Silence Is Golden creator Richard Bacon

In the new U&Dave show Silence Is Golden, a studio audience is given £250,000, but every time any of them make a noise, the communal prize pot is depleted – with comics Katherine Ryan, Seann Walsh and Fatiha El-Ghorri attempting to break them.  Fellow comedians including Spencer Jones, Laura Smyth, Dan Tiernan,Thanyia Moore, Nick Helm and Reuben Kaye are among those trying to make the audience crack. Here, series creator Richard Bacon explains all…

How does the show work? 

There's a studio audience who are given all the prize money in the first 10 seconds and are told, ‘You’ve won £250,000. We’ll hand out the cheques in an hour and all you have to do between now and then is remain silent’. The show is about the studio audience, really. They are our lead protagonists. 

How do you know who’s made a noise? 

We created and built this new and super-clever technology specifically for this show, to ensure we can catch any audience member as soon as they make any noise at all. Every single member of the audience is on camera and mic'd up. Unfortunately for them, that includes not just laughing but coughing, sneezing, crying. In fact, absolutely anything. Shrieking, screaming, whispering!

It happens a lot where they suddenly say something to somebody next to them. A small noise takes £5,000 off the total, and a bigger noise takes £10,000 off the amount of prize money they can win. 

At the heart of Silence is Golden is a piece of technology that's never been used before. I am really proud to say that the format has now been sold to five countries so far, who all use the same tech 

What sort of schemes have you come up with to break the audience? 

We have explosions, unexpected shocks, stand-up sets and nailbiting performances. We reunite people with friends and family they haven't seen for years or surprise them with their favourite celebrity. We try to make them gasp, laugh, talk, shriek or cry. 

We also try to bribe them! In some cases, host Dermot  O’Leary uses money to target individual people in the audience, ‘Right, I'll give you £200 now if you just say a sentence for me.’ However, the act of them saying the sentence will bring the total prize down for everyone. 

One of the joyful things about the show is that it is a lot of money to lose, and it comes down in big £5,000 and £10,000 jumps.

There’s something innately human about laughing, right?

 Whenever I write a new format or show, I always want there to be an inherently recognisable human behaviour within it.

With Silence is Golden, I think a lot about when I was at school. I would laugh in class, but I didn't want the teacher to see or hear. I used to hold my nose, and air would come out of my eye, and it made a squeaky noise. 

If you think of the classroom as being a studio audience and the teacher being all the tech. You think, ‘How can I hide the fact that I'm making a noise I'm not meant to be making?’. I think we've all had that at school! 

You might have had it at a funeral or somewhere else, but you're just not meant to laugh under the circumstances. That’s the heart of the show, and it’s something that we can all relate to, whether you’re sitting in the studio trying not to make any noise or playing along at home when you watch the show.

The audience does get time to relax though with a half-time break, what impact did that have on the game? 

I think it is my favourite part of the show because it was fascinating to watch how the audience would begin to interact with each other, especially when money is at stake. The half-time section gives them time to talk to each other, and often it leads to some interesting exchanges.

 They take this very seriously. Suddenly it’s as though there is a reality show inside this entertainment show. 

What we realised during the edit, was the show is really all about the audience. We leaned into that more and more over the course of the edit. There's one scene where £70,000 is lost in a single scene and when Dermot announces it to the audience, they're all frustrated with one another. 

I have never seen a studio audience so annoyed and build this kind of relationship with one another. We found that really exciting, funny and unusual. 

It must be so weird for Dermot having to host in a silent room? 

Dermot is so important because out of every presenter in the country, there are very few less likely than Dermot to go out in front of 70 people and get no reaction. People love Dermot! To see him struggling with a crowd that are sitting with their arms folded and giving him nothing, if Dermot can't do it, who could?

 The thing you can’t actually see as a viewer, and you can't feel to the full extent, is when you go out to that room and someone says, ‘Good evening everyone,’ or a comedian comes out and makes a joke, it's deadly silent because they're trying so hard! 

This group of 70 people are trying not to make any noise. It is a very strange and often uncomfortable atmosphere in the room! 

Why did you pick Katherine Ryan, Seann Walsh and Fatiha El-Ghorri as your team captains? 

Katherine is already a big part of UKTV, and just top of her game in terms of stand-up comedy, so we knew she’d be a fantastic talent to have on the show. Seann is somebody that I've worked with before and he's got my slight ADHD chaos about him, we knew he’d be compelled by the challenge of trying everything possible to make the audience break. 

And then Fatiha did our pilot and blew us away. Her crowd work is exceptional, and between the three team captains, you have such strong performers who each bring something unique to the stage. If these three hilarious comedians can’t break the audience, then no one can!

Who out of the three of them is the most competitive?

 Well, Seann gets really angry when it’s not going his way! At one point he kept getting off the sofa and going over to the monitor. It was when Jedward came on and he couldn’t believe they were even being allowed on TV. He was just throwing popcorn in the air and marching up to the screen and shouting. I think he was the most passionate!  

That shows that what we do is not just comedy. There are explosions, reunions, Robbie Williams. 

The bribing element is actually a central theme of the series. We bribe audience members to turn against the rest of the audience. It's quite unusual to see that happen, isn't it? 

Who’s more competitive, the audience or the entertainers? 

Probably the audience, I think. I thought they’d just think it was a little bit silly, and they don’t, so they do come in quite determined not to break. 

Did the audience have any wild tactics to try and stop themselves making a sound? 

We can tell if someone has body language going, ‘I'm not gonna do this.’ They're not allowed to close their eyes, which you would naturally do. They did try that and looking away, but that's one of the rules, you have to watch what’s going on the stage. 

We have an adjudicator called Joanne and she went, ‘I saw you cover your eyes, £5,000 off.’ So, we were sort of wise to those tricks. 

Were you surprised by the amount of people who took the bribes? 

I was surprised, actually. In fact, I was amazed, if I'm honest, that they broke that quick, with the bribery. I guess it logically makes sense to take that money because you're guaranteed to walk away with £300 or whatever we offered. But I was surprised they did it that quickly in front of everybody knowing that the rest of the audience could turn on them

 Do you prefer life behind the camera as opposed to in front? 

My favourite thing in the world is coming up with ideas. It's exciting coming up with an idea and then there's a hyper-focus element to it, which is part of having ADHD as strong as mine. It is a slower way of life than when you're on the radio every day. 

But I think the thing that I like most in the world now is that I include my children in that. I started my career at 17 and my career evolved. It seemed to be a good age to be moving into this area. When I started doing production in 2021, I got quite lucky and sold three shows relatively quickly. It led me to this. 

So, it's partly about the evolution of a career and partly that I like coming up with ideas. I like people. I guess I've been around so long that I'm very confident in this environment, I enjoy it. 

Why should people tune in to Silence Is Golden? 

I know I've mentioned ADHD previously, but I do try and put it into all my formats. I try to give them ADHD. It moves quickly. Entertainment is running at you and Silence Is Golden is all chaos, sped up. We are a show in which you can play along. You can watch this with your family and go, ‘None of us is allowed to make any noise.’

It's not a show about celebrities. It is a show about the public and I think that makes it relevant to the audience at home. Considering you're not allowed to laugh, it’s genuinely funny and even shocking at times. I think for me; I hope that it'll create certain viral moments as well that allow people to take note of it.

• Silence is Golden airs at 9pm on Monday on U&Dave and streaming free on U

@uanddave Could you stay silent? Silence is Golden starts Monday 5th May on U&Dave #dontlaughchallenge #dermotoleary #magicmike #comedy ♬ original sound - U&Dave

Published: 29 Apr 2025