We’ve Got Your Number (BBC1, 1999)
This is yet another game show that was tied into The National Lottery, you can find out what the numbers were after you sat through half-an-hour of this. The original plan was for this one to be called Your Number’s Up, but at some stage there was a rethink, and this was renamed We’ve Got Your Number. The host was Brian Conley, who was always able to get a studio audience cackling at his antics.
The idea behind this one was that various games would be played, but their results would be determined by what balls came out in the National Lottery draw. Brian would often begin by running on stage and shouting “it’s Saturday night!”, which was just as well, because as this was a live show, indeed it was. He would then start to sing, whether you wanted him to or not.
The games included Odd Or Even. This was where a dispute was settled between two people, based on whether the bonus ball was odd or even. These were fairly petty squabbles, but you could definitely feel the tension as the ball was about to be released. Some of these were done on location, and hosted by Julia Bradbury. And there was Second Chance. This was where someone had missed out on something, and could get another go, but again, the numbers determined the outcome.
Finally there was The Magnificent Seven. There were seven people with a talent, who were assigned the numbers 1-7, 8-14, and so on, up to 43-49 (back in the days when there were 49 numbers in the National Lottery draw, before going up to 59, which is why barely anybody wins nowadays, but this isn’t really the place for that rant). Again, the bonus ball will determine which one of them will get a small amount of BBC1 primetime to show off their act.
This means that Brian spends rather a lot of time shouting “the balls will decide!”. And there were lots of other memorable moments, including Conley’s Current Affairs, where Brian took a look at the latest news, and just general messing around really. There was only one series of We’ve Got Your Number, but this was definitely one of the better National Lottery tie-in game shows.
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We’ve Got Your Number didn’t get a second series because Brian signed an exclusive deal with ITV (and, indeed, it was seven years before he next hosted a game show for the Beeb).
Shame, because I don’t disagree that WGYN was one of the better Lottery game shows. While not *quite* as good as Winning Lines or In It to Win It, it was certainly better than Big Ticket and Red Alert – and also a good few of the later shows that didn’t contain anything related to the draw in some way (Millionaire Manor, This Time Tomorrow, Guesstimation, 5-Star Family Reunion).
And it definitely had a great title sequence – the numbers 1-48 being represented by all sorts of familiar situations (half a dozen eggs for 6, “XI” on a clock for 11, two rubber ducks in a bath for 22, etc.) and then a clip of the number 49 coming out during a draw, just to confirm that this is a Lottery show. Perhaps not *quite* as mesmerising as Doctor Who’s pointing a video camera at its own monitor, Tomorrow’s World’s fried egg and ball bearings, or Blockbusters’ cityscape – but a darn good sequence nonetheless.
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