Room 101 is a BBC comedy television series based on the radio series of the same name, in which celebrities are invited to discuss their pet hates and persuade the host to consign them to a fate worse than death in Room 101, named after the torture room in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, which is itself named after a meeting room in Broadcasting House where Orwell would sit through tedious meetings.[1] It is produced independently for the BBC by Hat Trick Productions.

or http://www.comedy.co.uk/guide/tv/room_101/

Clever that - all three speiiings in one sentence. Unfortunately...

Seriously? It's not quantitive easing or even the principle of the wheel barrow.

Speiiings?

He should have gone for a poo


I could survive without foreign food but it does give you more variiety





Good guess. It was exactly 240.

Aargh! I thought I'd fixed that! Me by own petard duly hoisted.

Surely you can find some evidence in the Daily Mail, and put up another tiresome link?

No. You're going to have to think for yoursel here. You can't expect to be spoon fed everything.

Anyone watch tonight's episode?

Very poor IMO

I don't find Katherine Ryan amusing in the slightest and she seems to be on every programme atm.

Ray Mears didn't seem to realise its a comedy show.

Fiona Bruce's choices were dul, dull, dull.

Best bit was Horst and his horns at the end.

Yes definitely the worst one so far.

I was completely lost by the Katherine choice of Cheryl F. somebody or other - who was she talking about? Presumably she was a singer from the Caribbean area?

It seems Katherines talents lie in neither comedy or accents

I haven't watched the show yet (and may not bother based on what others are saying about it) but I guess "Cheryl F" is Cheryl Fernandez-Versini ... the new married name of the singer formerly known as Cheryl Cole.

I've never seen an episode where choices have been met with silence from the audience.

Frank tried to lift things but he got no help from the guests, the choices for Room 101 were so dull / bizarre

I didn't realise it was a new series. The way the beeb has been going I thought it was more repeats.

Just realised the last ep I recorded has disappeared from my planner.

I've Googled Cheryl Cole and yes she is a singer and also on "X Factor", I think from the pictures it could be the same woman but I'm not certain. If she is it doesn't really help me understand the section of the show and the strange accent - does Cheryl Cole speak with a Caribbean accent?

It all seems a bit obscure to me but probably someone who follows modern pop would understand it.

She did say Cheryl Fernandez Versini née Cole née Tweedy, so her previous names were stated and there was a cardboard cut out of her on Ryan's table. They also made a joke of Ryan's rubbish Geordie accent with Skinner mentioning he thought he heard a steel band. If you've managed to avoid knowing who Cheryl (Fernandez Versini née Cole née Tweedy) is then you've done very well!

Rather an odd episode though this week. Mears was serious and Katherine Ryan was just weird. I didn't mind Fiona actually, I thought she got the tone of the show right.

Ryan was probably just shoehorning her act into the show, like she seems to do on every panel show she's on.

An odd thing regarding the show itself is that the categories are now the same every week, i.e. Modern Life, People and Wildcard. I suspect this is to help the editing, as last series they did occasionally show an extended edition and rather than just having an extra category and omitting that from the standard version, they actually shifted items between categories! The winner does have an extra choice but this is in the extended version and sometimes is swapped for one of the choices in the standard edition!
It makes for a very boring show though having the same categories every week.

Katherine was stated as the most persuasive guest even though she had one item ('bread') put into Room 101 just like the others (Mears, 'fakes' and Bruce 'extra pillows on beds'). I wonder what Ryan's extra item was? No doubt as nutty as her other suggestions!

I suppose that the Geordie accent could be mistaken for Caribbean!

I guess I've done very well then . I heard the name at the start but since it meant nothing to me I'd forgotten it (other than Cheryl + F something) by the time I'd come on here. You have to know she was trying to do a Geordie accent to get the joke and I was so lost by then nothing made sense, it was like a series of unconnected statements and very hard to follow if you're not in on it.

There are people out there like me who know nothing about modern pop and girl groups in particular, it's very common above the age of 40. Generally on programmes like Room 101 you can get by and still get most of the joke but this was all so "specialised" like knowing she had a Geordie accent, it may be so strong that it comes through in her singing but you wouldn't know that unless you've heard her sing (maybe fans are familiar with her speaking voice but most singers you know from their songs).

Katherine Ryan, amusing but odd, odd choices.
I think there was enough there in her oddness that could have been milked.
Ray Mears, with his serious choices, I'm still not sure what he meant by Fakes, suspect it wasn't just fake watches, but Frank didn't go into it.

This is where this new format falls over at times, you can milk serious, if you've got time to drill the guests a bit and pull their reasoning apart, don't have to laugh with them.

At least it cut down on Franks cutaway gags and videos, shoehorned the unrelated speciality act in there.

I'm 56 and totally out of touch with modern music and most mainstream light entertainment but even I have heard of Cheryl Cole and knew she had a Geordie accent! Some people are so famous you become aware of them by a sort of cultural osmosis, whether you want to or not.

It's a valid point though. As we get older and the makers/presenters of shows become much younger than us, we'll miss more and more of the cultural references. Then we'll be reduced to watching recordings of old stuff and pining about the good old days...

Ray Mears isn't the first guest to play the "serious" card. I remember Spike Milligan took the opportunity to slag off fox-hunting.

You must have missed the part where Katherine clearly said that she couldn't do a Geordie accent.

Yes she certainly did. I have always liked Katherine, and also room 101. Put the 2 together and it is fun. Not Einstein or rocket science, but a bit of light hearted fun.

As I said I was so confused by it all that it was very difficult to get anything out of it. It's like if someone tells you a story in 50 sentences you could probably recount most of it pretty accurately at the end but if they spoke 50 random sentences then you get very little, it was like that for me as I had none of the cultural references to get it.

She's passed me by completely but then I do go out of my way to avoid this sort of stuff. I tend to switch off completely for anything relating to celebrities and if there is something of such on the TV (such as a trailer or celebrity interview) my wife can comment on it afterwards and I have no idea what she was talking about even though it happened just 30s earlier. I'm not going senile as make it interesting with science, history, politics etc then I take a lot in.

I'm not totally out of modern culture as I often watch Jools Holland and as a result even have a couple of Paloma Faith albums. I also know that David Beckham is married to a Spice girl and know a lot about Ashley Cole as a footballer but not the name of his former wife until now.

Imagine how bad the episode would have been with out Katherine.
Her attempt at a Geordie accent was the best bit of the show for me.
Clip for those who didn't catch it > http://youtu.be/as9z6qK_VDU
"You're worth it, You're worth it, NO!"