Catchphrase, Say What You See! Actually, I’d Rather Not Roy

About Catchphrase

I’m sure you are familiar with the premise of the gameshow Catchphrase. In the main round a computer animation slowly builds into a famous phrase or saying and the first contestant to guess correctly will win a cash prize.

Sometimes the show’s mascot, a yellow robot called Mr Chips will appear in the animation.

If they correctly guess the phrase, they can have a shot at the bonus Catchphrase. This features another animation but in this case it is hidden behind 9 squares.

When they press their buzzer, a random square will disappear revealing part of the image behind. They win a bonus amount if they correctly guess the phrase, otherwise both contestants return to play the main round.

Again, a correct guess on the main round gets the player another chance on this same bonus Catchphrase – but the bonus amount decreases with each incorrect guess.

The Snake Charmer Incident

On one particular episode in 1994, hosted by comedian Roy Walker, an unfortunate sequence of revealing those squares on the bonus catchphrase resulted in an image of Mr Chips that was somewhat suggestive in nature!

Right Hand Down a Bit

In fact, TV bosses had the sequence edited in post production for the original transmission so that Mr Chips’ right hand was static and not moving about!

The full version (the video at the top of the page) surfaced a couple of years later in TV blooper show It’ll Be Alright on the Night and the clean version has been repeated many times on the Challenge gameshow channel.

The Clean Version

Here is another version that is in better quality but shows the edits that were originally made to clean it up for broadcast. I wonder if audiences at home understood just why everybody was laughing so much?

Do you think they should have made those edits? If you know then you know and would perhaps find it amusing, otherwise you’d be none the wiser! Let us know in the comments below.