The latest comeback for the Generation Game broke records last night. Unfortunately, the records broken were very rare vinyl ones, and they were broken by being smashed over the contestants’ heads . . . by other contestants. And that was before the games even began.
Presenter Joachim Pfeiffer, the Border Relations Unification Chief Executive (BRUCE) introduced this Irish Border Special edition, and promptly announced the contestants: Theresa May, Arlene Foster, and Leo Varadkar, representing Great Britain, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland respectively.
There were various challenges against the clock, most of which were never even started let alone finished. The contestants spent most of the two year time limit bickering among themselves.
In the round where they had to assemble a machine gun from scratch, Ms Foster proved surprisingly skilful. Fortunately, the “bullets” provided for insertion were lightweight dummies, incapable of hurting anybody.
Then there was a Play Your Cards Right round. May proved particularly poor at this, especially when the ace up her sleeve turned out to be a pair of twos. Nothing for a pair. Not in this game.
The most interesting round was the Nice To See You Border Construction Challenge. Foster attempted to erect a concrete partition, which Varadkar promptly threw down. Meanwhile, May created an invisible, frictionless model out of theoretical bricks. Nul points all round.
Then for the grand finale, the various negotiating points were arranged on a conveyor belt and displayed to the contestants. They had to agree on everything they saw. Unfortunately nobody had precisely the same recollection of what even one of the items was – even the cuddly toy – so they had to go away empty handed.
Mr Pfeiffer said afterwards, “This is a first I believe. Nobody has ever gone away empty-handed from this game before. They have made history, but not in a way they would have liked.”
Didn’t they do well? Well . . . no, not really. Oh well, better luck next time.