The Birthday Cake Game
Contents |
Host
Broadcast
Remarkable (a Banijay company) for BBC Radio 4, 31 August to 5 October 2021 (6 episodes in 1 series)
Synopsis
How old is a famous person?
Richard Osman (born 28 November 1970) invites three celebrities into the studio. He'll ask them about other famous people who celebrate their birthday in the coming week, specifically how old the star is. Whichever celeb can best guess the ages wins a Colin the Caterpillar generic birthday cake.
It's a very slight format, almost as thin as Simon Mayo's Dead or Alive. Along the way, there are anecdotes about the celebrities, and stories from their life, an expanded version of the chat from Richard's House of Games (3).
There's also a chat with a listener at home, they answer questions prepared by the producers that might clue their age - or throw the panel completely off the scene.
Scores are kept - three points for getting an age spot on, one point for being one year out. Comedians are competitive people, and the annoyed grunts when people just fail to score give a little schadenfreude for the listener at home.
The show began life as the podcast The Birthday Game in late 2019. After a successful launch series (some people talked about it, and downloads were in the thousands, which is enough to make any podcast a hit), Radio 4 picked up the format for broadcast.
Inventor
Richard Osman himself.
Theme music
Mat Osman, the sometime bass player in Suede, and Richard's big brother.
Trivia
The Birthday Game podcast was produced by Remarkable Television (an EndemolShine company), and was published 2 September - 16 December 2019 (that's 16 episodes in 1 series). All episodes were removed from the internet during 2020.
