Bob's Your Uncle



Bob Monkhouse


Kathy Lloyd with Maria Rice Mundy/Linda Lusardi


Central for ITV, 1991-2?


In certain Amazonian tribes it is believed that your mother's brother is more important than your father. This is because you might not know who the father is but mother, and mother's brother, is fact. Fascinating, eh?

Because of this Bob Monkhouse who, let's face it, is everybody's collective uncle puts three newlyweds through their paces in a show that just about nicks things from every gameshow going. But it works quite well.

The studio is circular with a sort of heart shaped door at one end where people come out. Yes, it's ITVs very own Temple of Love but there are no Sisters of Mercy in sight, apart from the Bob's beauties which alternated between Maria Rice Mundy and Linda Lusardi.

Each week would begin with Bob's round-up of the news (see Trivia below) and then we met the three couples.

Decisions, decisions

In Round One, each of the couples were asked a question which was asked to several members of the public, such as "Which colour of room do you prefer to make love in?" or something. We would hear the four most popular responses in no particular order at all. The players have to decide which they think is the most popular, although Bob always said that "it could be something else" except it never was.

If they couple guessed correctly then they won either pots and pans or a water pump, depending on the series. However, if they lost then they won some luggage or a three stone cuddly toy. "Why?" I hear you ask? For the next round. But before the next round they show some people they filmed tap dancing. Hmm...

Love boats

Round Two was the Sea of Matrimony. The couples would each be in a boat with the thing they won from the previous round in a swimming pool. Here's the clever bit: the boats all have holes in the sides so the players try to bail out when any water comes in. So, if you won pots from the previous round you could bail yourself out, but if you won something heavy you would naturally be in a worse-off position.

The first team to sink or capsize the boat is out. To make life more interesting, members of the family were waiting behind. Bob asked questions to the teams in turn and for every correct answer it all stayed the same but if a couple got one wrong then a member of their family had to join them in the boat (and we found out their weight too which must have been quite

Runaround... now!

The two couples that survived go on to the Run for Fun, a sort of Mastermind meets International Athletics. Around the main stage was a sort of running track. About a third of the way along there were two boards, both of which could hold five cards (one of which would be blue and the other pink). Two-thirds of the way round would be a Card pick-up point where there were nine cards waiting. The idea is to try and sort the cards out into certain criteria as set out by Bob, so if you think the person on the front did one thing you'd put them in the pink bit and if you don't you'd put them on the blue bit.

When Bob says "Go" and gives them their first card, the players have ninety seconds to sort out the ten cards. One player would run round, put the card where they thought it went (i.e. blue frame or pink frame), picked up another card from the pick-up point and return to the start and gave it to their partner who would do the same thing. The players can change what's been put down already at any time but only one was allowed to run at any point. The winners were the ones who got the most correct answers but if it was a draw, the fastest couple won.

It's a Knockout

The couple that won at this point had already won £1000, but now it was their chance to triple it to £3000 by playing It's a Knockout-style games with marriage as a metaphor. The players would need to do certain things within three minutes, for example, finding giant rings in the audience and then trying to throw them onto a giant ring finger of a giant hand, or feeding a large mechanical baby with some giant rusks by throwing them into its mouth, that kind of thing. This was a good fun part of the show and usually had different challenges each week.

If they won then during the final round they played for a car, if not then they played for the £3000 in the final round which was essentially The Golden Shot. There was probably a woman called Donna so Bob could go 'Donna the Dart' - our Bob likes his alliteration, you see.

The idea was to put a 'dart through the heart' in the Golden Shot style i.e. one of them was blindfolded and they controlled the crossbow, the non-blindfolded one had to tell them where to aim by guiding left, right, up or down. If they could hit the black dot in the centre of the heart within thirty seconds they won. They only had one shot, and in later years the heart moved from left to right making it a bit more difficult. If they hit it there would be fireworks and suchlike and a car would magically drive through the paper burst. Ahhh.

Lasted two series, we think.


"Donna, the Dart"


To make the show topical, Bob would re-record more up-to-date jokes nearer the broadcast date, with that part of the show re-edited. So, what you saw was the audience laughing to different jokes to the ones that were actually televised. Cunning.

Image:Bobs.jpg A promo, shown on ITV.
Image:Bobs2.jpg And another one.



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