Not really, but it got your attention didn’t it? It’s funny how many competitions there are on television these days and how simple the questions are. For example, on Channel 4 last night there was a multiple choice question, as they always seem to be, which if answered correctly would give the winner some incredible prize such as that trip for two to the Seychelles. I can’t actually remember what the prize was so amazed was I by the question “What is the capital of the USA?” Is it a) Berlin, b) Paris or c) Washington DC? Mmmm, tricky but only if you are, or have the IQ of someone, aged 2 years!

Of course, the advertisers make their money by requiring you to text your answer to a number where you will be charged £1 per minute. I’ve never taken part but I can imagine that the welcome message including a description of the prize probably takes 5 minutes, followed by another 5 minutes taking your full details including name, address, marital status, date of birth, weight, hair colour, shoe size, favourite meal etc etc and finally another 5 minutes for you to answer the question! That amounts to £15 at £1 per minute and if, say 100,000 people (not that great a number out of possibly 5 million viewers) enter the competition as a result of that single advert then the return is £1.5 million. Some return.

Very clever advertising, of course, and more fool us for thinking we can win the competition, though presumably somebody does. As I puzzled over the answer I thought to myself what a crazy world we live in! Then another thought occurred to me, what if the competition is meant to be taken seriously and there really are people out there who will struggle to get the correct  answer? After all, we all know how bad our education system is and how many illiterate ill-educated 16 year old dullards are spewed out into the work place once that system has finished with them. What if there really are people out there who don’t know that Paris is the capital of the USA?! It doesn’t bear thinking about does it!