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Give Us a Clue

Give Us a Clue
Presented by Michael Aspel (1979–84)
Michael Parkinson (1984–92)
Tim Clark (1997)
Country of origin United Kingdom
Original language(s) English
Production
Running time 30 minutes
Production company(s) Thames (1979–92)
Grundy (1997)
Distributor FremantleMedia
Release
Original network ITV (1979–92)
BBC One (1997)
Picture format 4:3
Original release 2 January 1979 (1979-01-02) – 19 December 1997 (1997-12-19)

Give Us a Clue is a British televised game show version of charades which was broadcast on ITV from 1979 to 1992. The original host was Michael Aspel from 1979 to 1984, followed by Michael Parkinson from 1984 to 1992. The show featured two teams, one captained by Lionel Blair and the other by Una Stubbs. Later versions of the programme had Liza Goddard as captain of the women's team.

A revived version was broadcast by BBC One in 1997 over 30 episodes, hosted by Tim Clark. Teams were captained by Christopher Blake and Julie Peasgood and the show introduced a lateral thinking puzzle (which the host could "give clues to"). Give us a Clue returned for a special Comic Relief episode in March 2011 with Sara Cox, Christopher Biggins, Lionel Blair, Una Stubbs, Holly Walsh, Jenni Falconer and David Walliams.

The game was based on charades, a party game where players used mime rather than speaking to demonstrate a name, phrase, book, play, film or TV programme. Each player was given roughly two minutes to act out their given subject in front of his/her team, and if the others were unsuccessful in guessing correctly, the opposing team would have a chance to answer for a bonus point.

Series 1 was not networked, Thames and a few other broadcast the series, around 19:00 while most others station moved it to an early time slot including 15:50. By 1980 all station were broadcasting the series in peaktime slot until 1986. No series was made in 1987 but repeats were broadcast on certain ITV station usually around 17:15, during the summer of 1988 repeats appeared around 17:15.

In 1988 the show moved to an early morning slot, left vacant when ITV Schools relocated to Channel 4, before being moved once again to around 15:00 slot in 1989 onwards. The original run ended in 1991, but a one-off special was broadcast on 4 May 1992.


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