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Spicks and Specks

Spicks and Specks is an Australian television program concerning the music industry. It currently airs on the ABC every Wednesday night.

The show is hosted by stand-up comic Adam Hills and consists of two teams of three. Each team captain is a regular - New Zealand-born actor/comedian Alan Brough and Triple J announcer Myf Warhurst. The other panelists are guests, usually musicians.

The show takes the format of a quiz show, with Hills asking unusual questions of the panels. Regular segments, which vary week-to-week, include:

  • Substitute, where one panellist from each team sings a well-known tune, substituting words from a text provided by Hills. This is usually a technical manual of some kind. The other panellists then guess the song.
  • Musician or Serial Killer, in which each panellist is shown a photograph and asked to choose whether the subject is a musician or a serial killer.
  • Bottom 100 in which Hills provides each team with a choice of two awful songs and asks them to determine which was rated worst by a given group or list.
  • Common People in which the teams identify the commonality between three musicians.

The final round of each program is devoted to a generic musical quiz. Despite points being awarded for each round, there are no prizes involved, although one episode did offer "thongs and a John Butler Trio hat" from audience members as fictional prizes. This can be seen as one of many examples of an ABC show alluding to the broadcaster's reputation for being under-funded by the government.

The space between rounds is usually devoted to musical trivia provided by Hills and comic repartee between the panellists.

Spicks and Specks is also a song by the pop group The Bee Gees from which the TV show takes its name.

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