A former Pointless winner has revealed what really happens when you appear on BBC game show admitting one element is really hard. The Alexander Armstrong fronted TV favourite has welcomed hundreds of contestants since it launched in 2009. Rosie Mullender, 47, appeared on the show in 2019 with her mother Janet, 71, and they emerged victorious, scooping the famous trophy and £1,000 prize money.

However she confessed that what people see at home isn’t what contestants see in the studio making the quiz far more difficult than it appears. “It’s [the studio] smaller than you think. Also, the set up is made for TV. Alexander actually stands in front of the questions on the board, so you can’t see them!

“He stands in a position where they’re visible on camera but not for contestants. It’s hard as you have to memorise them or try and peer around him to see,” she told FruitySlots.com.

That wasn’t the only surprise for the ladies. “The main thing I didn’t expect was that the Pointless trophy is actually really little!” Rosie confessed. “I thought it was so much bigger. If you get through to the final, you get a trophy and you get one each so my mum and I didn’t have to share,” she revealed. she also disclosed it only took “about a month” for their £1,000 prize money to come through.

“We could have won more but the people who appeared on the episode before us pocketed £5,000 so the jackpot was lower,” she said.

Rosie and her mother appeared on the show when The Thursday Murder Club author Richard Osman was still a fixture and she said they met both him and Alexander Armstrong before the show.

“They came around to introduce themselves to us at the podium and say hello. They were both friendly. Richard discovered that my mum is from Billericay, where he was born. He talked to her about that for a while and he made reference to it a few times on the show,” she said.

Speaking about the actual filming she intimated it was a “long day.” “I think we got there at 8 am but they filmed three to four episodes back to back and we were on the final one, so we weren’t called to start filming until 4:30pm.

“They tell you to bring your own clothes and take a few options. Stripes don’t work on screens, the colour red clashes with the background and they don’t think black wears well on camera. You also can’t wear logos.

“They also do your hair and make-up which is a nice treat. It only took about an hour to film a whole episode and we were done for the day.

“None of the real game was reshot and we were able to blitz through it really quickly. But Alexander did do a couple of takes of him asking the questions. He’d get a note in his earpiece and just redo the last line. You were warned that could happen and told not to answer again,” she said.

Rosie Mullender was speaking to FruitySlots.com.