Double Your Money
Double Your Money was a British quiz show hosted by Hughie Green. Originally broadcast on Radio Luxembourg, it transferred to ITV in 1955, a few days after the commercial channel began broadcasting. It was produced by Associated-Rediffusion until 1964 and then by Rediffusion London, and it finished in 1968 when the company lost its franchise. There were 260 thirty-minute episodes.
Throughout its run the show was one of the most consistently popular programmes on British television. The quiz format was similar to The 64,000 Dollar Question, with prize money approximately doubling at each question up to £1000, and multi-part answers being required at the harder stages. When contestants hit the £1,000 Treasure Trail, they were placed in sound-proofed 'isolation booths', where the fans were turned off and the temperature grew, making contestants sweat and look nervous.
The 8 November 1966 (air date) show came from The House of Friendship, Moscow, Russia, where Monica Rose and Natasha Vasylyeva were both hostesses and, because the Communist Party would not allow money to be given away, the big prize was a television set.
The Polish version of this quiz was "Wielka Gra" (The Big Game, 1962-2006).
Female hostesses on the show included 18-year-old Valerie Drew and an elderly cleaner named Alice Earley who was taken on by Green after first appearing as a contestant. Nancy Roberts (1961–1965), Julie de Marco (1963–1965) and Monica Rose (1963–1968), a former accounts clerk from White City, London, was a chirpy and popular teenage contestant who was also recruited by Green. She went on to host his next show The Sky's the Limit.
A feature of later shows was a section called "Beat Blackman" where viewers challenged previous contestant Roy Blackman on obscure sport trivia such as naming entire football squads in specific games, prompting Green to ask: "Who painted the goalposts?"[1]
Directors included Eric Croall (1960–1962), Don Gale (1963 and 1964), Jim Pople (1965 and 1966) and Peter Croft (1967 and 1968). Robin Richmond played the organ from 1960 to 1967.[1]
- 1960, shown 7.30pm on Friday, the show ran for 15 weeks.
- 1961, shown 7.30pm on Thursday, the show ran for 23 weeks.
- 1962, shown 7.30pm on Thursday, the show ran for 40 weeks.
- 1963, shown 7pm on Thursday, the show ran for 37 weeks.
- 1964, shown 7pm on Thursday, the show ran for 38 weeks.
- 1965, shown 7pm on Thursday, the show ran for 32 weeks
- 1966, shown 7pm on Tuesday, the show ran for 37 weeks.
- 1967, shown 7pm on Tuesday, the show ran for 18 weeks.
- 1968, shown 7pm on Wednesday, the show ran for 29 weeks.[1]
In popular culture
- Double Your Money is mentioned in the song "Television Generation" by the Kursaal Flyers, a band from Southend-on-Sea, Essex. The subject of the song (a "lonely girl" who "couldn't get ... out of the house") is described as having been "raised on Bugs Bunny and Double Your Money." Note that this would only be accurate from a "past tense" context (as in, the girl described in the song watched it several years earlier), because the band did not form until 1973, five years after the show went off the air.