Trivia / Pointless

• Acting for Two: A weird one; one Pointless Celebrities had the ventriloquist Keith Harris, and his most famous puppet, Orville. The puppet took his turn like any second half of a pair. And he was rubbish. Keith knew stuff, the puppet didn't.
• The Cast Showoff: Alexander loves to read clues written in foreign languages and routinely gets a hearty round of applause for his pronunciation.
• Christmas Episode: For Pointless Celebrities. This sees the set decorated, with sometimes the celebrities dressing up, and there's normally a musical performance at the end.
• Colbert Bump: An internal example: answers which become notorious for being pointless will usually stop being pointless as a result. This has been lampshaded on the show, particularly with regard to little-known countries such as the Central African Republic^note though news reports of its civil war may have been a factor in that one, Nauru, Djibouti, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.
• Descended Creator: Richard Osman was the producer who originally pitched the show, and played the part of the assistant during the unbroadcast pilot (with the intention being for an established presenter to play the part in the show proper). He made such a good impression that Endemol UK decided to offer him the role permanently.
• Milestone Celebration:
  • For the 200th episode, they had four of the teams who had managed to score 200 in a single round (the maximum possible - two wrong answers) back for another go.
  • For the 300th episode, Richard actually got up from his desk to exchange gifts with Alexander.
  • The 500th episode in June 2013 brought back the 'best losers' from the entire series - those who made it to the final before but got the closest possible to winning, with a larger-than-usual jackpot up for grabs. The couple who made the final actually had the best record - one 2-point answer, and two 1-point answers - but missed out once again (6-1-3 in the final round).
  • The 1000th episode in January 2017 featured Richard as the host and Alexander at the desk. Four teams who had distinguished themselves in different ways (three final-round pointless answers, biggest jackpot win, first jackpot win, celebrity jackpot win) were invited back to compete again.
• Missing Episode: A politics-themed celebrity special recorded in March 2018 featured Alex Salmond as one of the contestants. Following subsequent events, it seems unlikely it will ever be shown.
  • The episode first broadcast on 8th March 2013, in which the highest jackpot is won, has not been repeated since, due to an incorrect answer in the head-to-head round which some felt was an equally valid answer.^note For the clue, "Individual light-sensitive cell in a digital camera", the losing team's answer of "sensor" was deemed incorrect, with "pixel" revealed as the correct answer. The winning team's answer, however, scored 2 points, whilst "pixel" scored 6. When the episode was skipped over during a repeat run in 2014, a document which was leaked to Buzzfeed showed that the BBC had to deal with 1,217 complaints over the episode being omitted.
• Permanent Placeholder: Richard is actually a producer for Endemol, the production company^note in fact, it is he who script edits the UK version of Total Wipeout, and he also serves as executive producer for 8 Out of 10 Cats and 10 O'Clock Live; when they were originally pitching the show idea, he stood in for the role of the Mission Control guy and the directors liked it so much that they asked him to do it for the actual show.
• Promoted Fanboy: Mark Humphries is a fan of the show and once tweeted that should there ever be an Australian version, he would love to be the host. Two years later, he is!
• Rereleased for Free: Banijay, the current owners of the show, launched an official YouTube channel in May 2023, and began uploading episodes from Series 9 shortly afterwards.
• Sleeper Hit: The show was originally commissioned as daytime filler for BBC Two, but proved to be a hit with audiences and eventually started airing in an early evening timeslot on BBC One.
• Star-Making Role: Prior to Pointless Richard Osman worked exclusively behind-the-scenes as a producer, director and writer (among other roles) at Endemol. When pitching the show to the BBC, Osman took the role as assistant and co-host for the demonstration and the executives were so impressed they offered him the job on the show proper. Thanks to his natural wit and on-screen banter with Alexander, Richard soon became well-known and has gone on to present several other shows, such as Two Tribes and the more well-known Richard Osman's House of Games.
• Throw It In!: Xander once misread the word "underparts" (referring to a bird's plumage) as "underpants" whilst reading out a board of clues, and didn't notice until Richard pointed it out. He read it out again correctly, but the misreading was left in.
• What Could Have Been: An American version was planned to air on Game Show Network, hosted by Alison Sweeney of The Biggest Loser and Days of Our Lives fame. The only thing to come out of it was a pilot that never aired; you can read all about the pilot here.