Reading/watching recommendations

There are quite a few I would recommend so that way you could see how each show is run.

First of all, if you have not done so already, I think it's imperative that you watch this video on all of the U.S. Millionaires so you can see our contestants and how we've done things over here, as well as the kind of questions. Obviously, Britain has had Million Pound Questions that are easy for us, like Steve Devlin and Pat Gibson, but there was a $500,000 question in 2002 Primetime asking who preceded Margaret Thatcher as prime minister, and the contestant walked.



In case you don't know the back story on the last Millionaire, it was a Tournament of Ten. Someone was going to win the million. The top ten with the highest amount won in a regular game qualified for a single million dollar question. If they qualified, they'd be in the lead. They had the option to walk and keep their original winnings, but if they went for it and missed, they'd drop back to $25,000 as if it were a regular game.

I highly recommend watching the U.K. 20th anniversary specials, and I take it you have done so.

I also want to share with you part one of Hooman Vojdani's run. You may know him as the man who won One Million Euros in Austria just last month in June 2018. I think fans in the English language shows especially should watch this because of how so much of it is the same game, but so much of it is so radically different. I pointed out the specifics last month in a thread about his win. Watch this run, and you'll notice many of the fundamental differences.



Next, I want to share with you Rob Fulton's Million Dollar win in 2005.



There's a few reasons I recommend watching this.

#1 It's a Millionaire, and his country's first at that.

#2 For whatever reason, Australian Millionaire isn't as common in internet videos as the U.S. and U.K. are. You could binge watch for weeks and months on end of the kind of content between America and Britain, but Australia is less common. To put things in perspective, Martin Flood's run is not online. This one video is the only thing I've seen of it.



That is all the footage, to my knowledge, that exists on Martin Flood's win on the internet.

#3 Watch the special after Rob Fulton's win. The knowledge, the dedication and the prophecy of his win is truly breathtaking.

There's no way I can go without sharing this. I simply have no words.



No country has had more top prize winners, and more top prize losers than Japan has. There's a ton of good content on Japan, and Mino Monta has entertained me with how he conducted himself on the show, but I wanted to share this with you just to show how different they do things compared to us.



Look at this. It's like they build it up, hype it up like it's a sporting event. They rolled out the red carpet with a grand entrance. They treat Millionaire like a big deal, at least for their celebrities. What other country do you know does this? Sure, the U.S. and U.K. have had numerous celebrities throughout the years, and Australia, too, with Molly Meldrum reaching the Million Dollar Question, but how many of them got the royal treatment before they were about to reach the hot seat? How many were on pins and needles as they made a grand entrance onto the stage? You can tell what Millionaire means to the Japanese culture, and also the use of final answer is interesting.

That's all I have for now. I'm hoping you enjoy this content, and I'm hoping this also leads you to other content in the future. 

Having watched the Million winners once again (I have seen most of them individually over the years), I have a few observations. Firstly, regardless of how often I watch them, I still get the chills when the correct answer is revealed and the audience cheers. The raw emotion that some of the contestants show illustrate how special the moment is.

I've noticed an interesting comparison in comment sections of John Carpenter and Ken Basin's videos. I have observed some commenters referring to them both as arrogant however the consensus I took away from the comments was this was a positive trait in John's case but negative for Ken (given his loss). Personally I perceive this to be unfair; would Ken be held in the same high regard for his antics as John if he too had won the Million?

I am mostly familiar with the UK version hosted by Chris Tarrant. The difference in presentation style between him and Regis is stark to me. I found there to be little to no tension once contestants had locked in their final answer. Is this simply his style or would this be better suited to US audiences? When Meredith made the joke about rounding down the number to get the correct answer, this struck me as something which Chris would have done.

I also noticed that there is no long celebration following the Million win. In the UK Chris would often stand with the contestant and their family/friend and give a speech to the camera about the win.

From the few videos I have seen here, I occasionally found Regis' presentation to be a little unpolished. Examples from the Million winners compilation include talking whilst the contestant's 30 seconds for Phone-A-Friend have begun and asking if a contestant is giving his final answer once it has been locked in. Would anyone agree with what I've said?



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Hooman Vojdani's run was indeed brilliant. I couldn't understand what was being said but I loved the camaraderie between him and the host. I noticed that he didn't seem to ask if it was his final answer a few times, particularly when he seemed to answer before the 4 options appeared.

The set design is very nice, I especially liked the green lights for the first 5 questions. They seemed to use the £1000 lights down cue after each correct answer for questions 5-9 then reverted to the usual cue for questions 11-14. I wonder why this is. I noticed that the UK 20th anniversary specials used a few unusual cues too.

I watched the second part of the video to see him win the million. I find the jump from 300,000€ to 1 million to be very strange. Why such a huge jump? Additionally, I did not understand the 4th ?? lifeline. I expected it to be revealed on the 15th question but it didn't appear. Why is this?

That really is very bizarre that there is so little footage of Flood's win online. Any idea why?

"Economics was actually the right answer... NO" I'm going to make that my signature. Looks like most of the run is on YouTube, that should be entertaining.

That Japanese clip was great, what a build up to the reveal of the Final Answer.

I really appreciate the time you've taken to compile these. Do I win any awards for the longest post? 🤣

Don't worry, for some reason they repeat the episode again in the video muted.

I do remember DOND and the gambles you mentioned. It’s an interesting insight into how we think, isn’t it?

“I’m a fat man” is a great clip. My brother and I are both Millionarie fans and frequent note the differences between audience participation in the show. I love the way that Regis and Meredith (“Audience, are you ready?”) got the others in the room involved too. I feel that was pretty lacking from the UK version. Perhaps it’s a cultural difference.

Poor Igor, he didn’t get any confetti or anything! It was nice to see Regis do the part which Chris normally did with millionaires. It was also weird to see contestants leave through the host’s entrance. I don’t think I’ve seen that before.

Mino Monta really is great. I love the way they dramatically cut to different cameras and even zoom in. He waited so long that the final answer cue stopped playing!

Thank you for linking me to those other forums, I too learned a fair bit about other versions of the show. Allowing contestants to choose which version of the game to play (number of lifelines and safety nets) really is clever.

Thanks once again for all your contributions, I’m learning a great deal from you.

I know what you mean about the UK audiences. Are we a more risk-averse nation on the whole?

I'm not quite sure what you meant when you said that someone "set all of their lifelines". Can you clarify for me?