Recently I finished a brilliant book called ‘Rejoice! Rejoice! Britain in the 1980s’ by Alwyn W. Turner. It is a sizeable length though so needs many hours commitment to complete.

Shortly after I saw an episode of ‘Bullseye’ repeated on Challenge television and it immediately got me thinking that pretty much everything you needed to know about the decade was actually available in less than thirty minutes of viewing time.

The host Jim Bowen starts by introducing the competitors who are three pairs. One a darts player and one who we would now call a ‘quizzer’. What becomes immediately obvious is how many of the contestants have blue collar occupations; coal miners, chimney sweeps and welders, for example, in comparison to what would be typical today. The odd surprise appears such as office administrators or even police inspectors but they are few, while the clothes and particularly ladies hair (perms very much to the fore) are case studies from the time in both areas.

The role of Bowen in this part of the show is of prime importance to students of modern history. Some of his attempts at building rapport with the contestants and put them at ease are awkward at best. Even currently though this could be forgiven. More concerning are his attempts at humour. These often centre around innuendo. Fireman on the show are asked about their big poles for example. Or focus on stereotypes. Scotsmen are careful with money is repeated on one show. Both would lead to complaints in 2024 but no one seems to bat an eyelid back then.

The show then starts in earnest with the darts players trying to hit specific segments of the dartboard to give the quizzers a chance of answering a question for a cash prize. The pair with the lowest cash amount at the end of the round are eliminated. The most noticeable change with today is that the questions seem more difficult then compared to contemporary quiz shows. This includes some fairly savage words to spell in the spelling category. As an aside (and in a reverse development) the general knowledge questions on Mastermind latterly seem far easier than they were in the 1980s. Has the rise of the internet actually resulted in the dumbing down of society?

Embedded within the show is the appearance of a professional darts player who attempts to score 301 with 9 darts to win money for charity. Nowadays we are used to our professional sports people having been media trained often with stock answers to questions. This is noticeably not the case here with the host often struggling to get any coherent answers from the professional. Honourable exceptions to at least a certain extent are Eric Bristow and Bobby George, possibly even then ahead of their time.

The finalists are decided by a very similar round to the first of dart throwing and quizzing between the remaining two pairs. The finale itself is largely what the show is most famous or infamous for. In many ways this is due to the ‘come and have a look what you could have won’ catchphrase used by Bowen.

The smaller prizes largely seem to be from an age that is far more than forty years ago and bear testimony to how far the world has advanced technologically in that time. Teasmade’s for example, radio cassette recorders and a huge cordless telephone.

This time warp is then reinforced by the star prizes. In fairness there were some that would be impressive even now, holidays to Barbados for example. However the speedboats (that were often won by contestants that lived in the most landlocked places in the country) and the caravans have definitely not aged well. Pride of place goes to the cars though most especially the Austin Metro.

Whether any of these prizes are still in existence seems extremely unlikely, just like Bullseye itself. Although recent reports suggest it may be making a comeback soon, fuelled by the exploits of Luke Littler darts has been attracting increasingly larger audiences. ‘Super, Smashing, Great’ as Bowen would have said.