What’ll it be New Zealand: the money or the bag? By hokey! It’s been 50 years since Kiwi game show It’s in the Bag caused a sensation across the nation. We’ve dug out some vital facts about the beloved brain-tickler.
First, there was radio
Many New Zealanders consider It’s in the Bag to be a slice of TV Kiwiana, but before it was a television juggernaut, it had been a huge hit on radio. Selwyn Toogood launched the show on public radio on New Year’s Day 1954. It gave ordinary Kiwis their brief moment in the limelight – not to mention the chance of winning a big-ticket item such as a fridge or washing machine – and it soon became appointment listening. Years later, broadcaster Peter Harcourt recalled, “It was literally true that on the night Selwyn was doing It’s in the Bag, cinemas virtually closed their doors because it wasn’t worth opening.” The radio show ended in the early 1960s when listeners defected to TV in their droves.
TV bosses weren’t keen
In the early ’70s, Selwyn began badgering the NZBC (the precursor to TVNZ) to make a TV version of the beloved quiz show, but execs considered the format “old hat”. In 1973, they finally agreed to shoot a pilot “hoping no doubt that they would prove to this pain-in-the-neck Selwyn Toogood that they had been right all along”, recalled the host. Instead, it became prime-time viewing after just one season.
Sue Scott kicked off her presenting career on the show.
Put a sock in it!
Every week, the audience was kept in suspense as contestants were invited to choose between a guaranteed cash prize and a bag that contained a mystery prize. Sometimes the mystery would be something valuable, but it could also be a booby prize. One unfortunate punter turned down some substantial loot and came away with one of Selwyn’s old socks!
Heather’s wild ride
Glamorous co-host Heather Eggleton’s job was to introduce the contestants, and announce and fetch the prizes. On stage, she and Selwyn were all about the people and prizes, but behind the scenes they shared a passion for horses. “Selwyn loved horse racing,” Heather later recalled. “We always found time when touring New Zealand to sort out a few bets together.” In fact, Heather later married Taranaki dairy farmer Peter Crofskey and over the years bred several successful racehorses.
Selwyn’s sidekicks Tineke Stephenson (née Bouchier) and (left) Heather.
What a trip
At the height of his success, dad-of-two Selwyn was clocking up around 2400km a year, travelling the length and breadth of New Zealand to film in as many towns as possible. He later shared, “I regret having spent so little time with my sons. My wife has virtually brought up the children by herself.”
Just wait a (Ala)mo!
The show required contestants to have a fair bit of general knowledge and one night, when a young woman was asked what the Alamo was, she replied that it was a ship. “I disallowed her answer,” recalled Selwyn, who’d been waiting to hear something like “a famous battle in American history”. However, he later discovered that there had been a ship called the Alamo. (It was well before the internet and the search for the truth involved a trip to the library.) “Both answers were right. We traced the contestant, flew her to Whanganui at Television One’s expense and reinstated her in the programme at the point where she’d been eliminated.”
From left: Sir Edmund Hillary, Joseph Holmes Miller and Selwyn stacking up the suds for a 1956 radio giveaway.
But wait, there’s more!
It seemed like the end of an era when the last show was filmed in May 1979. In fact, it was such a big event, the Weekly ran a cover story about it. In 1986, however, It’s in the Bag was resurrected with John Hawkesby as host and a 19-year-old Hilary Timmins as his offsider. One of Hilary’s abiding memories was of filming in Greymouth after a lot of miners had lost their jobs. One contestant forfeited the money in favour of the bag and won a lump of coal. “He’d just been made redundant, which we didn’t know at the time,” Hilary recalled. “This guy was amazing. He laughed and said, ‘I came with nothing, I leave with nothing.'”
The second version of the show ended in 1990, but it had another run with Nick Tansley and Suzi Clarkson in 1992, and then again between 2009 and 2013 on Māori Television with Pio Terei and Stacey Morrison.
