Beating the Wet Blanket

I am not an avid television watcher, so I did not tune into Who Wants to be a Millionaire? for about a year, but when I finally did, like nearly half the nation (19 million viewers at its peak) I was gripped. At the time I was also rather poor and thinking of going to live in France. Night after night, in an atmosphere vibrating with tension, huge sums of money were being won on questions that were no harder than Trivial Pursuit, and the germ of the idea of trying to get on began to lodge in my mind. ‘How vulgar!’ said my inner Aunt Agatha. And I would read about the 5,000 telephone lines which were open 24 hours a day, the tens of thousands of people trying to get on and one man on the programme said he’d rung 400 times. ‘Pointless and hopeless’ said my inner Wet Blanket.