Tipping Point ... The saviour of Peak Time Telly??

Imagine my surprise as I sat down with my tea to watch mediocre early evening television to be greeted by Ben Shepard standing in front of an oversized 2p shover and four contestants that had been overdoing the blue smarties in the green room vieing to win an possible £10,000 from answering questions and putting disks into the aforementioned machine.

At first I was just weeping with sadness that near prime-time telly had reached a new low, but then after about 10 minutes of watching found myself hooked.  I was rooting for people to win (usually the underdog) and cheering when the cocky one made a fatal flaw by selecting 'zone 1' instead of 'zone 3' and winning jack poop.

I was more surprised when someone actually won the £10k out of the machine at the end.  Could this be possible?  I had after all spent about £20 one day trying to win a knock off Pokemon character out of one in Corrigan's "Slots of Fun" only the day before and failed miserably.

This made me think.  If they can do this with a simple premise of a 2p shover then surely the possibilities are endless.  So I sat in my quiet space (or naughty step as everyone else in the family calls it) and came up with a new winning formula that I'm hoping ITV will like and pay me millions for the concept.  It's simple, but I would stare at, zombie like for a whole hour - even taking in the adverts for PPI mis-selling, accident helplines and cash for gold companies along the way.

So my idea goes like this.  Howard Brown (aka Howard from the Halifax adverts) would front a show called "Chicken Point".  It would bolster his waning career and would also bring a much needed change from the tired line of usual suspects appearing as presenters on other quiz shows currently on TV.  Now I'm not saying he will ever excel over the mighty (and in my opinion) god of the quiz show Bradley Walsh, but he will come a very close second.

The game involves contestants who must refer to the host only as "Howard from the Halifax" with pockets full of 20p coins taking it in turns to answer questions and the correct answer gives them the opportunity to slot and get an egg from "The Chicken Machine" (circa 1980).  The chicken will cluck, rotate and pop a little egg out into the little hatch at the bottom of the machine.

Excitedly, the contestant will take the egg and bask in the glory of the prize before them.  At that point they have the chance to gamble ... do they want to open the egg to see if it contains a prize they want (say for instance a waterproof hair hood or a plastic whistle) or wait and see if it contains the special banded strip of tickets which they can exchange for greater value goods - an example would be 500 tickets equating to an eraser with the ITV logo on it, or 20,000 for an ornamental saucy PVC lifeguard.

The contestants would quiver with excitement, the audience would continually give awed hushes as fortunes are won and lost on the life changing decisions before them.

Eventually, the last contest goes forward to the mega-chicken.  They have to answer as many questions as possible within 60 seconds with every correct answer equating to a golden 20p that can go in for them to win prizes like oversized soft toy cows and barely passing inspection toys from Korea that look something like characters from television shows and computer games.

Then after the final piece of glitter falls from the ceiling it is left to Paul Sinnha to answer sensible questions while chasing people down a grid winning real cash on a serious and worthy quiz show that in my opinion should just have a channel of it's own.

And that is it really.  The future of television quizzing is in our hands.  Do we want banal and indecipherable quizzes on our TV like "GoldenBalls" or do we want simple Arcade based quizzes that involve risk, 20p's and witty banter amongst contests and views alike!