Although broadcasting is constantly on the hunt for novelty, traditional programmes are no less crucial in the vicious ratings war. While disloyal millions channel-hop for something new, there is nevertheless strength in familiarity. ITV's This Morning, for example, has chuntered on, heedless of different locations or presenters, for the past 17 years. As trumpets signal its unchanging theme tune and that floaty band of celebrities (Cliff, Joan Collins, Blair) scrolls across the screen, at least two million people settle down to watch - which is really quite a lot for that time of day.
Equally, the BBC has a whole raft of shows that never seem to change. Last week I was invited to take part in the classic parlour game Call My Bluff, which has one of those evergreen formats. My fellow participants greeted one another in the green room as if their lives were just the boring bits between one series of Bluff and the next. Only William Hague, who had made a storming appearance on the show before ours, was a bit reticent backstage. Apparently he was "a bit formal with the journalists".
While all this badinage was going on, I was bowled along to make-up. Here I had the honour of sitting next to the glorious June Whitfield, who was musing on the distinguished heritage of the show, from the days of Frank Muir and Robert Robinson to its current elegant host, Fiona Bruce.
My team captain, Alan Coren, told me our programme would be his 549th. "It's fantastic," he said, sketching out his weekly routine, which appears to consist of playing poker, tennis and "this lovely game with friends. And getting paid for it. What could be easier?" Coren's success in notching up half a century of Bluffs is probably down to his ability to make the not-very-easy business of being witty about words such as "dhole" (an Indian wild dog) and "sapsago" (an inedible Swiss cheese) look like falling off a log.
The scatological journalist Rod Liddle, hired as Coren's opposing team captain last year, was slightly less breezy about the task of knocking off 20 shows in five days. "It's exhausting," he groaned. "I write all my own definitions for the bluffs. I even add to the real ones." With sometimes a bit too much brio. He told me how, at the beginning of his captaincy, he had to be brought into line a bit by the producer. "I was begged to remember it was a daytime show." It seems that audiences familiar with the mischievous behaviour of Coren and Whitfield were somewhat startled by the novel choices of clause preferred by Liddle. "I was advised to avoid using phrases such as 'suppurating dog's nipple'," he said sadly.
In our show, there were no dog nipples, but we discussed plenty of other joyous subjects, from head lice to stuffed pork and Las Vegas card games. Fiona Bruce revealed that Peter Sissons sometimes calls her "Fifi", Whitfield launched into a mesmerising riff about bottoms, and that wag Charles Collingwood from The Archers made a remark that probably means my first outing on the programme will also be my last. "Rosie, my dear," he said drily, "I have noticed that when you are lying you turn a rather fetching colour of pink." Which, for a game based wholly on fibs, is a bit of a problem.
