No-Nonsense Bullseye

Turned out that when he was 11, he and some friends played with petrol.

i remember jim bowen asking one chap what he did for a living . he said he was unemployed . jim said ...smashing !!!

They once had a multiple murderer on - and I’m not joking!

Poor old Jim died many times on stage, but I could'nt help but like him.

Dec 7, 2019 -- 7:50PM, Torquemada wrote:

They once had a multiple murderer on - and I’m not joking!

He'd already killed two before he went on the show.  The filming took place on a May 28th; on June 29th he robbed a couple and shot them both in the face, taking his tally to 4.

Jim Bowen's real name was James Whittaker.  I think he needed a new surname for equity reasons.  The 'owen' bit is his wife's maiden name and the 'B' comes from his mother's maiden name.

The murderer lost Bully’s gamble at the end. If he’d won, perhaps he wouldn’t have killed that couple a month later. What a POS.

This is interesting.  Apparently the producer struck a deal with a speedboat manufacturer that got him a lower price if he gave away at least 3 boats per series.  Behind the scenes they had 2 star prizes -  a speedboat and a car.  If the couple won, they got the speedboat.  If they lost, when they're shown "what they could have won", they pushed out the car.

Stay out the black and in the red, nothing in this game for two in a bed.

Player throws a dart in the right zone, 'you've won the washing machine'.

Throws again in the same zone 'you've lost the washing machine'.

I loved Bullseye. Jim Bowen. Legend. RIP.

I saw one recently where the player hit the black.

Bowen: You've won a date with the Ayatollah.

Player hits the same black again.

Bowen:  You've just lost a date with the Ayatollah.

Legend indeed.

And you could gamble your winnings/prizes for the 101 in 6 darts challenge always knowing your BFH was safe.

Take your time and listen to Tony.

'Good girl!'   

I saw one where Jim imitated a Japanese person.  Harmless fun but you know today he'd be sacked.

Apart from the nostalgia/kitsch there is something very appealing about watching the programme now, on Challenge or whatever.

I think it is that everything you see is real.

I don't think Bully was real. Looked like a cartoon.

Used to get some funny out-takes

Iiiiiiiiiiin 1 ,Wake up in style with this Goblin teasmade
Iiiiiiiiiiin 2, Something for the ladies, an upright Hoover

"A fabulous automatic knitting machine."

I saw an interview with Bowen on Youtube where he says one of the prizes was a cafetiere and Tony Green had no idea what one was.  When told, they both agreed that it wasn't really the sort of thing their contestants from 1980s Barnsley etc. would want.

There was one show were the guy won the pools but his wife forgot to post for that week. Jim replies "what a pity".

Jim Bowen was absolutely right to take a hard line with the questioning of contestants. 'Bullseye' was a serious business, and we can't allow petty personal sensitivities to invade that space.

A woman in her 40s got this wrong: "Which invasion during WW2 was codenamed Operation Overlord?".  She said Dunkirk.  Now, I think it's appalling that people nowadays wouldn't know but this was at a time when it was still within memory, when D-Day participants were still of working age.  She was in her 40s, not some kid.

Not sure that's fair criticism. The fact that the whole operation in Normandy came under the overall codeword of Overlord would only have come to light long after the event. That's the point of codewords: they're secret. Overlord itself had its own deception plan, codenamed Bodyguard, including a fictitious army in Scotland poised to invade Norway under a fictitious Operation Fortitude.

People at the time knew of the invasion itself (codenamed Neptune, incidentally) as D-Day. It's only those of us of the next generation who discovered that a months-long campaign in North-West France had been codenamed Overlord.

That's the Bullseye !

It was widely known enough by 1983 to be a question.

Plus Dunkirk wasn't an invasion.  It was a retreat.

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/16717761-overture-to-overlord

Overture to Overlord

A book about the planning for D-Day.

Written in 1950.

But if it really were that widely known in 1983, it wouldn't actually have been a question in a quiz show though, would it? Otherwise Bowen would have been giving away Teasmades left, right and centre.

Put it this way: my mother was 23 in 1944, and knew and spoke all about Dunkirk, Dieppe and D-Day. But I never once heard her refer to Overlord. In fact, with the Normandy campaign being bogged down in murderous fighting for months on end, the less the public knew about an Overlord plan which had assumed a German collapse within days the better.

Lots of men like war documentaries, wimmin don't really.

Yes. That's the best answer.