Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

Every Fortune Huntress needs a financial backup plan, so before I go any further, you should know that what I am about to relate is not it. In the last 48 hours before I left New York, Eric and I were busy packing. But we found time to head up to ABC's studios on West 66th Street to audition for Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, the "weddings week" edition.


I can't say I was thrilled about the prospect. Gameshows aren't really my thing, since they sit in my personal ranking system just one rung above reality tv, which is truly dreadful. (Bring back thoughtful programming! Stop the dumbing down!).



But with a wedding to plan, and no job to speak of, who am I to turn down the prospect of free cash, should it arise? Besides, I comforted myself that since Slumdog Millionaire, this particular show has a newfound cachet.



Auditioning is not as glamorous as it may sound. There was no sound studio, makeup or wardrobe department. Instead, we were ushered into the ABC canteen, and given a Scantron form and a Millionaire pencil (ours to keep!) -and a brown envelope containing The Test.



On the wedding edition of the show (intended for engaged couples to help them pay for some aspect of their big day) conferring between the couple is allowed. But we were told that we had to take The Test on our own. Quite frankly, I was terrified. The problem is that if one of you passes, and the other does not, then the one who succeeded is eligible to be interviewed for the candidate pool. No problem if that happened to Eric, since is a major fan of the show, but it would be a rum state of affairs if I were somehow to get on the show on my own, given my relative reluctance to be there.


We had 10 minutes to complete 30 multiple choice questions, including something on Gnarls Barkley (those who know me won't be surprised to hear that I didn't get that one), a geography question on the location of the Smoky Mountains and a list of beers, where we had to identify which was known as the Silver Bullet (see photo above if you're not sure).

Having taken the test, I felt a bit more comfortable. I was pretty sure I had got 20 out of the thirty questions right. How high could the passing score be? There were about 35 other engaged couples in the room (and more lined up outside, ready to take The Test as soon as we were done). But from those 35 couples, only 5 passed. Plus one single. (Pity the other half of that couple).

You will be happy to hear, reader that the Fortune Huntress and her beloved made the grade. After a short interview with a staffer, we were invited to take a brief screen test (still in the canteen). It may not be much, but even getting to the screen test stage was not a given. One of the five couples who passed was dispatched without making it on camera.

We won't know for some weeks whether we made it into the (admittedly tiny) candidate pool. Of the thousands of couples who audition, only 7 make it to the show. I don't like our odds myself. But I have to confess that it was a lot of fun doing the test (especially once we knew we had both passed)!

On Tuesday night, after dining at the Panda Inn in Aptos, California with Eric's parents, we received the following fortune cookies:
Diana "You shouldn't overspend at the moment. Frugality is important". Pretty accurate, that.
Eric "You will be traveling and coming into a fortune". Huzzah on both counts!

I'll cover off the real financial backup plan in a future post. For now, I'm just lucky to have hitched my star to Eric's fortune-friendly train.