It’s the 45th anniversary of Sale of the Century, a quiz show institution that gathered Australian families around the TV at 7pm each weeknight to try their luck at the trivia questions while imagining themselves in Mercedes and furs. Based on the US version, the show put down deep roots in Australia and stayed on the air for 21 years.
Genial host Tony Barber was the anchor of Sale, running out to his place at the podium from the moment when the show started in 1980 until 1991, when he was succeeded by Glenn Ridge. Barber’s first co-host was the actor Victoria Nicolls; she was followed by Delvene Delaney and Alyce Platt. Ridge bantered with Jo Bailey, Nicky Buckley and Karina Brown.
While the warmth of the hosts’ personalities and their cross-talk kept the show bubbling along, Sale’s central appeal was to a quintessentially ’80s dream of sudden, life-changing wealth – an aspiration to the cars and yachts and holidays of the Packers and Bonds. Although the show limped over the line to the new millennium, its ratings had been declining, and its cultural heyday remains the era of big hair and big ambitions.