Dermot O’Leary has been juggling his This Morning duties with a new social experiment show, Silence is Golden.
Fronting the new show, Dermot O’Leary offers 70 audience members the chance to win £250k on one condition – they must remain silent. The seasoned presenter would rush from ITV‘s daytime studio, to the set of Silence is Golden, often working until late in the evening.
But the constant switch between lively morning antics and deadpan silence left him feeling rattled. “We were filming at least two episodes a day,” Dermot reveals. “So by the end of it, you’re like ‘Someone please say something.'”.
However, it wasn’t just about earning cash; Dermot and the panel had their work cut out: “Our job is to get the money back,” he disclosed. “The channel said to us, right from the start, ‘We don’t have this money to give away.’ That comes with its own pressure.”
Silence is Golden seems simple – stay quiet, win a life-changing prize. But there’s a twist. Dermot introduces a panel of chaos agents – comedians and entertainers whose job is to make contestants break their silence.
Leading captains Katherine Ryan, Strictly star Seann Walsh and Fatiha El-Ghorri onto the stage, Dermot is backed by a rotating cast of performers ranging from mainstream to bizarre.
“We had to keep hitting them with something new, we were almost out for blood,” Katherine admits. “We tried everything – pyrotechnics, snakes, spiders, even nudity.” Some acts were more unusual than others. “There was a baby race,” she adds. “That was amazing.”
The goal? To provoke any reaction. “It’s not just about making them laugh,” Seann explains, “It’s about getting any kind of reaction, whether it’s shock, fear, sadness. Anything to get that noise.”
Dermot explained the high-stakes situation of the game with a big reveal: “It’s £5000 for a small reaction, £10,000 for a large reaction. Everyone’s wired, everyone’s got mics, everyone’s got cameras on them, and we’ve even got a Guinness world record adjudicator, Joanne Brent, who I found on This Morning!”
He continued, revealing how the World Record adjudicator had to reassure and guide the participants post-filming, once the lights were switched back on: “Joanne has to tell them: ‘The light is now on. You can talk.’ And even then, there were trust issues.”
In a dramatic twist, one contestant decided to exit the competition due to their intense phobia of snakes and spiders, without making a sound, choosing the group’s chance of a win over their stay.
Seann Walsh recalls the mayhem that ensued as contestants became increasingly desperate: “People went crazy,” he quipped, “One guy started taking 20 quid a pop. He’d make a noise, there was a score. Another noise, there’s another score. That’s how bad it got.”
The competitive environment led to fractures within the group as Seann noted with surprise: “We didn’t see that coming,” he said, reflecting on the tense squabbles, “They were screaming at each other.”
Backstage, the performers found common ground in their shared experiences. Seann revealed: “There’s nothing the comedian loves more than another comedian bombing. It’s a win-win situation – we can laugh at a fantastic act or at the silence when it falls flat!”.
However, the lack of audience response began to wear on them. “It’s traumatic, we’re used to people laughing,” Seann admitted. “Instead, the audience is just staring at us and it looks like hatred.” Katherine agrees, joking: “I have PTSD from the experience,”.
The final round brought a climax of tension. “Everything rests on that final round,” Katherine added, “So they’re under a lot of pressure and we all relied on that.”
She disclosed her strategy was to focus on groups and couples – particularly those with history. “I was flirtatious at one point, I tried to destabilise relationships,” she confessed. “I have that kind of relationship with my sister – I can’t do anything serious with her.
“My middle sister is getting married in August and I know we’ll be laughing because we’re bullies. That’s what we had to bank on for Silence Is Golden. Those groups of friends that get the giggles for whatever reason.”
Seann, on the other hand, was more direct in his approach and took inspiration from Jim Carrey’s Lloyd Christmas in Dumb and Dumber. “I had a scene from Dumb and Dumber in my head,” he says, “So I screamed in someone’s face. We go to desperate measures.”
Now back on safer comedic turf, Seann says: “I was very happy to go back to audiences that weren’t being paid a quarter of a million pounds to not laugh.”
But he remains grateful to work with Katherine, with whom he shares a surprising past. “We entered the same competition years ago,” he says, “We came joint runner ups but I gave my award away.”