Punchlines

Punchlines was a comedy panel game show that aired on ITV from 3 January 1981 to 22 December 1984 and was hosted by Lennie Bennett. The show itself was based on a failed 1979 American game show pilot of the same name hosted by Bill Cullen, which in turn, was an attempted reboot of another American game show from 1966-69 called Eye Guess.

Punchlines
GenreComedy panel game
Presented byLennie Bennett
Voices ofRobin Houston (1983-4)
Theme music composerLaurie Holloway
Country of originUnited Kingdom
Original languageEnglish
No. of series5
No. of episodes79 (inc. 1 special)
Production
Running time30 minutes (inc. adverts)
Production companyLWT
DistributorITV Studios
Release
Original networkITV
Picture format4:3
Original release3 January 1981 (1981-01-03) 
22 December 1984 (1984-12-22)

Format

Main Game

Each week, teams of a celebrity guest and a member of the public had to match the punchlines which were given by 8 other guests who were seated in Celebrity Squares style boxes to the questions that were asked by the host, and the first team to reach 150 points won the chance to win a major prize, while the losing contestant left with a Lennie Bennett doll in the first two series, then from series three onwards, they left with a case of champagne and some glasses.

At the beginning of each show, they would all look into the camera one at a time and introduce themselves. From the third series onwards, the Punchliners consisted of a mixture of the original Punchliners and more well known celebrities. The original Punchliners included Fogwell Flax, Bryan Joan Elliott, Aiden J. Harvey, Judy Gridley, Patti Gold and, making his first regular TV appearance, Matthew Kelly.

Bonus Round

In the final, round the winning contestant had to match seven of the eight punchlines correctly to win the star prize but if they failed to do so, they went away with the prize that corresponded to how many correct punchlines they had matched.

Australian version

A pilot for an Australian adaptation of the show, hosted by Jeremy Kewley was made for the Seven Network in 1986. However, it never made it to air since then.

Transmissions

Series

SeriesStart dateEnd dateEpisodes
13 January 198128 March 198113
25 September 198119 December 198116
324 December 19829 April 198316
410 September 198331 December 198317
51 September 198422 December 198417

Specials

DateEntitle
9 May 1981FA Cup Special
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