of this and got all the way to the final!!