Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

Host

Stephen Taylor Woodrow (voiceover)

Co-hosts

Various antiques experts including Eric Knowles, Jonty Hearnden, Lorne Spicer, Tim Wonnacott

Broadcast

Reef Television for BBC One, 10 March 2008 to 18 June 2010 (59 episodes in 3 series)

Reef Television for BBC Two, 14 February 2011 to 13 May 2012 (90 episodes in 3 series)

Reef Television for BBC One, 18 February 2013 to 19 May 2017 (160 episodes in 8 series)

Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is: Food: Reef Television for BBC Two, 5 May to 5 June 2009 (23 episodes in 1 series)

Chefs: Put Your Menu Where Your Mouth Is: Reef Television for BBC One, 8 to 26 April 2013 (15 episodes in 1 series)

Synopsis

A mid-morning antiques show which completely changed its format from one series to the next. The general idea is that TV "experts" are shown using their expertise to invest their own money instead of other people's, and the original format was not a game show but simply a documentary series following TV property experts buying houses with their own money. However, for the second series it became yet another in the long line of Bargain Hunt wannabes, with two antiques experts competing to make a profit with up to £1000 of their own money. The experts are given certain parameters (having to buy from a certain place, or a certain type of object) but are free to purchase as few or as many items as they like, and can even do them up before selling them on. Hardly the most original format (and an hour is really too long — the repeats sensibly trim it down to 45 minutes) but some of the experts are good value.

Today's instructions are handed to the experts in a golden envelope.

Jonty Hearnden, Kate Bliss and Eric Knowles on the lookout for antiques

Following a BBC Trust investigation in 2009, the programme was found to be in violation of BBC programming guidelines, although it was noted the BBC was unaware of the practices being used by the production company. The Trust found that:

"...in this case a sofa was being sold. Unbeknown to Reef Television management the real buyer did not wish to appear on camera so a friend stood in for him/her. That sale fell through and the dealer then sold the sofa at auction for the same price... [the BBC Editorial Standards Committee] noted that the reconstructions had not changed the underlying facts about the sales which had taken place... Even so the ESC considered both practices to be unacceptable."

The outcome was that the series in question, along with previously-aired series of Sun, Sea and Bargain Spotting, which was also found to have misled viewers, would not be shown again. However, the ruling was only against the old series; the newly-compliant series 3, already in production at the time of the Trust's enquiry, went ahead and was aired some months later.

Series 4 was moved to its sister channel BBC Two at the much later time of 5.15pm, though by that time it had perhaps had its thunder stolen by the similar (and arguably superior) Antiques Road Trip, which shared the same time slot at the start of 2011.

The show had a spin-off version in 2009 on BBC Two with celebrity chefs competing, cunningly titled Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is: Food and employing what is essentially a less rigid version of the Recipe for Success format. In 2013, it came back, but this time on BBC One under the title Chefs: Put Your Menu Where Your Mouth Is.

Theme music

Theme by Sharpsell.

The remainder of the soundtrack is mostly library music, but the profit summaries are accompanied by the Armand Van Helden remix of "Professional Widow" by Tori Amos.