Call My Bluff

This article is about the UK game show. For the US game show, see Call My Bluff (U.S. game show). For the dice game, see Liar's dice.

Call My Bluff
Genre	Panel game
Presented by	Robin Ray (1965–66) Joe Melia (1966–67) Peter Wheeler (1967–68) Robert Robinson (1969–88, 1994) Bob Holness (1996–2003) Fiona Bruce (2003–05) Angus Deayton (2011)
Starring	Team captains Frank Muir (1965–66, 1969–88 & 1994) Robert Morley (1965–66) Alan Melville (1966–67) Michael Flanders (1966–67) Drusilla Beyfus (1967–68) Kenneth Horne (1967–68) Patrick Campbell (1969–80) Arthur Marshall (1980–88) Joanna Lumley (1994) Alan Coren (1996–2005) Sandi Toksvig (1996–2003) Rod Liddle (2003–05)
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language(s)	English
No. of series	25 (BBC2) ?? (BBC1)
No. of episodes	542 (BBC2) 469 (BBC1)
Production
Running time	30 minutes
Release
Original network	BBC2 (17 October 1965 – 16 April 1994) BBC1 (13 May 1996 – 17 July 2005)
Original release	17 October 1965 (1965-10-17) – 17 July 2005 (2005-07-17)
Chronology
Related shows	Call My Bluff (U.S. version)
External links
[{{#property:P856}} Website]

Call My Bluff is a long-running British game show between two teams of three celebrity contestants. The point of the game is for the teams to take it in turn to provide three definitions of an obscure word, only one of which is correct. The other team then has to guess which is the correct definition, the other two being "bluffs". It was brought back to BBC TV by producer Richard L. Lewis.

Examples of words used in Call My Bluff, taken from a book published in connection with the show in 1972, are Queach, Strongle, Ablewhacket, Hickboo, Jargoon, Zurf, Morepork, and Jirble. "Queach", for instance, was defined as "a malicious caricature", "a cross between a quince and a peach", or "a mini-jungle of mixed vegetation". The first and second of those particular definitions are bluffs.

The theme music for the show was Ciccolino by Norrie Paramor.

Broadcast history

Call My Bluff originally aired on BBC2 from 17 October 1965 to 22 December 1988. The original host was Robin Ray, later succeeded by Robert Robinson (from 1967).

Robert Morley and Frank Muir captained the teams. Morley was later succeeded by Patrick Campbell, and Arthur Marshall took over upon Campbell's death.

Various celebrities also stood in as team captains, including Kenneth Horne, Kenneth Williams and Alan Melville.

The original series finished after Marshall's death, although a general change in the tone and atmosphere of broadcasting at the time may also have affected its temporary demise.

The show was resurrected in 1996 after an eight-year rest (apart from one special edition on 16 April 1994 for BBC Two's thirtieth birthday, which still featured Robert Robinson, but this time with Joanna Lumley as a team captain opposite Frank Muir), now as a daytime series on BBC1. It began airing on 13 May 1996 with Alan Coren and Sandi Toksvig as the team captains and Bob Holness replacing Robinson as chairman.

In 2003, Toksvig was replaced by the journalist Rod Liddle, and newsreader Fiona Bruce took the chair. The series finished again on 17 July 2005.

Call My Bluff returned for a special during the BBC's 24 Hour Panel People in aid for Comic Relief 2011, with Alex Horne, Roisin Conaty, Russell Tovey, Tim Key, Sarah Cawood and David Walliams participating. The host was Angus Deayton.

Transmissions

Original BBC2

Series	Start date	End date	Episodes
1	17 October 1965	29 June 1966	37
2	2 October 1966	14 April 1967	26
3	1 October 1967	7 July 1968	39
4	24 April 1969	28 May 1970	59
5	14 September 1970	25 January 1971	20
6	14 June 1971	7 February 1972	34
7	13 November 1972	7 May 1973	26
8	3 September 1973	28 January 1974	22
9	30 September 1974	24 March 1975	26
10	29 April 1976	12 August 1976	16
11	29 April 1977	12 August 1977	16
12	22 March 1978	2 August 1978	18
13	2 January 1979	15 May 1979	20
14	13 January 1980	30 March 1980	12
15	3 July 1980	4 September 1980	10
16	13 February 1981	26 July 1981	20
17	28 January 1982	17 June 1982	20
18	11 April 1983	4 September 1983	20
19	23 January 1984	20 August 1984	29
20	19 October 1984	21 December 1984	10
21	29 October 1985	31 December 1985	10
22	8 January 1987	28 May 1987	20
23	10 September 1987	10 December 1987	14
24	14 April 1988	16 June 1988	9
25	26 October 1988	22 December 1988	8
One-off	16 April 1994		1

Almost every single one of the first 263 episodes from Series 1–8 have been wiped from the BBC archives. The episodes that survived in the archives are Episode 3 of Series 2, Episodes 5 & 38 of Series 4, Episodes 3–4 of Series 5 and Episodes 15–16 of Series 8.

Book

• Call my Bluff by Frank Muir and Patrick Campbell, published by Eyre Methuen, London, 1972.

International versions

Country	Local Name	Host	Network	Year Aired
Australia	Would You Believe?	Peter Lazar	Australian Broadcasting Company	1970–1974
Denmark	Fup eller Fakta	Otto Leisner Erling Bundgaard Zita Boye-Møller	Danmarks Radio	1966–1991
Finland	Kuutamοlla	Santeri Kinnunen	MTV3	2001–2004
United Kingdom	Call My Bluff	Robin Ray Robert Robinson Bob Holness Fiona Bruce	BBC 2 BBC 1	1965–1988 1996–2005
United States	Call My Bluff	Bill Leyden	NBC	March 29 – September 24, 1965

References in other works

• On the musical episode of Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps Donna Henshaw and Janet Keogh (played by Natalie Casey and Sheridan Smith) sang:

Smith: "Skankarific's not a word!"

Casey: "It means terrifically skankified, it was on Call My Bluff"

• An episode of the early-'80s LWT sketch-comedy series End of Part One parodied the show as Scrape My Barrel, where panelists had to figure out the meaning of the word working class.
• In the "Europe" episode of QI (series E), a segment was featured entitled "Call My Euro Bluff", featuring stories about laws in the EU. The panel then had to decide whether each story was true or a "bløff" (Stephen Fry pronounced it "blerff").
• The show (and in particular its host, Robert Robinson) was the subject of a sketch by Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie in the second series of A Bit of Fry and Laurie.
• In the Doctor Who episode "Bad Wolf" Call My Bluff is mentioned as one of the games hosted in the game station.
• In May 2014 the quirks of the show were lampooned by Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse in BBC Two's satirical Harry and Paul's Story of the Twos, where the show was given the name "Speech Impediment" and the word chosen for the panel was paedophile.

See also

• False or True
• Balderdash
• Wordplay (a US game show that aired on NBC from 1986–1987)
• Fictionary

External links

• Call My Bluff (1965–1988) at IMDb
• Call My Bluff (1996–2005) at IMDb
• Call My Bluff at BFI
• Call My Bluff at UKGameshows.comru:Гамруль

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