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'I went on Crystal Maze and one filming detail left me speechless'

A former Crystal Maze contestant has opened up about their experience on the iconic game show

[The Crystal Maze]

The Crystal Maze was an iconic game show(Image: Channel 4)

A man who appeared on The Crystal Maze has revealed what it was really like to play the game.

The Channel 4 game show saw a team of six strangers enter the maze, where they were led through four themed zones.

Within each zone were a number of rooms, each containing a game, puzzle, challenge or test. The team had to choose one of their members to take on a challenge selected by the host. If they succeeded, they won a time crystal, but if they failed, they either left empty handed or were locked in a room - requiring the team to expend a crystal to buy them out.

Iqbal Hussain was one of the many contestants who entered the maze in the hopes of winning big. The 54-year-old appeared on the show 30 years ago, and has vivid memories of being on the set in Essex.

Speaking to Heart Bingo Online, Iqbal revealed one particular moment that took him by surprise during filming, reports the Mirror.

[The Crystal Maze]

A former contestant has spilled the beans(Image: Channel 4)

"Unlike how it appeared on the screen, you didn't get to choose which game you played - the production team assigned that for you, I'm not sure based on what!" he said.

"The team captain then spoke this as if they'd decided on the spur of the moment. You also didn't have any say in what type of game you got assigned. I didn't want a physical game, knowing my limitations, but that was precisely what I got as one of my games!

"We were exhausted at the end of each day, as filming would start around 9am in the morning and often not finish until 10pm that evening. We'd then be driven back to our hotel, sleep, wake up, eat breakfast and get back to more filming. So, the one hour show you saw on the telly was edited down from many hours of real-time filming."

Recalling a memorable off-screen moment, Iqbal went on: "We had two people locked in! One in the Ocean zone and one in the Aztec zone I think.

"The funny thing is they were genuinely left locked in for the duration of the show, until we paid a crystal each to release them later on - which we did, albeit reluctantly and after many hours. So, if you thought you were taken away to a nice, cosy corner of the filming set, you were sadly mistaken."

[The Crystal Maze]

Filming took place in Essex(Image: Channel 4)

Iqbal was also surprised at how "flimsy" some of the sets were, likening them to "polystyrene that had been painted to make it look like rocks".

He added: "When you're in the Dome at the end, it gets filmed twice - when the big fans switch on, they send the gold and silver tokens in the Dome swirling into the air, but most of them remain on the ground.

"So, of course, you realise that your best chance of winning is to scrabble around on the floor grabbing as much as you can. But obviously this doesn't make great TV, so they then filmed you again, leaping around and clutching at tokens in the air, even though this wasn't what you actually put through the slot to try and win the prize."

After a successful run in the 1990s, Channel 4 revived The Crystal Maze in 2017, but sadly the pandemic led to the show being axed in 2020.

The Crystal Maze is currently available to stream on Amazon Prime Video

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