Fed: Andrew G ready to take on gameshow guns O'Keefe and McGuire

AAP General News (Australia)
02-02-2007
Fed: Andrew G ready to take on gameshow guns O'Keefe and McGuire

By Michael Gadd, National Entertainment Writer

SYDNEY, Feb 2 AAP - Australian Idol presenter Andrew Gunsberg is ready to take on Eddie
McGuire and Andrew O'Keefe.

He hits TV screens again as host of The Con Test on Wednesday.

Bumper audiences already have tuned into O'Keefe's The Rich List on the Seven Network
and 1 vs 100 with McGuire on Nine, which air on Monday nights.

Now it's Network Ten's turn to send in troops for what has been dubbed 2007's battle
of the games shows.

"We should have some sort of challenge," says the host, better known as Andrew G, with
excitement.

"Maybe we could have a pronounce-off, Eddie, Andrew and me, that'd be heaps of fun."

Of course, he's joking. Or is he?

In contrast to the contestants on The Con Test who feign intelligence to bluff their
opponents out of $50,000, the host of Ten's new game show could simply be playing the
underdog card.

Either that, he's not foolish enough to take on the force behind O'Keefe and McGuire,
or he's just happy to be in the battle.

"It's pretty crazy that a couple of years ago I was hanging out with my good friends
at Channel V," he says.

"Now I'm piloting a game show ship up against Captain McGuire and Captain O'Keefe.

"It's just that I'm in the little tinny coming up the side of them ... with a Bacardi
and Coke in my hand."

The Con Test's format mirrors PokerFace, a show created and hosted in Britain by Anthony
McPartlin and Declan Donnelly, better known as Ant and Dec, the UK's version of Gunsberg
and his Idol offsider James Mathieson.

What sets it apart from other quiz shows is that while it's an advantage for contestants
to know the answers, it's more important to convince your opponents you do.

"You've got to be either really smart or really shifty," he says.

"If you're both, it's your show."

Each show begins with "the grilling", in which the contestants offer a glimpse of their
life story and are questioned by their rivals.

Sometimes they tell the truth, very often they don't as an intimidatory tactics.

The sledging and lies continue, and are encouraged, in the studio.

"The grilling is a lot like past life regression," Gunsberg says.

"They can talk themselves up or they can say they're a pizza delivery guy, and build
up a facade."

At the end of each round of five quickfire multiple choice questions, which are generally
more complex than anything offered up by McGuire on 1 vs 100, one contestant will leave
the show.

"We celebrate that fact," he says of the tricky questions.

"It's all part of the good old Aussie art of being suss."

At the end of each round a contestant will either "fold", believing the money they
already have earned from their correct answers is the best they can muster or because
they are convinced they are the lowest ranked contestant.

The contestants, not even the live studio audience, don't have a clue where they are
placed on the leaderboard.

If no one folds by pressing a big red buzzer during a 10-second countdown, the lowest
ranked player is sent packing with not a cent to their name.

Either way, they visit Gunsberg's co-host Brigitte Duclos in the "folding room" where
they are greeted by family and friends to find out whether they'd made the right decision.

This is often the most dramatic part of the show as the contestant's decision is often wrong.

As a debutant quizmaster, Gunsberg claims little advantage over the likes of O'Keefe,
whose 6pm game show Deal or No Deal is a hit, and McGuire, who had a winner in Who Wants
To Be Millionaire?

"I just look at Brigitte and we giggle that they're letting us do a game show," Gunsberg
says, before he admits he had a "filthy crush" on Duclos during her days as a Ten newsreader.

As for the return en mass of game shows to primetime, Gunsberg says it's like any trend.

"Why am I wearing skinny jeans? Why do I wear my hair like Greg Evans?" he asks. "Everything
comes back eventually."

"The big question is will I be remembered as the Graham Kennedy Blankety Blanks or
the Darryl Somers Blankety Blanks.

"Do you remember Darryl Somers hosting that show? He did you know."



* The Con Test premieres on Wednesday at 7.30pm on Network Ten.



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