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2 **** Strictly embargoed until 25 th April 00.01am **** Rylan Clark-Neal hosts ITV s newest game show Babushka. Babushka is a high-stakes game show with a simple objective: find the money hidden inside 10 giant Babushka dolls and keep it. One pair of contestants takes part per episode. They must open 8 of the 10 dolls for a chance to win up to 44,000. Players need to answer a true or false question to open each Babushka. Get a question wrong and that doll, plus any banked cash, is lost. Get it right (and there s a smaller doll inside) they can start banking cash. Contestants can open each Babushka as many times as they want. But, if they push it too far and find no smaller doll inside all banked money is lost. One Babushka is hiding enough smaller dolls to be worth a whopping 10,000. However, if the players open an empty Babushka (there s two hiding in each round) they lose any banked cash. The players get three helps and can double their winnings at the end of the game by finding the golden Babushka. But they need to hold their nerve as once the game starts there s no opportunity to cash out early.

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4 **** Strictly embargoed until 25 th April 00.01am **** Why did you want to host Babushka? RYLAN CLARK-NEAL Q&A Within two minutes of playing the game in a small room with paper cups I knew that it was amazing. I didn t need convincing, it was me bullying the channel saying: If you don t commission this I will leave! Are the dolls scary? We don t let the contestants see the studio until the second they start the game. It s really daunting. You ve got 10 of these girls looking at you. As much as they re nice to look at, they re quite intimidating. They re massive - I m 6ft and when I stand next to them they re the same height. When they re fully open they re like 7ft/ 8ft ridiculous. When I first saw them I was impressed. Did you try and keep a doll? I have already bagsied one of the dolls. I ve already said if I die I want to be buried in one. And, as a gift at the end of the series, I got the first ever golden Babushka. Why have the dolls been named? That was all me. The format exists abroad in Tel Aviv but the dolls don t have names, they re 1 to 10. I wanted Russian women s names. We called one of them Slava and nobody liked Slava. In all the run-throughs everyone ignored Slava because they didn t like the name. They either got her out of the way first or didn t touch her at all. So we were like, we love Slava, because there s a little story there. So I then started creating these characters for the girls I do call them the girls but we found out literally just before we started that Slava s actually a boy s name, so Slava became Svetlana.

5 He added: I love them, I absolutely love them. They ve all got their own characters. Throughout the series you start to believe things about them. You think that they re real people. It s really crazy because people will come on the show and say, Oh, let s leave Sonya because my nan s called Sonya or Let s leave Katya because of Katy so people start to have these feelings towards these girls because of their names. The way I say Anastasia was a joke. In rehearsals we called her Anastasia and then I kept singing Anastasia and I was saying, She s getting really annoyed, she doesn t like being compared which is why she s now known as Anastasia. When every contestant comes on and says What about Anastasia?' I go, Anastasia, don t she gets really annoyed. People believe that Anastasia s got attitude and I love it. I do literally feel like they re my 10 daughters and I ve got to look after them, but at the same time get really wound up by them because they can be absolutely brutal. Were you really keen to do a quiz show? It s something I ve always wanted to do because I love the public. I love working with Joe Public. That s where I just feel at my easiest. The best thing about working on this show is I know nothing. I don t even know what the questions are. Sometimes I have to re-read the questions because I say it wrong and I don t know where the money is. So I m playing three games a day and it s fun for me. And I want everyone to win. That is the thing, I m on the contestants side. There s no we don t want these to win. There is nothing like that. There is no way anything can be fiddled with because those dolls weigh a tonne and it s all computerised. The second that button s pressed that doll will start to open. Even if all of our cameras turned off, even if there s a fire, if that button is pressed that doll will start to open. It s not like there s a little man behind it s a real big set up. I love Strike It Lucky with Michael Barrymore. I watch that now. He was such a good presenter. What I loved about Michael, he was all about the contestants. He s the same as me. I don t give a f*** about an autocue, I don t care about the format, if them contestants are saying something funny, I will run with it. And we ll run with it for the entire hour. That s what I love about that show. I wanted to bring a bit of Strike It Lucky to Babushka. Did you have any arguments on set? We did have an argument. The question was, On the bottle of Heinz tomato ketchup it says once opened you should store in the fridge is that true, or is that false? Well, I ve seen audience members rowing with their partners I told you it should be in the cupboard and I told you it should be in the fridge and the answer was true, it should be in the fridge. And literally you heard half the people go, Told ya! and you heard half the people go Oh! So it s ridiculously easy questions that are just so divisive, it s ridiculous. You get actively involved, acting out the answers **** Strictly embargoed until 25 th April 00.01am **** Oh yeah! I didn t want to do a game show where you just stand there and it s all about answering questions and finding the money. I wanted to enjoy it. I m on their side, I ll never tell them an answer, even if I think I know it. But if I can help in any way I will. So one question was On a UK coin, as you look at it the Queen is looking to the right is that true, or false? So I will go out and I will look to the right, and I will look to the left. Because I will try and help them visualise it.

6 **** Strictly embargoed until 25 th April 00.01am **** QUICK-FIRE FACTS 10 dolls: Tatiana, Viktoriya, Natalya, Svetlana, Anastasia, Angelina, Sonya, Olya, Nushka and Katya. 8 of 10 dolls must be opened per game. They each hold one of the following amounts: 2 x 0, 2 x 500, 2 x 1,000, 2 x 2,000, 1 x 5,000 and 1 x 10,000. Three helps are available: PEEK (open one level of a doll to see if there s another inside) SWITCH (ditch a question and choose another category) and X-RAY (bank 5,000 by the half way stage and the final doll can be x-rayed to see what s inside). Contestants are given the chance to double their money at the end of the game. Two small Babushka dolls are placed in front of them. If they pick the doll that s hiding the golden Babushka they double their money. But, if they pick the empty Babushka, all winnings are lost. Only one couple plays per episode. Babushka airs weekdays at 5pm on ITV from Monday 1 st May. ITV Press Contact emma.daly@itv.com ITV Picture Contact peter.gray@itv.com