Out for a golden duck
HALFWAY through tonight’s DOUBLE THE MONEY (C4, 8pm), I’m starting to wonder if the whole thing is doomed. I don’t mean just this episode; I mean the entire series. The idea of this competition, remember, is for each team of two (of which 10 remain) to come up each week with a clever short-term business idea. Or clever enough, at least, to stay in contention.
The teams are handed a sum of money at the start of the episode, and told to come back, within a given deadline, with twice that much.
This time they’re told they have a week to turn £1,000 into £2,000. Well, I say “told”. It’s host Sue Perkins who’s issuing these instructions, so it’s more a case of them being asked nicely.
Even so, any team that fails to hit that target will be out.And that’s the bit I’m worried about, because this week it looks as if everybody’s business plan is rubbish. I mean absolute cast-iron pants (pardon my French).
Will any of them come even close to making enough? If not, and everyone’s sent home, how will Channel 4 fill this slot for the next three Fridays?
I can only assume they’ve got something else on stand-by, such as one of their shows about how horrid the Tories are, ready to be shoved into the schedules at short notice.
Of course, it’s easy for me just to sit here on my sofa shouting stuff at the teams on this show, such as “What the heck are you doing?” and “Have you lost your minds?” and “What on earth made you think people would pay you actual money for that?”. So obviously that’s what I do.
But even if I wanted to be more sympathetic, I think I’d struggle.
I’m not going to spoil it for you by telling you who miraculously ends up doing OK tonight and who, less surprisingly, doesn’t – but put it this way; at the halfway mark, the pair who have poured all their money into setting up a hook-a-duck game on Bournemouth beach (£5 a go) are starting to look almost Bransonesque compared to some of their rivals.
I’m not so sure about the ones who plan to hold a ladies’ day (£30 a ticket), where women can “hang around and empower each other”, not least because their definition of female empowerment doesn’t seem to involve much more than “getting your hair and make-up touched up”.
I’d have thought female empowerment would mean not having to bother doing that, but, hey, I’m not the expert.
Other ideas tonight include Telford’s Greatest Talent Show (a concept to which this team has committed itself before actually finding any talent to take part) and a workshop on Indian erotic art, held on a north London industrial estate.