Take Your Pick!

Derek Lamb recalls an enduring game show and early ratings winner for ITV

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In 1950, television ownership was rare yet by 1960 it was the norm. Two events propelled this development: the televising of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953 and the start of commercial television on Thursday 22 September 1955. Take Your Pick! began the next day and remained in this early Friday evening slot for the next 13 years.

The show was devised, produced and presented by Michael Miles, a former radio broadcaster from New Zealand. In 1941, he was a news reader in Singapore and escaped on a cattle boat with his wife Joan, shortly before the island fell to the Japanese. They spent the rest of the war in Africa entertaining troops. This included a radio show called Army Forfeits to the South African forces.

Like a number of Commonwealth entertainers, Michael and Joan travelled to the UK after the war. By August 1946, Radio Forfeits was on the BBC Light Programme, described as the “new all comedy quiz in which victors win prizes and victims pay a penalty.” A favourite feature was the Yes-No Interlude where contestants were forbidden to use those words or move their head for one minute as they faced a barrage of questions.

By 1952, the format had transferred to Radio Luxembourg as Take Your Pick! and then to Associated-Rediffusion, the London weekday commercial television channel. Another stalwart of early commercial television, Hughie Green’s Double Your Money, had also been on Luxembourg.