Most evenings at 5.15pm I will sit down and watch a TV show broadcast every weeknight on BBC1 (or BBC2 if a Government briefing is taking place) called Pointless, writes Paul Clark.

It is a fairly gentle quiz show hosted by Alexander Armstrong with the assistance of Richard Osman.

The kids often joked I should go on the show with someone as I have got a mind of useless information stored up, second only in the Clark family to Max.

I do not recall where we saw the advert, but Pointless were after new contestants. Max and I decided to apply, not expecting to hear back.

A couple of weeks later I got a call from a researcher (the BBC seems to be full of researchers) asking if Max and I would be available to do a Zoom version of the show the next Monday as an audition.

Max arranged to come back from University for the weekend as we needed to be in the same room.

The format was pretty similar to the show – there were four pair of contestants on the Zoom call, along with yet another BBC researcher who was acting as quiz master.

They were not overly concerned with the answers given, they were more interested in how the pairs interacted with each other.

This was just as well as Max managed to get 100 points with his first answer.

I did not do much better with my attempt.

We had been told at the start of the call that after the first set of questions they would call back any pair they wanted to get more information from.

We were not confident, however 15 minutes later we were called back for a more one-to-one chat.

We performed well as a pair, bouncing off each other and cracking a few jokes.

We were told if we were successful we would hear from them in the next month, we would not hear if we were unsuccessful.

A month passed, nothing. Oh well we thought, it was fun applying.

A couple more weeks went by until we both got a call asking if we could get to BBC Studios in Elstree to film, the next day!

A bit of juggling on Max’s part and we were good to go.

Due to COVID restriction the BBC had increased the number of shows you could be on from two to three, unless of course you got to the final and won the Pointless trophy.

We arrived on the appointed day and were eventually led through to our dressing room.

We had been told to bring two changes of clothes with us for the potential three shows.

A member of the wardrobe team came to see us to make sure our outfits were suitable.

Max had chosen the loudest, most bad taste shirt in his wardrobe, and he had many to choose from.

The wardrobe staff loved it; I was not quite as keen myself.

It turned out Max was wearing the shirt for a bet with one of his housemates.

I was slightly more conservative in my choices, going for the standard issue shirt and sweater.

It was a long day sitting in the dressing room waiting to be called to film the show. We had arrived as requested at 12.15pm, by 5pm we were getting a bit stir crazy. Eventually we were called down to film our first show.

The interaction between Alexander Armstrong and Richard Osman comes across well on the TV, but it is even better live.

They are a genuinely funny double act.

The show is recorded in real time, meaning the broadcast version is 45 minutes, and the recording time is roughly 50 minutes.

The only double takes being if a contestant mumbles an answer or if one of the presenters makes a slight error.

It is a very slick process. Max and I sailed through the first round, mainly due to one of the other contestants making a bit of a pig’s ear of an answer.

The second round was a question regarding Commonwealth countries with the letters U and K in them.

Max went first with Australia and scored a respectable 60 odd points.

We were in a fairly strong position, as one of our fellow contestants came up with that well-known Commonwealth country Denmark, that was until I came up with Bermuda, which was incorrect and scored the maximum 100 points.

The final pair came up with St Kitts and Nevis Islands and sailed through. We were out. That was the last filming of the day. We would need to return the following day to complete our portion.