Is there a reason this article took so long to be published after this run ended? Yes. And we'll get to that. But in the meantime, please join me as I rank all these episodes from worst to best...
Guest Panellists (in panel order): Su Pollard, Jordan Banjo, Joanne McNally, Rob Beckett, Emma Barton and Joe Swash.
The last placed of the episodes for the year, mainly because the gameplay is poor and the contestants were slightly grating. Probably nice people in real life, but when you get a contestant talking on national television about how she'd waxed her own sister's bum, you do have to think "Were you brought up in a ditch?" Or maybe that's just me and Mary Whitehouse.
But it makes you wonder where things will end up... will there be an episode of Blankety Blank in ten years' time where a gynaecologist shares details of his own mum before tackling the Supermatch Game? Editions of Mastermind where contestants appear during a cystoscopy, answering questions with their willies hanging out? I also mentioned the poor gameplay in this one - while we'll get into the average correct answers later on in the article, this one fares the worst with just ONE correct answer out of forty-two chances (2.38%). Pretty rotten stuff.
So, it's another year, another new Blankety Blank series. And, as always, while some enjoyment was obtained from this new stuff, I must again clarify that I wouldn't be watching it, much less writing an article about it, were it not for The Anorak Zone's look at the original series. Going back over the runs of Terry Wogan and Les Dawson, the articles were surprisingly popular, meaning this so-so revival series is looked at purely for completeness' sake.
As the show is current, then the relentless search through old autobiographies and newspaper clippings isn't generally available to us here, but we will be exploring the ratings, some feedback from a writer, professional contestants and some nerdy stats. We'll also dig in to Bradley Walsh's TV past and, of course, review the episodes at hand. Let's get stuck in...
Guest Panellists: Ashley Roberts, John Barnes, Sue Perkins, Richard Ayoade, Janet Street-Porter and Guz Khan.
Reminiscent of one of the earlier Bradley Walsh episodes, in that you've got a mass of people trying too hard to generate laughs, and in so doing producing none whatsoever.
Richard Ayoade, dragged down by his panel show ubiquity in 2025, nevertheless gets in a few smiles. Sue Perkins is Sue Perkins, and Guz Khan doesn't really get much to do, but altogether they're three professional comedians getting less laughs than Janet Street-Porter. (Ayoade is actually the only new face on this edition, as Street-Porter and John Barnes had both appeared on single editions of the show when it was hosted by Lily Savage. The other three are Bradley semi-regulars.)
There are frustrating moments where comedy could be drawn out of the set-up, but instead Bradley beats a dead horse by asking contestants what they'd like to win. One wants a Range Rover, while another wants a holiday in the Maldives. It's funny because the actual prizes are cheap, you see? Yeah, it's funny. Every single week.
One improvement here are the contestants getting some answers right. Altogether they get 8 matches out of a potential 37, though it's arguable that a contestant should have got a relatively easy one (chosen by four separate panellists) which would have taken this up to 12. Factor in that all 6 of Richard Ayoade's guesses were "funny" answers that wouldn't possibly have been matches and you're basically talking 12 out of 31, a 38.7% match rate, massive by this run's standards. This is a show where not only could anything be the answer, "anything" actually is one of the answers.
It's scarcely worth noting as trivia that there are three Head to Heads played to decide the final winner, as both contestants keep writing down the same answer. Although, in this instance, the final Head to Head would have been played even under the original rules of the show, as both winning contestants guessed the top answer in their respective Supermatches.
Guest Panellists: Angela Scanlon, Rustie Lee, Tom Allen, Jon Richardson, Kiell Smith-Bynoe and Jenny Eclair.
Although this fourth run of Bradley Walsh's Blankety Blank isn't exactly bad, and is certainly better than his first two runs, there is still a sort of "voyage through inanity" to the whole project.
While most episodes will feature one of the panellists pointing to their eyes and then to those of the contestants in a "I'm reading your mind for this answer" way - just a couple of steps away from saying "smashed it" - here once again the core problem is the questions.
The old concepts about "the clue is in the question" and "it's a game you can play at home" are nowhere to be found, as we get questions like Jenny Eclair being named after her favourite dessert, so if Bradley did the same he'd be Bradley [BLANK]. Unless Bradley is particularly famous for a dessert preference, there could be about 300 answers to that one, making it understandable that the contestants get just 3 matches out of a possible 48 on this edition. (Although contestant Dion does add to the low scores, with a somewhat irritating "Surely no one is that thick?" method of play.)
There are just four question writers credited on this edition, so I discussed it with one of the regulars, Adam Bostock-Smith, on X (the burnt-out shell of Twatter). If it's not bad from to quote posts on "X", then after asking him if the questions were deliberately hard, Adam replied: "God knows. That's a producers call. If there's half a chance of being vaguely funny then I'll stick them in the mix. I'm really not very involved." When pressed on the matter, particularly the "dessert" question, Adam conceded: "Yeah. That one wasn’t mine. I agree they should have a little clue in them. But such decisions are above my pay grade."
One thing to note is that Bradley's run of Blankety Blank does include a significant number of physically disabled contestants. This third run has perhaps a lower amount by its usual standards, with just five with physical disabilities. (or at least physical disabilities that we can see.) While Bradley and the panellists understandably steer clear of poking too much fun of such contestants, lest it be taken the wrong way, wheelchair user Ross Lannon makes fun of himself, quipping when Bradley talks to him about what prize he'd want to win: "Knowing my luck, it'd be probably be, like, a treadmill". It's a moment where Bradley doesn't really know what to say, or how he should react. Ross actually has his own write-up of the show at his blog where he reveals he was there for seven hours, and the episode was recorded on 6th April 2024, 14 months before broadcast.
Finishing on some trivia, then this edition saw the show return to the Top 50 after six weeks of being hammered in the ratings by Britain's Got Talent. While we can see the ratings of this one on the BARB site (49th place, 2.23 million viewers), for the first six episodes of the run (not counting the Christmas Special) we must look to Broadcast Magazine, which gives calculations for the lower depths. Although Broadcast usually has slightly different figures than BARB, for the first six episodes it had the show averaging at 81st place with an average of just 1.51 million viewers.
Guest Panellists: Aisling Bea, Kojey Radical, Judi Love, Josh Widdicombe, Michelle Collins and Jedward.
Continuing on with discussion of the questions, what's surprising about modern Blankety Blank is that even when the questions are okay, the gameplay is still so witless. Not that the original run was an episode of Connections, but none of the questions seem to have any thought applied to them at all.
12 out of a possible 41 matches are scored on this edition, the highest amount in a series where the average is 6 out of the same number of chances. Yet a quarter of this number comes from Bradley having his nickname sewn into his dressing gown: "The Incredible [BLANK]". A contestant and three panellists pick "Hulk", which is almost meaningless. There's no invention behind such an answer, it's just stating something basic, a superhero name that has no connection towards the subject matter. Why would Bradley have that as his nickname? Wouldn't it have made more logical sense for someone to have done a weight gag and said "The Incredible Bulk", for instance? Aisling Bea at least "gets it" more than most, writing down "The Incredible Sulk".
Take another question, where cutbacks have led a village to hire not a bouncy castle, but a bouncy [BLANK]. Okay, answers of a "bouncy ball" are quite logical, but there's no connection between it and the original bouncy object. If a castle is something that costs money, then surely the cutback version would be a smaller, less elaborate property - for example, a bouncy flat? A bouncy bungalow? No one really watched Blankety Blank for the quiz element, but such matters make it feel really arbitrary, like it's almost an inconvenience.
Lastly, Jedward make up the panel, following a tradition of "two panellists on one desk" that was trailblazed by Keith Harris, Little and Large and the Krankies. The Anorak Zone has a fair bit of time for Jedward, and it is something of a shame to see them just cheaply used as the butt of jokes on this edition. Yeah, they have the modern habit of saying the word "literally" for no reason, but they're still kids. Well, just about. It's notable that the brother on the left (John) doesn't seem as comfortable with all the mock abuse, or maybe he just feels awkward trying to smile when he doesn't find it particularly funny? He's not alone.
Guest Panellists: Lesley Joseph, Antony Cotton, Shane Richie, Nish Kumar, Rosie Jones and Mel B.
There's not really much discussion of comedy in these articles on modern Blankety Blank, perhaps because you need to actually have some comedy in it to talk about it. But in the old series overviews it used to be discussed a fair amount.
One thing repeated in those old articles was the notion that comedy is subjective. And this edition features a couple of comics who get many debates going on all sides - Nish Kumar and Rosie Jones.
Nish had a viral video back in 2019 when someone threw a bread roll at him during a Lord's Taverners charity event. No one's justifying throwing food at the guy, but what's significant here is a couple of the heckles he received: "tell me a joke" and "don't do politics". For a lot of modern comedy is often like watching a Ted Talk, and an older audience would have been brought up with feedline-punchline.
What's notable is that Kumar doubled and trebled down on the attack, finally suggesting that if the charity had more money they could hire a right-wing comedian who would charge and not do it for free. The idea of a stand-up comedian being "right" or "left" would be bizarre to older audiences who just wanted a laugh and didn't care what cross Morecambe and Wise put into the ballot box. No one ever laughed at Tommy Cooper but then said they wanted to know what party he supported.
But Nish couldn't get off the politics and do straight gags. He's just not that kind of comedian, and as a political commentator he's not going to do the one about two dogs walking in the desert, he's going to go for diatribes. That's the act. It's also stand-up brought up through the Comedy Club and Festival circuit, rather than one honed in the tough working men's club environment.
This is not to suggest that one is better than the other, they're just different. Some of the crowd at the charity gig may have just simply wanted to hear gags, not a lecture. And this isn't just confined to Nish, lots of comedians now do a "set" with "material" that is like an extended sermon with a few mild quips, on either side of the political spectrum.
In The Guardian in 2021 Nish gave one of the main reasons why (in his opinion at least), he's funny, which perfectly explains why some people may agree or disagree, by his own words: "[...] me when I’m angry is funny. I’ve got quite a stupid voice and when it gets loud it really sounds like tyres screeching round a bend.” An angry delivery with a loud voice that sounds like screeching tyres. You can find that funny. But if you don't, that's perfectly understandable, too.
Perhaps the one annoying thing is that Nish does fall into the trap of being very much an echo chamber for a political persuasion, which not only distances members of the audience that don't share those views, but maddeningly works against communicating with said demographic. For if you were a Daily Mail reading, Brexit-voting elder member of society who voted Conservative, you're hardly likely to change your mind and rethink your position by watching someone call you racist and stupid. You're doing more harm than good in that regard, but then it's a reflection of the times where everything's a polemic and nothing is about trying to reach a common ground. (And this bit was originally written back in July 2025, before things got even crazier. Love one another, gang.)
All of this is pretty much an attempt at objective discussion, and certainly Nish and Rosie Jones are a pretty harmless presence on this edition, and he raises a smile when he tells the audience about how Rosie heckled him as his own support act. Do Nish and Rosie generate laughs here at The Anorak Zone? Well, no, not really. But then neither do about 80% of the "comedians" on this modern version of the show. I certainly don't have any particular issues with them, either. Though it's a sad fact that with three stand ups on this edition - Shane Richie also started out as a comedian, remember - the person who gets the most laughs is David, a somewhat grumpy contestant. In all, this is an okay episode that makes sixth spot here.