Who Wants to be a Millionaire - Yeh right

My first question has to be which department will have major budget cuts if any one wins the major prize on TV ONE's new tuesday night marquee show.

Of course Who wants to be a millionaire is probably the most successful quiz show brand in history with many of the mega commercial networks around the globe paying out millions in prizes over the years.

But the kiwis have done it on the cheap by borrowing the Channel 9 Studio in Melbourne and only flying across those selected to actually face the 15 questions asked by host Mike Hosking and therefore ditching the fastest finger first round, an integral part of the shows excitement around the globe.

I have been fortunate or unfortunate enough to have experienced WWTBAM in Britain and in Australia and the first questions are to get the contestants settled and with a safe grand in their pockets.

In NZ they are not!!, the poor girl who represented the first ever contestant in NZ had used all her lifelines by $500 and didn't make it to the safe grand !! not a very good start for the Kiwi version. For the cynical like yours truly, it looked like the bosses at TV One had an after thought "shit what do we do if any one gets a roll on and wins some money" ............." We better not take that chance"

As for the host, ONE brought across a cardboard cut-out of Mike Hosking and got an expat Kiwi from the centrelink office in Collins street to ask the questions or that's what it looked like such was the charisma of the Close Up presenter.

Citron Restaurant Wellington NZ

My first experience of Citron was a really bad one, I was unwell so was not keen to go, but the meal was rounded off with the most bizarre dessert, I or probably most of the world would have ever set their eyes on: the deconstructed cheese cake. This consisted of crumbs, a thimble of watermelon milkshake and teaspoon of cheese cake topping and will stay with me for the rest of my life.

That aside I was prepared to have my mind changed.

The fact that they did have mineral water ice cubes when asked did indicate a certain level of poncieness ( is that a word) and the rest of the night would prove the point.

Dinner

1st course

Beef Cappaccio with horseradish foam.

Pretty awful really it looked like catfood that someone had dribbled on and tasted much the same.

2nd Course

Strudel of assorted mushrooms w baby beets, fennel & spiced raita.

This was ok, if a little dry but not up to the standard you would expect from one of Wellington's finest restaurants

3rd Course

Chefs Soup

Small is good at Citron and this thimble of Soup made such an impression on me I have forgotten what was in it.

4th Course

Beef ribeye w braised shin, baked polenta, Brussels & escargot

This was rubbish, I enjoyed the snails but when you order a ribeye I think most people would agree you expect something substantial. This ribeye was more a pupil than the eye and was tough. The less said the better.


5th Course

Cheese

Both the cheeses served were good the gippsland Blue and the Hawkes Bay Gouda.


6th Course

dessert

Toasted almond pannacotta w port poached pear & sorbet

This was the best bit of the night, firstly because we were almost going home and secondly because it actually lived up to the restaurants reputation, it was good.

TVNZ SERVE UP DREADFUL OLYMPIC COVERAGE

Well 5 days into the 2008 Olympics I can safely say I have never seen such awful TV coverage, TVNZ are quite dreadful.

Since Athens 2004 TVNZ has screened no significant sporting event and prior to that not since Sydney 2000 and it shows.

It began embarrassingly on Friday night with Keith Quinn, who I respected hugely as a rugby commentator in his heyday, stumbling through the Opening Ceremony. He really did sound like a guy that had not called anything for 4 years and had prepared for the event in 4 minutes. Frequently Quinn gave us dodgy pronunciations, mixed up female and male athletes at regular intervals. I'm sorry Keith you need to stick to advertising Funeral plans.

As we moved into competition days we are subjected to very limited live coverage and those events supposed to be live are interrupted by ad breaks, the games seem to stop whilst TVNZ takes these breaks, surely it was NBC that paid all the dough for the rights.

TVNZ other commentators are fairing little better John MacBeths last big gig for TVNZ was the world bowls in Christchurch hardly a decent warm up for the Olympics, and it showed, on monday as he completely missed the fact that Kirsty Coventry had set a new world record in the semis of the Womens 100 backstoke.

Dear old Peter Montgomery obviously knows his stuff, but Peter save your excitement for the finals not the heats.

Thank the lord SKY have the rights to London 2012.

4th August 2008 Olympics and Drugs

Humans have been eating things, drinking things, and more recently injecting things to help them perform at a higher standard since time began so why do we insist on banning certain drugs that will help athletes/sports people perform better.

Where did this all start, the drugs in sport thing?
I bet you that 50 years ago had these so called performance enhancing drugs been available then they would have taken them and had no problem and we wouldn't have the mess we have now.

I actually admire the East German and Soviet athletes of the 70's and early 80's ( Jarmila Kratochvilova excepted, surely a bloke.) and think the whole drug thing started because the West was loosing regularly to the East. Therefore the drugs in sport thing is a hangover from the cold war, the fact of the matter is the East was doing it better than the west and as the west had the adminstrative might decided to ban the drugs.

What is this issue here? since time began humans have been trying to run faster, jump higher, throw further.

Isn't the Olympic motto faster,higher, stronger and whatever means the athletes have used to get there is their business.

It really gets to me that we have to go through this rubbish every time the Olympics comes round.

In my view, just let them all get on with it and you solve the problem instantly and save huge amounts of money.

In 1988 Ben Johnson had a couple of tablets now and again to help him train and and recover, the guy has been vilified as a cheat for 20 years, isn't it time that we faced facts that his win at the Seoul Olympics was one of the great runs of all time.

I have a bigger problem with the South African guy running with artificial limbs as these are a mechanical enhancement of the human body.