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Pointless saw a first ever Pointless Jackpot winner, based on the random guess of Yamamoto Gonnohyoe as a Random Japanese Prime Minister!
The other categories they could’ve answered questions upon were Wimbledon Achievements, Japan, Superman films and Maths. Personally, I would’ve gone with Superman films, but, of the choices available, Ray and Deb, from the Ribble Valley, went for Japan and had to come up with a pointless answer out of either Studio Ghibli films, Japan’s 2014 FIFA World Cup Squad and Japanese Prime Ministers from 1900-2017.
I could’ve come up with some Ghibli films if I had more than the minute (I could only think of Your Name as a Japanese animation, and that wasn’t from them), while Ray and Deb didn’t have a clue about any of them so made a random guess at three names for Japanese Prime Ministers: Yamamoto, Akahito and Shozi.
Expecting three incorrect answers (and the latter two were), the first one was correct! And it was pointless! The man in question was Yamamoto Gonnohyoe who was Prime Minister from 1913-1914, and 1923-1924. He was born on 26th November 1852, and died on 8th 8 December 1933… 47 years before John Lennon (but that wasn’t part of the question.
As a result, Ray and Deb took home £3,000!
Earlier on, I had a joking thought that they would win the jackpot from the start, because of the couple, Ray works in logistics at a chocolate company, so he’d be able to bribe Alexander Armstrong and Richard Osman with some tasty treats (just kidding).
This is the first time I’ve seen this episode, and it turns out it’s a repeat (not surprising for Pointless) but even still, you can watch it again on the BBC iPlayer.
I can’t find a clip of this posted online, but if anyone does so, I’ll link it here. In the meantime, here’s a full size pic of former (twice) PM Yamamoto Gonnohyoe.
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.