Hello!

This week sees the first part of a new three-part post from my regular guest blogger – and game show contestant / game show enthusiast / game show host – Ryan Vickers. And this time, our Canadian friend, who you can follow on Twitter by the way (@RealCanadaMan), gets all impressively bilingual.

So… Emporte-le, Ryan!

Which means “Take it away, Ryan!” 

(Well, it does according to Google Translate anyway.)

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My Life In Game Shows.

Episode 16: Au Suivant, 2019

“I get knocked down, but I get up again, you’re never gonna keep me down!” 

– Tubthumping by Chumbawumba

Dear reader, when I had last written you, I figured this might have been the end. Luckily, it wasn’t!

In the summer of 2017, I had a number of whirlwind game show experiences. One of them was seeing a new show (to me at least) called Au Suivant, which was a French-Canadian adaptation of the original Italian show Avanti Un Altro! Loosely translated it means “NEXT!”. Think of it as Who Wants to be a Millionaire, but with a line up. This all boiled down to a warm summer’s night when I found myself at the Radio-Canada studios to watch a taping in August of 2017. I was fascinated by this show (more than you know!) and after the taping, I vowed to apply for the next season.

Quick back story: we lived about 90 minutes’ drive from Montreal when I grew up which means we had all access to Quebec TV channels, most of whom adapted formats from the USA with smaller budgets. I dined on such shows as Wheel of Fortune, Family Feud, Jeopardy!, Street Smarts, Supermarket Sweep and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, helping me to improve my French as life went along. I was a bit nervous to apply and when I finally did, my love of Fort Boyard was not to be, as it was cancelled before I had the chance to apply. I did have auditions for shows such as Le Cercle and Paquet Voleur which required a long six-hour ride to Montreal but they didn’t pan out.

So, it happened this past Easter, in early April 2018 that the contestant call for Au Suivant went out. I wasn’t about to miss my chance. I put together an audition tape.

PRO TIP: As others may have said, make sure that your audition tape is sharp and gets across your personality. I put in an interesting tidbit (I am one of the coaches for Team Canada for ‘sport stacking’), showed my love of travel (by saying hello in front of one of the TV station affiliates when I was away on vacation a month previously) and made myself stand out (I explained why I should get picked by sitting on my staircase, talking clearly with my scuba diving gear in shot).

Take a look at my interview video! I’m not above saying that I did about twenty takes before I got the right wording on the stairs! I also filled out the application and sent it off.

My phone rang about three weeks later when I was sitting in our staff lounge. I read the name on the inbound call and raced to my classroom to find out that I had booked a tryout! And unlike last time, I auditioned for them via FaceTime!

PRO TIP: I had lead time of about two weeks for the audition. I made sure to organize two key things. Firstly, I arranged a room at my workplace that was going to be extremely quiet. Secondly, I recruited a French-speaking friend to simulate the interview – both the “personality” section and the “knowledge” section.

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And that’s where we’ll leave it for this week. Next week, we find out whether Ryan’s audition is successful or not (spoiler alert: it is), and exactly what homework he did in preparation for this, his latest game show appearance. 

Jusqu’à mardi prochain!

Which is “until next Tuesday!” in English. 

I think.