Wheel Of Fortune

I've just been watching the French of Wheel Of Fortune on telly, and what a cultural experience it was! It was like going to KFC in another country and finding that they offer a different type of sauce or something when you order the nuggets. Not that I go to KFC in Australia, and not that they have KFC here (as far as I'm aware) but once long ago I went to KFC in England and I'm sure they had a surprising Indian twist to their menu there.

Anyway, I've learnt that French people are apparently cheats, either that or the French wheel (of fortune) is ridiculously heavy. One of the competitors, an old lady, apparently had some terrible arm disorder that prevented her from spinning the wheel much, but the other two (able-bodied youngsters) didn't really spin it much further than she did. Most of the time they just gave it a gentle nudge so as to stay as far away as possible from bankruptcy. Boring.

The Lovely Assistant was sort of a departure from what I'm used to, and sort of the same. She was tall and blonde and flashy (normal), but she also looked sort of plastic (in a plastic surgery way. When I say "sort of" I'm being extremely generous. She looked extremely plastic) and she was at least a head taller than the host (who was small and featureless but not at all charmingly Tony Barber-ish). And her dress looked more like a nightie than a dress. At the end of the show, she danced with the winner (who, strangely, looked a bit like the Lovely Assistant, but shorter and less flashy. Just as blonde though)

The French version has a dog. He doesn't do anything, but he's always there watching.

And, most unexpected of all, the French version of Wheel of Fortune is educational. I now know that there's an expression "entre la poire et le fromage". I don't actully know what it means, but I like to imagine that it's the French equivalent of "between a rock and a hard place", except the French think that being caught between two soft places (like a poached pear and a camembert, perhaps) is the worst possible scenario. Or maybe it's like being caught between a beurre bosc and some parmesan. Which could well be delicious.