Michael McIntyre is back with his hit game show that’s packed with huge stars, big laughs and a giant spinning wheel. This series has more celebrities than ever before with the introduction of the ‘Double Chair’, as well as a higher stakes ‘Cashout Question’… Can the contestants answer their way to a fortune?
Celebrities on the first episode of The Wheel are: Jonathan Ross, Joanne McNally, Gethin Jones, Judi Love, Niko Omilana, Clodagh McKenna and William Hanson
- Watch The Wheel on BBC iPlayer and BBC One on 12 October at 8.20pm and add to your Watchlist now.
Interview with Michael McIntyre
Michael, we are so happy to have The Wheel returning to our screens on Saturday night for its fifth season! If you could sum up this new series in three words, what would they be?
Funny. Dramatic. Emotional.
Dermot is back again as a celebrity expert for the FIFTH time, and you have a surprise for him in the form of a new segment….
Dermot, as he loves to be reminded, is the best performing celebrity in the history of The Wheel as he has come top of the leaderboard three times. Nipping at his heels are Jonathan Ross and Claire Balding with two top place finishes each. So, we decided from this series on that any expert finishing top three times would be inducted into the Wheel Hall of Fame, meaning that if a contestant lands on them they will forever be lit in silver and worth double money.
Dermot was overcome with emotion when he learned of this accolade, Jonathan and Claire are fired up to join him and the likes of Richard Madeley and Joey Essex, who have both finished last twice, can but dream.
The Hall of Fame isn’t the only new thing we, as audiences, get to see in this series is it…
This series we are debuting the double chair! For a while I thought it would be fun to book celebs who are a couple, related, a double act or known for working together, so we built a chair for two.
So, our first dual spinners for this series will be Danny Dyer and his daughter Dani on The East End, Torvill and Dean on Ice Skating, newlyweds Jamie and Sophie Laing on Weddings and Chris and Rosie Ramsey on Super Mario.
And for people who think contestants may benefit from having an extra person on the Wheel, this has not thus far proven to be the case due to instant bickering between the pairings.
You have some “resident” celebrity experts returning to our screens this season, but there are some new celebrity faces too. Talk us through some of the new celebrity faces joining you for this series, and who surprised you in this series with their knowledge (or lack of…)
We have lots of lovely new celebrity experts spinning around in the new series. I heard from a friend of mine who was working with the extraordinarily brilliant actor Michael Sheen that he was a massive fan of The Wheel. So, we invited him to come on and were thrilled when he agreed. He was wonderful fun and giddy with excitement to be on what he said was his favourite show. Another newcomer this series was fellow gameshow host and insanely talented author Richard Osman.
Richard also hosts a podcast I love called ‘The Rest is Entertainment’ on which he spoke about his appearance on The Wheel. It was lovely to hear how much he enjoyed the experience and how impressed he was with The Wheel itself. I often take it for granted as I’m so focused on the game, but the fact that we’ve built this huge spinning Wheel suspended above the contestant wheel is pretty amazing.
One of the celebrity experts experienced quite a shock in this series, when a contestant rose up to join them on The Wheel…please tell us more!
In a previous series Penny Lancaster came on with her expertise being her husband Rod Stewart, so we thought it would be fun for Ayda Field to come on with her hubby Robbie Williams as her category. I’d met Ayda before and she’s tremendous fun.
So, Ayda came on, the show had started, and we were all enjoying ourselves – but what I didn’t know was that Robbie had come with her and surprised me and everyone by coming up on the Wheel first as a contestant! It was a total shock for me – and not to be missed.
There are some “out there” categories this year for contestants to choose from. To date, what’s been the weirdest category that a celebrity has chosen to showcase their expertise in?
We’ve got more fantastic categories in this series like Nails, Sea Creatures and Peppa Pig. Over the years some of my favourites have been; Bill Bailey on Elves, Ellie Taylor on Breakfast, Lucy Beaumont on Crisps, Paddy McGuinness on Karate and my obvious favourite, Joel Dommett on Michael McIntyre.
Finally, The Wheel brings so much joy and laughter on a Saturday night. With us approaching its fifth series run, and the hope that there’ll be many more series to come, it’s clear that the series resonates with viewers across the country; can you tell us why you think this is?
The Wheel has become a better show than I imagined myself when I thought of it. I loved the idea of having celebrities bring categories that they deemed themselves experts in, I loved the randomness of a wheel and having humans aboard one, I loved the idea of having the contestants on a wheel beneath pooping up and down – but what I didn’t know then was how much camaraderie and comedy there would be when we all came together with the shared purpose to win lovely deserving people money, and the intense drama and tension that would lead to…oh and the theme tune is clearly amazing!
See also: BBC Unveils First Look at Agatha Christie’s Towards Zero
