In Japan, the goal of a TV game show is not so much to win, but to entertain the audience. This show that challenges players to climb a slime-ridden staircase is a case in point. Commenters at YouTube assure us that the stairs are made from a relatively soft material, so it doesn’t hurt as much as you’d think to fall on them. -via The Daily What

His demeanor alternated between intense concentration and jubilation. The strategy worked even better than he had anticipated due to the large number of Free Spin bonuses that appeared in his safe slots. Host Peter Tomarken became increasingly flabbergasted each time Larson made the “spin again” gesture. $30,000 was considered an extraordinary payoff for one day on any game show at that time, and the likelihood of missing the whammies for more than a dozen spins was considered to be vanishingly small. By his 13th spin Michael had $32,351 and nervous giggles. By his 21st spin he had $47,601 and conspicuous anxiety. But he pressed on.

The Press Your Luck control booth had grown silent as the show’s producers began to realize that Larson was consistently winning on the same two spaces. In a panic, the booth operators called Michael Brockman, CBS’s head of daytime programming. “Something was very wrong,” Brockman said in a TV Guide interview. “Here was this guy from nowhere, and he was hitting the bonus box every time. It was bedlam, I can tell you.” Producers asked if they should stop the show, but Larson did not appear to be breaking any rules so they were forced to allow the episode to play out.

The amount of game show money Larson won in one day was not eclipsed until 2006. Find out how he did it and what happened to Larson after his big win at Damn Interesting. Link

Mix reality TV and Japanese game shows and throw in the plot of The Truman Show, and you’ve got this unbelievable true story.

MADE IN JAPAN

In January 1998, a struggling 23-year-old standup comedian known only by his stage name Nasubi (Eggplant) heard about an audition for a mysterious “show-business related job” and decided to try out for it.

The audition was the strangest one he’d ever been to. he producers of the popular Japanese TV show called Susunu! Denpa Sho-Nen (Don’t Go For It, Electric Boy!) were looking for someone who was willing to be locked away in a one-bedroom apartment for however long it took to win a million yen (then the equivalent of about $10,000) worth of prizes in magazine contests.

Cameras would be set up in the apartment, and if the contestant was able to win the prizes, the footage would be edited into a segment called “Sweepstakes Boy.” The contestant would be invited on the show to tell his story, and, with any luck, the national TV exposure would give a boost to his career. That was it- that was the reward (along with the magazine prizes).

SUCH A DEAL

As if that wasn’t a weak enough offer, there was a catch -the contestant would have to live off the prizes he won. The apartment would be completely empty, and the contestant wouldn’t be allowed to bring anything with him -no clothes, no food, no nothing. If we wanted to wear clothes, he had to win those, too. Nasubi passed the audition and agreed to take the job.

On the day of the contest, the producers blindfolded him and took him to a tiny one-bedroom apartment in an undisclosed location somewhere in Tokyo. The apartment was furnished with a magazine rack and thousands of neatly stacked postcards (for entering the contests), as well as a table, a cushion to sit on, a telephone, notepads, and some pens. Other than that, it was completely empty.

Nasubi stripped naked and handed his clothes and other personal effects to the producers. He stepped into the apartment, the door was locked behind him, and his strange adventure began.

HOME ALONE

Nasubi spent his days entering magazine sweepstakes, filling out between 3,000 and 8,000 postcards a month. It took him two weeks to win his first prize -a jar of jelly. Two weeks later, he won a five-pound bag of rice.

But how could he cook it? He hadn’t won any cooking utensils. He tried eating the rice raw, and when that failed he put some in a tin can, added some water, and put it next to a burner on the stove. Using this method, he cooked about a half a cup of rice each day, and ate it using two of his pens for chopsticks. (The producers are believed to have given Nasubi some sort of food assistance, otherwise he would not have eaten anything during the first two weeks of the show. To this day it is unclear how much assistance he received, but judging from the amount of weight he lost during the show, it wasn’t much.)

SECRET ADMIRERS

Nasubi didn’t know it at the time, but he was being watched. Sure, he knew about the cameras in the apartment, but the producers had told him the footage would be used on Susunu! Denpa Sho-Nen after (and if) he completed his mission. And he had believed them.

But the producers had lied- he’d been on TV from the very beginning. Each Sunday night, edited highlights of the week’s activities were broadcast in a one-hour show on NTV, one of Japan’s national networks. The show was a big hit, and in the process Nasubi became a national celebrity, one of the hottest new stars in Japan. A naked star at that, albeit one whose private parts were kept continuously concealed by a cartoon eggplant that the producers superimposed on the screen.

NASUBI’S BOOTY

Viewers were there when Nasubi won each of his two vacuum cleaners, and they were there when he won each of his four bags of rice, his watermelon, his automobile tires, his belt, and his ladies underwear (the only articles of clothing he won during months of captivity), his four tickets to a Spice Girls movie (which he could not leave his apartment to see), his bike (which he could not ride outside), and countless other items, including chocolates, stuffed animals, headphones, videos, golf balls, a tent, a case of potato chips, a barbecue, and a shipment of duck meat.

Nasubi also won a TV, but the joy of winning it was shattered when he discovered that his apartment had neither antenna nor cable hookup. (The producers feared that if he watched TV, he’d find out that he was on TV.)

And he won a few rolls of toilet paper -10 months after his ordeal began.

Nasubi sang a song and danced a victory dance every time a new prize came in the mail; when he did, many viewers at home sang and danced with him. When his food ran out, they gagged and sobbed with him as he ate from the bag of dog food he won; when he prayed for a new bag of rice, viewers prayed, too.

ROUND-THE-CLOCK EXPOSURE

Nasubi was such a media sensation that reporters tried to find out where he was living. It took six months, but someone finally located his apartment building in June 1998. Before they could make contact with him, however, the producers whisked Nasubi off to a new apartment in the dead of night, telling him the move was intended “to change his luck”.

In July the producers set up a live website with a video feed and a staff of more than 50 people (many of whom were just there to make sure the moving digital dot stayed over Nasubi’s private parts at all times). Now people cold watch Nasubi 24 hours a day.

Finally, in December 1998, one year after he was first locked into his apartment, Nasubi won the prize -a bag of rice- that pushed his total winnings over a million yen. So was he free? Not exactly: The shows producers gave him his clothes, fed him a bowl of ramen noodles, and then whisked him off to Korea, where he couldn’t speak the language and no one would recognize him. Then he was placed in another empty apartment, where he had to win prizes to pay for his airfare back home.

When Nasubi finally accomplished that, he was flown back to Tokyo, taken to a building, and led into another empty room (it was really just a box, but he didn’t know it).

INSTANT CELEBRITY

Out of habit, he stripped naked and waited for something to happen. Suddenly the roof lifted, the walls fell away, and Nasubi found himself, still naked, his hair uncut and his face unshaved for more than 15 months (he never did win clippers or a shaver), standing in an NTV broadcast studio in front of a live audience. Seventeen million more people were watching from home.

More than 15 months had passed since Nasubi had been locked into his apartment, and it was only now, as he held a cushion over his privates, that he learned he’d been on TV since day one. His weekly show had made him Japan’s hottest new star, the producers explained to him. The diary he’d kept? It had already been published and was a bestselling book, one that had earned him millions of yen (ten of thousands of dollars) in royalties. That bowl of ramen  soup the producers had fed him the day he came out of isolation? The footage had been turned into a popular soup commercial. They told him about the website -it made money, too. All of this resulted in a lot of money for Nasubi.

It took quite a while for all this information to sink in. “I’m so shocked,” Nasubi finally said, “I can’t express what I feel.”

ONE OF A KIND

Today, Nasubi is a happy, successful celebrity. Nevertheless, as crazy as Japanese game shows can be, it’s unlikely that any other person will experience what he went through. Even if someone were crazy enough to agree to be locked in an apartment for such a long time, they would know from the beginning what was up.

But there’s another reason: that much isolation just isn’t healthy. Sure, he looked relatively happy on the show, and he certainly had moments of joy.  But the footage had been edited to make Nasubi’s experience seem better than it really was. In press interviews, he admitted there were times when he thought he was going to go nuts. “I thought of escaping several times,” he told reporters later, “I was on edge, especially toward the end.”

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The article above was reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Unstoppable Bathroom Reader.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

The BBC has a TV program called Fast and Loose. It’s a game show with a segment called Interpretive Dance, featuring David Armand, whom you might remember as the guy behind the hilarious interpretation of “Torn” by Natalie Imbruglia. Now he has a regular job doing what he does so well. -via Arbroath

1. The original name of the show was What’s the Question? After pitching it to the network brass, Merv Griffin decided to change the name to the catchier one we know today. The reason? One of the execs thought that the game was a great idea, but that the game needed more jeopardies. NBC ended up buying the show without even seeing a pilot.

2. The winner with the smallest amount of earnings at the end of the game managed to triumph over the other two contestants by keeping a mere dollar. On January 19, 1993, Air Force Lt. Col. Daryl Scott cleverly bid just enough to keep him afloat. The other contestants got the question wrong and lost everything. No one else has ever won by keeping a single George Washington. The answer? “His books ‘No Easy Walk to Freedom’ and ‘The Struggle is My Life’ were published during his imprisonment.” The question? “Who is Nelson Mandela.”

3. The infamous Final Jeopardy music has a name – it’s called “Time for Tony” and it was written by Merv Griffin as a lullaby for his son. If you’re familiar with the song, no doubt it’s not much of a lullaby to you – it serves more as a reminder that time is running out and you’d better hurry. It was tweaked a little bit and renamed “Think!” Over the years, Griffin estimated that royalties from the theme song earned him roughly $70 million.

4. The record for the largest one-day total ever belongs to Ken Jennings, of course. He’s the only contestant to surpass $52,000 in one day, and he surpassed it by a landslide with $75,000. Jennings actually holds 11 of the top 15 earnings spots. One of these top 15 spots was actually earned during Jeopardy! Kids Week by a 12-year-old from Virginia named Kunle Demuren, whose knowledge and quick buzzer finger earned him $49,000. Photo from Moore’s Lore.

5. Back in the pre-Trebek era when Art Fleming was the host, contestants could start the audition process by just giving the office in New York a call. They would pass preliminary tests over the phone and then set up a date and time to audition in person if the were eligible. Once they made it to the actual office, potential contestants went through a written test and a faux game. These days, the audition process often starts on the Internet during designated testing times. Sometimes a “Brain Bus” also roams the country and tests Ken Jennings-wannabes. If you think you have what it takes, one of the online testing periods is coming up soon – January 26-28 for adults.

6. In the show’s entire history, a three-way tie has only happened once. It happened fairly recently too – on March 16, 2007, every single contestant ended Final Jeopardy with $16,000. They all returned the following week to play again. You can see it happen here – Alex Trebek seems quite pleased.

7. “I Lost on Jeopardy” was released by Weird Al Yankovic in 1984. Original host Art Fleming has a cameo as himself and original announcer Don Pardo shows up to tell Yankovic all of the fabulous prizes he failed to win. The funny thing is, Weird Al was actually on Rock & Roll Jeopardy and lost to Gary Dell’Abate, better known as Howard Stern’s sidekick Baba Booey.

8. Julann Griffin, Merv’s wife, was integral to the development of the show. She helped him develop the unique answer-and-question format when they were on a plane ride to New York in the early ’60s. From 1964-1975, a piece Julann composed served as the theme to the show. It was called “Take Ten.”

9. If Alex Trebek seems a little condescending when he corrects players with wrong answers, as if he would know the answers himself even without his cheat sheet, well… he just might. Trebek is pretty brainy. Time magazine once asked him if there was an easy question that he ever didn’t know the answer to, and this was Trebek’s response:

We were doing some shows at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, and during the commercial breaks I’d go out and talk to the people in the audience. And a little boy stood up and asked, When was the Magna Carta signed? I said 1216. I was off by a year. I know a lot about the Magna Carta, but unfortunately I got the date wrong in front of 6,000 people.

He admits that he probably wouldn’t do too well if he actually had to participate on the show, though, due to his slow reflexes.

Read more of that interview at Time.

The best part of this clip may be the teasers for Roseanne, Coach and Thirtysomething at the end.

Link