House Of Games: Young Talent Time Game

John continues to explore what happens when you take popular culture and throw dice at it… You can even make today’s game your very own! See details at the end of the article about our exciting self-serving auction…

Last time on House Of Games we reviewed the Thunderbirds International Rescue Game, and I admitted I wasn’t that familiar with the source material. That’s definitely not true of today’s entry, The Young Talent Time Game. I watched Young Talent Time a lot as a child. Partly because I wanted to be a member of the Young Talent Team, singing wholly inappropriate songs with PG-modified lyrics, but mostly because of my obsession with Evie Hayes. Veteran song-and-dance doyenne Hayes was one of the judges on Young Talent Time, but I knew that she was also secretly my real grandmother and would eventually come to take me away to her magical kingdom. She would feed me turkish delight while we flew on her enchanted wheelchair, and Evie would ask me – over and over – if my mother helped me make my dress, and then give me 79 points. “I loves ya, Evie”, I would say. “And I loves ya back”, she would whisper in reply, that being the litany of our people.

But let’s go back a step, shall we?

Boxcutters and Kitchens

I had the pleasure this week of being a guest host on the Boxcutters podcast, along with the ever-delightful Josh Kinal and Brett Cropley. Yes, a podcast – it’s a bit like what I would call “being on the wireless”, only it doesn’t exist anywhere. Or it exists everywhere. Like Skynet from The Terminator.

Anyway, Boxcutters is a weekly show about television, so part of the show involved discussing TV projects I’ve been involved with. I was trying to be on my best behaviour throughout, but God knows if I succeeded. I do have a tendency to go on a bit, so it’s turned out to be one of the longest Boxcutters ever, and that’s even with me manically speeding up as the show goes on. So if you want to hear me rant about Battlestar Galactica, defend Six Feet Under, and jabber on about meerkats, simply click here.

Ironically, even though Boxcutters is a high-tech information-superhighway zero-gravity-haircut hoodie-and-skinny-jean wearing podcast, it’s recorded in a radio station. Old school.

The radio station in question is none other than Melbourne’s much-venerated RRR. This brought back memories for me, as I spent a lot of time at the Rs back in those heady days of the early-to-mid 90s. We were young then, and it felt like the summer would go on forever (or something). Every day promised another Killjoys record, or an Angie Hart lookalike walking up Brunswick Street carrying a sunflower. Remember sunflowers? Remember when they were really in?