Lee Mack confirms 1% Club celebrity special but shares fears ‘no one was going to get past the eighty per cent question’
NOT Going Out star Lee Mack has confirmed that his hit quiz show will be getting a celebrity special, but there’s a twist to the format.
Speaking on Capital Breakfast with Jordan North, Chris Stark and Sian Welby the comedian let slip news of a special episode that has already been filmed and will be coming to ITV soon.
Presenter Jordan had been talking to Lee about the success of the series, which has been on the air since 2022, and he asked if there would be any kind of celebrity special in the pipeline.
Lee was slightly cagey at first but then said: “Well…I just texted someone saying am I allowed to talk about this, but I don’t know? But anyway, yes, we are.”
Fans of the quiz will be used to seeing Lee at the centre of 100 hopeful contestants trying to answer a series of questions that fewer and fewer of the population get can get right.
Until finally they are faced with the ultimate question that only 1% of people polled got right.
Read more about The 1% Club
It seems that Lee is worried that this particular celebrity version of the show may be too taxing for the group they have invited.
He went on to explain: “Well, it’s Soccer Aid special… so, it’s ex-footballers with some celebs as well.
"So, you can imagine we were worried no one was going to get past the eighty per cent question."
Lee said that the production team had actually been surprised at how well the group did, adding: “If I told you that Neil razor Ruddock did really well, you’d be as surprised as I was.”
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The ITV quiz is notoriously hard with most of the 100 contestants knocked out long before they reach the final question.
Recently eagle eyed fans of the show had even deluged the channel and socials with complaints about an answer they were convinced were wrong.
It took an extra brainy viewer to calm things down and explain the reasoning behind the answer.
Speaking to Capital Breakfast, Lee explained that he was originally worried about doing The 1% Club because it didn’t involve people laughing at his jokes.
He said: “ I said, ‘look this will only work if you’ve got a hundred people who aren’t playing so they’ll laugh at my jokes.
“So we did it and we built a rostrum and we had a hundred people who weren’t playing but they weren’t laughing at the jokes either because they were so engrossed in the questions.
“I thought ‘this is actually a good sign they’re not laughing because they’re so bothered about the questions.’ So I thought yeah why don’t I do the show when no one is laughing at my jokes.”
You can listen to Capital Breakfast with Jordan North, Chris Stark and Sian Welby weekdays from 6:00am – 10:00am across the UK on air, and on Global Player, the official Capital app.
You can watch the latest episodes of The 1% Club on ITVX.
