Was listening to the [Frank Skinner podcast on Absolute Radio](https://planetradio.co.uk/podcasts/frankskinner/) and he starts off chatting about when he was on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. Co-host Pierre Novellie, mentioned he was Franks ‘Phone a friend’.

And it turns out that if you’re the ‘phone-a-friend’ person then the t.v. company sends a minder to your home to make sure you aren’t sitting there with Encyclopedia Britannica in your hand if the phone rings.

Gosh, that never occurred to me. Must be weird if you’ve got a big family and one Saturday night there’s a big beefy minder standing by the phone! 🤣

by TheManFromConlig

12 comments

  1. Yeah I did know that and it wasn’t just one person with a minder, it was all 3 or 4 of them that you selected before the show.

  2. I didn’t *Know* but kind of assumed they did *something* since you could just google it.

  3. I always assumed they travelled to the studio with you and the “phone” a friend aspect was just for show….

  4. In the new version with Jeremy Clarkson he mentions this a lot. When someone chooses phone a friend he mentions the minder.

    I guess this is more important to mention these days so people don’t Google stuff.

  5. There’s clips of people phoning a friend way back when and getting their friend to google the answer. They brought in minders pretty sharpish after that.

  6. How do they know who is going to make it to the main section from the audience? They can’t send a minder to visit every friend for everyone in the first part of the show. Or do they?

  7. I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue did a spoof version. Humphrey Lyttleton complained about having to dial the number. The “friend” was sitting in the audience and he told them to switch their phone off when it rang.

  8. “…and one Saturday night there’s a big beefy minder standing by the phone!”

    You know it’s not live, right?

  9. Why have we assumed there is some big bruiser lurking in their front room haha! They’ll just get a notary or somewhere close to them to pop in.

  10. Not sure how impactful sending Terry McCann would really be.

  11. Is this not common knowledge?

    Clarkson always asks something along the lines of “Is there one of our people there to make sure you’re not googling the answers” whenever phone a friend is picked.

  12. I was a phone a friend about a month after the ‘coughing major’ incident. It was all done from my home phone.

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