Monday, Sep. 01, 1952

Winkle-Washers

Last week some 6,000,000 British fans welcomed back the BBC's most popular TV show, the parlor-game What's My Line? Though very similar, the British version differs in a few respects from the U.S. What's My Line? (Sun. 10:30 p.m., CBS-TV).

Sparked by a bad-tempered, red-faced, 45-year-old bachelor named Gilbert Harding, the BBC's What's My Line?, like its U.S. counterpart, has four sharp-witted panelists. These regulars ask pointed questions of each guest in an effort to find out his occupation. On both the U.S. and British shows, the early questions sound alike. Is your work essential? Do you control a staff? Can you eat what you make? But there the similarity ends.

In the U.S., baseball umpires, corset salesmen, jet pilots and bagel bakers dominate the screen. British panelists are more likely to be guessing at such occupations as winkle-washer, teapot-handler, kipper-packer, gentleman's gentleman, or sagger-maker's bottom knocker (a pottery worker). A strictly British question which suddenly narrows down the field: Are you nationalized?

"We're slower, we digress more, there's more tittle-tattle." says Impresario Maurice Winnick. Winnick bought What's My Line? (along with Mutual's quiz show, Twenty Questions) and sold it to the BBC, although some Britons insist that What's My Line? is derived from a 1946 BBC show called What's in a Face?

Contributor of most of the tittle-tattle and digression on the British show is voluble Panelist Harding, whom the BBC once banned for seven weeks from Twenty Questions after he audibly mumbled into the mike that the show was "a silly business." Later he was officially scolded for snapping at a whisky broker on What's My Line?: "I'm tired of looking at your face." Unlike U.S. audiences, Britons win no prizes on their quiz shows. The successful challenger who manages to stump the panel is rewarded with a parchment scroll, suitable for framing and hanging in the front parlor.

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