Cutting to the Chase on a Quiz Show

It's taken Young Keith a while, out in the garage with a laptop, a screwdriver and all the spare bits he had left over after assembling a collection of flat-pack Scandinavian furniture for the little cottage he and Charlii are doing up ready for the wedding. Odd thing about that furniture. The bookshelves turned out to have traces of clothes horse.

Anyway, he's done it. A fantastic advance in modern TV technology.

You see, once upon a time we had to watch telly live. And if there were adverts we had to sit through them and see what they wanted to sell us. Or nip out to put the kettle on / answer a call of nature. And to get round this, eventually we had video recorders and tapes, and then Sky Plus. So we could record programmes, and then fast-forward through the adverts. Especially important when watching old episodes of Last of the Summer Wine. I mean, I'm not 50 yet, and they expect me to watch all those adverts where Michael Parkinson sells you insurance policies?

But KeithVision is a massive leap forward. It can detect those "human interest" sections in quiz shows where the contestants are asked about their "interesting" hobbies, their unexciting jobs or their dreary families. All in the interests of killing a bit of time to stretch out the programme without adding any more questions - and thereby, presumably, saving money that would otherwise be laid out on quiz question setters. I have a feeling these people may be paid piecework.

So when Chris Tarrant is asking somebody about their wacky brother, or Alexander Armstrong is discussing what school they went to, or Victoria Coren is trying to find anything remotely interesting about the geeks on her show, KeithVision simply jumps to the next question, ignoring that whole "interesting back story" tedium.

If you're watching live, it can even fill the boring bits in, with back-questions from University Challenge or Mastermind. It's been an absolute godsend. I can now watch "Eggheads" in 16 minutes, "Pointless" in 12. I've not tried it on  "Celebrity Millionaire" yet, but we should skip through it in about 20 seconds, I reckon.