‘It's silly, fun escapism!'

The irrepressible Michael McIntyre on what inspired his new all-star game show

- Steven Perkins

Michael McIntyre is no stranger to sending celebrities into a spin. After all, on his Big Show he has taken command of their phones to send scandalous messages to everyone in their contacts list, and loudly woken them up in their own homes for the ‘Midnight Gameshow’ segment.

However, in BBC1’s new 10part quiz The Wheel, he’s taking that idea more literally. The titular Wheel will be packed with celebs who each represent a specialist field of knowledge, and the show’s contestants spin The Wheel, hoping to select the best possible star to help them win lots of money.

It was Michael, 44, who came up with the concept, so TV Times chatted to the hugely popular comedian to find out what inspired it and why the show’s set to be our latest TV obsession...

How did the idea come about?

Game shows and quiz shows are so well-loved, and they always do so well when people revive old formats. So I thought, ‘I’m going to think of one’ – and two came to me in the bath! One of them was The Wheel; it came to me as a human roulette wheel, that was my first thought. The other idea wasn’t so good, so it is on the back-burner!

How does the show work?

The idea was to have a wheel of experts and they each represent a category. Then we came up with the idea of another wheel with three contestants. The contestant wheel is spun, and someone is selected. They rise up, and the idea is for them to keep answering questions until the end, when they can win big money. But if they get a question wrong, they slip back down on to the contestant wheel, and it’s spun again.