A contestant from The 1% Club has opened up about his experience on the show, revealing that the ITV programme has a reserve of seat fillers in case a contestant decides to leave the set after being eliminated.
The show, presented by Lee Mack, does not have a live audience but has 100 contestants at the start of each episode. Contestants who are knocked out are expected to stay on set and watch the game unfold. However, it has been revealed that the producers have a backup plan in case someone opts to leave after they get knocked out.
In an exclusive interview with Express.co.uk, Kyle Talbot from Leeds, who featured on the Saturday night episode (February 15), shared insights about what filming was like.
“The worst part is when you go out, especially if you go out early. You’re in position (on set) because you’re still part of the show. You’re sat there for the rest of seven hours (filming).”, reports the Express.
“You still need to look interested, and you still need to take part with everything else as well. So can you imagine if somebody was like, ‘Oh, I’ve gone out earlier. I’m gonna go, I’ve had enough’. And you just have a blank space on the TV. But if that was to happen, they do have people there to fill in. But it wasn’t needed (on my episode).”
At 27 years old, Kyle experienced this situation firsthand. Despite no one wanting to be eliminated on the first question, he unfortunately stumbled at the second hurdle.
“Some of the earlier questions seem a lot harder than ones further down the line,” he remarked. “The one aim going into this show from absolutely everybody that goes on to it, and I suppose everybody that watches it as well is, don’t go out on the first question. I didn’t go out on the first question, but I did go out the second.
“What people don’t realise is that you are sat there, you’ve got all the lights, you’ve got the music, the potential of winning all this money, attention, all that sort of thing.
“You’ve got your tablet and within that 30 seconds, you need to type the word to the exact spelling as well. If you, for example, put a word and put one letter by accident that could potentially be a different word, then that’s it. You’re out, even though you know that you meant that certain word, which is correct.”
Despite the show being broadcast live, it’s a long seven-hour day for recording, and Kyle explained how it works. “Once you’re in there, and you’re comfortable you have a bit of a talk with the floor manager on the day. A lot of people, potentially, have never watched it either, so they get a bit of an overview of what it actually is.
“They also have a comedian that comes on to kind of settle everybody and add to the experience. That was Mark Olva. He was really funny.
“And while that’s going on you get a bit of make-up as well. I’ve never worn make-up in my life so that was an experience. Then they come round, set up all your mics, and do a sound check and everything like that.
“Once that is all done, they activate the lighting and the spotlight. You’ll see watching the show at the very beginning, the lights are off, and then lights then come on and that’s your signal to clap and it’s about to start and are ‘live’,” he explained.