Around the world in 28 days

For the benefit of those members of the staff who may be planning a trip round the world this summer, we publish below an article by programme director DON GALE about the circumnavigation of the globe made by the ‘Double Your Money’ unit. It will be of no help to them at all.

 

With shouts of ‘Have a nice holiday – enjoy yourselves’ ringing in our ears, eight members of a unit of nine gathered at London airport. Needless to say the non-arrival was H. [Hughie – Ed] Green, who seems to have a special clause in his contract that guarantees late arrival.

With collective suggestions from the unit ranging from ‘we can always post sync’ and ‘we can do the reverses in Lincoln’s Inn Fields’ the unit passed through the appropriate gate on its way to the aircraft. H. Green arrived eventually at the airport and, with Ken Wyatt as a ministering angel, was rushed through the booking-in formalities and arrived breathless but unabashed, to be greeted with various coarse comments by the unit. Perhaps with Berlin in mind and the possibility that BOAC might be talked into letting Green into the sharp end of the aircraft, there was an immediate rush to the insurance counter.

During our journey to India, the unit were given a long ‘multi-coloured’ iced cake suitably inscribed ‘Double Your Money’ and garnished with £ signs. Not knowing where to put the cake, and not wishing to be told, it was decided to let the steward cut it up and distribute it to all the passengers on the aircraft. In this way, we disposed of the cake and ensured that any noxious contents planted in this delicacy by critics of the programme got a good distribution. This, of course, is known as audience participation.

Another thing that came to light on this trip was an aversion that Hughie Green has to people sleeping on aircraft. If any member of the unit managed to drop off, this sufferer from insomnia would shake them and enrol them into his club. If you tried to persist in sleeping, not only were you woken up again, but you were sat next to, and engaged in conversation.

Fourteen hours later, the unit arrived in New Delhi, and was conducted to a large baroque edifice which was the hotel. Armies of porters descended on the luggage and under the maternal supervision of our unit manager, the fracas was stopped from being a riot and transformed to the comparative quiet of say, the ‘Ready, Steady, Go!’ studio. But, dear reader, the weekend didn’t begin here, it ended in calamity when, on ordering beer (purely on medical grounds, of course, as the water is suspect) a gaily ‘turbaned’ gentleman giving an impression of Peter Sellers said: ‘Very sorry, dry day, no drink.’ Even H.G. was speechless.

Other memories of the trip after this great shock are rather confused, but some of course do still stick in the mind.

There were the strange antics of director and quiz master in front of the Taj Mahal which confused a large percentage of the local population when the first contestant failed his first question after being brought all the way from London.

It was with little regret that eight members boarded their plane to leave India, even though they were wondering what the next contestant would be like and whether their own personal stomach upsets would be settled by New Zealand.

We would like to point out that after our arrival in North Island, N.Z., the fact that it rained and floods covered most of the island had nothing whatsoever to do with our new contestant coming from Manchester. We would also like to point out that the national disaster referred to by the Prime Minister during our stay was these self-same floods, and had nothing to do with the programme or the unit.

A rather odd incident concerned the kangaroo that appeared in the show in Australia. It was quite definitely male, but was confused by being named Mabel. Still, that’s show business.

Other events included buying tailored shoes in Hong Kong. There were four fittings and still they were completed in less than 24 hours. There was the rudeness and slowness of the American customs at Honolulu and the rain that fell in Antigua against all local knowledge but which was attributed by the unit to our contestant. There was Green turning blue during the filming at Niagara where the temperature was 18 degrees Fahrenheit while two days previously we had been filming in a temperature of 88 degrees Fahrenheit.

These and many others were memorable incidents but the facts are that the unit flew 39,500 miles, filmed in five countries and recorded in Canadian and Australian studios three one-hour tapes in 28 days.