The Golden Shot

People always make the mistake of thinking that Bernie the Bolt was the blindfold shooter. This was not the case. Bernie the Bolt loaded the crossbow; the arrow fired by a crossbow is called a bolt hence he was called ".... the bolt".

But it was a mysterious individual in evening dress "the blindfolded cameraman" who actually responded to the "up a bit, down a bit" instructions. The crossbow was in fact attached to his camera and so when the participants gave him instructions he moved the camera controls to respond.

This role was undertaken by a real cameraman on the show by the name of Derek Chasen.

We endured Bob Monkhouse's cheesiness in the early 70s for the moment when Bernie loaded the Bolt and the camera looked down the shaft of the arrow towards the target.

Bernie was blindfold and tension was in the air as the contestant had to tell him how to aim. Everyone had to say "up a bit... down a bit..." etc. That was the terminology. Anything else was pretentiousness.

Maybe it wasn't as incredibly naff as it sounds... or probably it was.

Sometimes the prizes could be quite big. Like a car (cheapest one on the market). It was working-class entertainment. For a while we always watched it. What else was there to do on a Sunday afternoon over the jelly and ice-cream? After a while we became more sophisticated and wouldn't be seen dead watching it. As it were.

I must slightly correct my fellow poster. True, this was naff, but the first host was not Bob Monkhouse, but Jackie Rae. Also, only old fogies like me remember that the original catchphrase was "Heinz The Bolt", before Bernie came along, although I vaguely recall Heinz making a comeback for one show.

Part of the show's charm, apart from its naffness (many things went wrong when it was on live), was Anne Aston's struggles with mental arithmetic!

Oddly enough, this is one show which I would love to see return, but sadly I don't see it happening. 30 years on, I suspect the "powers that be" would be too safety conscious about cameras dressed up as crossbows!