302 The Krypton Factor

First  viewed  :  Autumn  1977

This  game  show  first  arrived  in  September  1977  in  the  pre-Coronation  Street  timeslot  on  a  Wednesday  evening. It  was  a  Granada  TV  production.

The  Krypton  Factor   marketed  itself  as  Britain's  "toughest  quiz" . It  aimed  to  find  Supermen  and  Superwomen  by  testing  various  facets  of  human  ability . The   format   was  tweaked   from  time  to  time  over  its  original  run  but  the  most  enduring  features  were  as  follows :

• A  physical  ability  test  set  on  an  army  assault  course  for  which  female  and  older  contestants  were  given  a  head  start. Although  unknown  to  me  at  the  time,  the  course  was  situated  not  too  far  away  from  me  at  Holcombe  Moor  and  I  live  even  closer  to  it  now.
• An  observation  test  based  on  a  film  clip ,which  climaxed  with  an  identity  parade  where  contestants  had  to  decide  who  was  the  third  pedestrian  to  walk  by  in  the  background  from  a  selection  of  identical-looking  candidates.
• A  mental  agility  test  usually  based  on  memorising  a  sequence.
• An  intelligence  test   devised  by  a  Maths  professor  from  Manchester  University  where  contestants  had  to  re-assemble  a  shape   from  its  constituent  blocks
• A  quickfire  general  knowledge  test   which  concluded  the  programme.

The  points  gained  by  the  four  contestants  on  each  round  went  towards  their  score  or  "krypton  factor"  and  the  winner  went  through  to  a  semi-final.

The  host  throughout  the  original  18  year  run  was   news  reporter  and  anchor  man   Gordon  Burns  who  was  genial  when  facing   the  audience  but  tough and  inflexible  in  his  dealings  with  the  contestants.

I  never  really  liked  it  because  it  made  me  feel  inadequate  but  some  of  that   response   was  artificially  created. For  example , the  intelligence  test   often  took  the  contestants  nearly  twenty  minutes  to  complete  rather  than  the  edited  two  on  screen.   

In  1995  the  show  was  pulled  after  a  major  re-vamp  was  though  not  to  have  worked  but   inevitably  there  was  a  revival  with  Ben  Shepherd  which  lasted  two  years  from  2009  to  2010  which  passed  me  by.

On  the  theme  of  me  not  noticing  things , I  was  going  to  conclude  by  saying  that  we  in  the  north  west  still  get  to  see  Burns  as  co-host  of  the  BBC's  regional  news  programme  but  it  turns  out  he  retired  four  years  ago  !