Colm O'Regan: Ben Shepherd tips the scales on daytime TV

Day-time TV has its moments. Most of the moments are less than magic. 

On a good day, it might be Columbo and hopefully, you’ll have switched on in time for him to prove the gun couldn’t have been fired the way the sweating witness claimed. 

But more often than not, you flick through the options and groan. There are soap-omnibuses full of unhappy people shouting “You think you can walk in here after all these years and start playing Happy Families?” 

Then someone gets a heart attack and smiles wanly in their hospital bed and says, “I never stopped loving your mum, you know that, don’t ya?”

Or it is the endless property programmes where Derek and Valerie are looking doubtful about the size of a seventh bedroom — into which my house would comfortably fit — while the presenters make a fingers-crossed gesture for the camera while hiding in the sixth.

Or the police getting out of a car to talk to Darren Sidebottom who is wanted for several minor offenses. But mainly he is guilty of growing up in Tory/Tony Britain.

And just when you get more and more frustrated and get closer to a situation beyond which you might not be able to return from, you see it on Up Next: Tipping Point.

Pound for pound, it’s the best quiz on TV. The presenter is Ben Shepherd. He’s agreeable. Crucially he doesn’t get in the way. On the Chase, Bradley Walsh is more animated. He wheezes for air when one of the answers has the word fanny in it. I’m not sneering. That absolutely has its place too. But it is not about the answers on Tipping Point.

It’s the machine. The counter machine with the shelves on pistons. It is compelling. I will never tire of its low-tech drama. No matter how many times I watch it I am brought back to Perks Funfair in Youghal.

I never forget the first time I saw the coin pushers, with their low-cost entry and potentially infinite riches. Their physics was transparent, unlike the black-box bureaucracy of the other slot machines. Standing there with my budget of coins and my feet salty-sandal-scraped after a day at the beach. The day’s sunburn brewing nicely. Chippy-ketchup fingers slippily clutching a dose of fives or tens or just brown money because it was 1989 and the milk quota cheque wasn’t that much.

The delicately balanced overhangs of coins tempting me in, like glacial erratics. The joy of victory. And the absolute howl of rage when some little shite on the other side with anger management issues banged the machine and caused everyone’s winnings to be diverted into a chute. A bit like a drinker on South William St ruining plaza-pinting for everyone.

All of this comes flooding back when watching Tipping Point. It’s more sedate than Perks. There isn’t some scut lashing the machine on the other side. Just a reserved computer programmer from Derby saying “Dropzone Four please Ben”. 

Ahmed from Leeds groaning slightly when the counter drops from one shelf to the next but rides the nearest other counter. Leanne from Weston-super-mare gasping as a seemingly impossible overhang puts her out of the show.

Maybe one day I’ll go on it and just at the end with the Star Prize counter teetering on the edge like the Italian Job van, I’ll just go over to Dropzone 3 and take 50 pounds and walk off enigmatically.

Or maybe I’ll slap the machine and send it down the chute. Most likely, I’ll just select Dropzone Four and pray I don’t get the ride.

Either way, it’ll be great daytime TV. Even if Columbo is on.