#75: Bob Johnson's Big Money Turkey
Gobble Gobble! Dear God, Is He Senile Or What?

ITV: (1983)

There are certain game show moments that leave you dazzled because someone did the unthinkable and won big money.  There are moments where you point and laugh because they made a blunder so bad that even they laugh at their mistake.  But then there are moments that become so infamous that they become intertwined in game show folklore that once you see the moment for yourself, you have to watch it again to make sure what you just watched was real.

This definitely falls into the third category and oddly enough it's in the same episode where the Family Fortune Irishman Problem induction took place.  But this induction takes place at the very end of the show during Big Money.  Ladies and gentlemen, one of the most requested inductions you've asked me to do and here it is.  Bob Johnson and his infamous Big Money Round.

Well, if you read the Irishman induction, you could probably gather that Bob, as a contestant....stunk.  I mean, thinking that an Isreali was an Irishman and Des O'Connor was Irish, when in fact he was English.  All the way through the game, he didn't even get one answer up on the board.  If it wasn't for the rest of his family being much better players, they wouldn't have made it past the auditions, let alone win the game and make it to Big Money.  So, oddly enough the guy who can pass for a sober Father Jack from Father Ted gets selected to play along with Michael. 

Yeah, it's a motley crew there.  Max Bygraves the crooner, Michael, the sane one, and Father Jack himself.  Michael goes first, so Father Jack heads to the bar to listen to a Max Bygraves album to try to get some new nuns to show their habits to him.  Here's how Michael played his round of Big Money.

Name something People take with them to the beach.....A Towel
The first thing you buy at a supermarket.....Bread
A food often stuffed.....Chicken
Any famous Snooker player.....Hurricane Higgins
An Outdoor ball game.....Tennis

All 5 of them very good answers and they get no complaints from me.

And apparently the survey people agree and he got 131.  That's a great score for the first half of the game.

So now Father Jack, I mean Bob comes back out and is ready to play clean up.  All he needs is 69 points and they win the money.  He's got 20 seconds to do it all in.  It can be done.  So, let's get started.

Name something people take with them to the beach.....Turkey

Oh boy.  The crowd is laughing.

The first thing you buy at a supermarket.....Uh, Turkey Ha ha ha.

It's the first thing you buy, not the first thing you grab on Supermarket Sweep, nitwit.

A food often stuffed....TURKEY! HAHAHAHA!

Any famous snooker player.....Hurricane Higgins (repeat sound)  uhhhhhhhhhhhh (times up)

Max himself is looking at the crowd.  His eyes tell the entire story. 

So does his partner, while the rest of the family is following the American rule of the show where no matter if the answer is the worst in the world, you always clap and yell "Good answer, Good Answer!" 

Max then quips that he's playing for 1,000 pounds and two weeks in Turkey.  I bet he's thinking that the other family should have won because he'd have a shot to bed 3 ladies who were young, wild, free and unlike Father Jack here, had some semblance of a brain left in their heads.  Either way, it would have made for a better game. 

So, we go to the board and we see 3 turkeys up there.  He only got 21 points, and time ran out for the last two before his feeble mind thought of trying to say Turkey for all 5 answers.  So his family, as Max puts it, goes back to the asylum with the people with 658 quid.

So, that ends the sad tale of Bob Johnson's day on Family Fortunes.  Apparently, he performed so badly, that one of the family members asked the production company how much would it cost for them to not air this episode.  The producer asked her how much she's offering, and apparently it was nowhere near enough, so the episode went out as scheduled and embarrassment ensued, much to the delight of the viewers of this show and the people who've seen that moment on various clip shows featuring memorable game show moments.  A decade or so later, the family was interviewed about the moment and Bob had said after the show wrapped and they went home that there was a malfunction with the headset and he heard the "A Food Often Stuffed" question.  He thought he'd use that one answer to save time and get the last questions with about 10 or so seconds to spare.  And to prove the brainpower of the family, they all bought it.  Well, except for Michael who had disowned his family and decided to change his last name to Barrymore and host Strike it Rich.  I kinda wish what I had just typed there were true.  But anyways, it's always a memorable moment, and the whole show itself is worth watching.  To end this, I wonder what Father Jack thought about Sober Father Jack's performance on the show.

"HOW DID THAT GOBSHITE GET ON THE TELEVISION?!"

God, I loved Father Ted. 


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