From our own correspondent - France

I have been reading your blog and I thought you may find this interesting, on a recent holiday in France we stayed in an apartment and there was not much choice on the TV other than French TV Channels ( surprise suprise ! ) MTV and CNN. As a long term fans of DOND you can imagine our joy when on the second evening of our holiday we discovered the French version of DOND ( which we then watched religeously pretty much every night afterwards despite understanding very little ! ).

It is very different to the UK version, from memory, the main differences that I can remember are;

Top prize is 500,000 Euros.

After each successful box opening ( the equivalent of our blue numbers or low reds ) there is happy music played and the contestent usually goes and hugs and kisses the person who has opened the box. If the box is opened with one of the big numbers then cruel laughter is played.

The contestents ( particularly the female ones ) seemed to take it much harder when a bad round was encountered and we actually saw one contestent crying.

After a round of box opening the banker rings much faster than in the English version and seems to simply give the amount rather than engage in any sort of conversation as here. Not once did any of the contestents speak to the banker. The offers also seemed to be a lot higher than the UK even though they are in Euros. People usually played until the last box and we saw one contestent win 220,000 Euros.

There is a lot more geniality and general playing around by the host and contestents than the English version ( at least one contestent does a little dance in every programme ) and the studio seems to be a lot brighter. Personally we felt that the atmosphere was a lot less tense.

Every show seemed to have an older gentleman in the audience who seemed to be taking notes as the show progressed. Some sort of French legal requirement maybe ?

The E220,000 box was called the 'Joker' for some reason.

Well that's about all I can remember, if anyone is going to France for holidays then look out for it. It was usually on around 7 - 7:15 in the evening ( sorry can't remember the exact time ) on the 'PUB' channel.

Oh..and great blog by the way !

Cheers,

Richard.

ICIFM - Many thanks, Richard, I sent you an email before posting this, but I suspect it may have gone straight to your junk folder (I should have used RevealSite's email tool...dooooh)