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The Saturday evening family game show has always been a popular choice for TV schedulers, and one of the most remembered game shows has to be 321. Hosted by the genial Ted Rogers, the show started with a quiz to find out which couple would get to play the game proper. The main part of the show was then a series of sketches and musical numbers featuring “famous” star guests of the day, who would then come over to the contestants with a particularly obscure clue to one of the prizes available to be won.
321 will always be most remembered for the real star of the show, Dusty Bin. Dusty was a radio controlled dustbin with a big cheery face, who represented the booby prize. If the contestants chose the wrong clue as their final prize, all they would win was a brand new dustbin.
Surprisingly, Ted didn’t really have a catchphrase, but he did have a catch-hand-signal. This involved him holding up his hand with three fingers held up, then rotating his hand and reducing the finger count to two, then a further rotation to leave a single digit aloft. You had to be very careful when copying this to hold your hand in the right direction to start off with, otherwise you could end up with some offensive hand positions!
The clues were the part of the show which baffled most people though. The guest stars would bring across an object of some kind (e.g. a spoon, a piece of wood, a magazine), and a rhyming clue which made absolutely no sense. The clue still made no sense even when Ted would explain it to the couple at an immense rate of knots whenever they chose a clue to reject or ultimately accept. Prizes could be anything from the previously mentioned new dustbin, through a new sofa or some gym equipment, to a holiday or the top prize, a car (usually something like a Mini Metro), but identifying what the prize was from the clue always eluded me.
[...] of letters and numbers didn’t seem to be proper names. Â R2D2 therefore ended up being called Dusty Bin, whilst C3PO was the funny Gold Robot. Â I also remember being very scared for C3PO when Luke was [...]
my dad made the ceramic dusty bins given as a consolation prize x
That’s a cool claim to fame Chloe. Does that mean friends and relations used to get given Dusty Bins as presents at Christmas?
Does Chloe know where I could get a REAL ceramic Dusty Bin , not one of the cheap replicas?