I won The Price Is Right – I walked away with £16k but ‘useless’ prizes turned into a nightmare and cost ME money
WHO would have thought that WINNING prizes on a game show would have ended up costing the winner lots of money?
Well that was certainly the case for Brian Gilmore – who took part in The Price Is Right back in 1995.
The show, which was hosted by Bruce Forsyth at the time, saw contestants try and bag prizes by guessing the RRP of them.
Brian managed to get his hands on £16k in cash AND a number of incredible prizes by memorising item’s prices in the Argos catalogue beforehand.
He won small prizes such as a lamp table, writing bureau, microwave grill, egg cruet set sand fridge freezer.
But was over the moon when bagged the cash, as well as a gazebo, hot tub and a conservatory.
However there was one small problem – he had nowhere to put them.
He told The Guardian: “After the show, the production team said: ‘Right, where do you want us to deliver these?’ And I was like, ‘Woah! Woah! You can’t deliver a gazebo. I’m in a shared house!’
“So I spoke to them during lunch breaks for quite a few weeks, saying ‘I know you’ve got to get rid of the stuff, but I genuinely have nowhere to put it’.”
So Brian had put them in storage, which cost him £100, plus £10 per item that he wanted to store.
“So my money’s going down, I’m paying to store some tat,” he told the publication.
He managed to flog the freezer and microwave, but had to pay to get it delivered to the new owners, and he also couldn’t legally sell the fridge as brand new.
Brian eventually managed to sell most of it, but described the whole situation as like “winning a scratchcard but finding you can’t cash it in”.
The Price Is Right first hit our screens in 1984 on ITV.
It was presented by Leslie Crowther until 1988.
From 1989 to 1990 it was on Sky One, hosted by Bob Warman, then between 1996 and 2001, Bruce Forsyth was the front man.