Name 13 items commonly found in women’s handbags. Did your answer include Rawlplugs? Probably not, Ofcom, the regulator, has ruled after finding ITV’s quiz channel, ITV Play, guilty of a serious breach of broadcasting rules.

Last September Quizmania asked viewers to identify “things that you find in a woman’s handbag” in order to win cash prizes. It gave as an example a mobile phone. Calls were charged at 75p per minute but, by the game’s conclusion, only 7 out of 13 correct entries had been recorded.

A viewer had guessed plane tickets, winning £450. Other viewers won prizes for guessing ibuprofen (£75), dog (£225), mittens (£100), driving licence (£75), contact lenses (£50) and umbrella (£75).

The remaining six answers were later revealed as: rubber band, false teeth, dog biscuits, directions, balaclava, and “raw/Rawlplugs”, the trade name for plugs that allow screws to be fitted into masonry walls.

Viewers complained to the broadcasting regulator. Ofcom ruled that ITV’s solutions “were not reasonable answers to what appeared to be a straightforward question”.

The game breached broadcasting rules that require that competitions be conducted fairly. Ofcom said: “This was a serious error of judgment.” It said that broadcasters must “observe the highest possible standards” when viewers are spending money to participate.

ITV Play made £9 million profit in its first six months. Any reoccurence could result in a fine and even the removal of its licence to broadcast.

ITV said that Quizmania’s executive producer was not working on the day in question. It claimed that “raw/Rawlplugs” had been selected in good faith by a games developer, and Rawlplugs had been included on the messageboard of a popular television chef’s website as an item she said that she carried in her handbag.

However, the broadcaster accepted that both “raw/Rawlplugs and “balaclava” were not likely to be carried in handbags. The answers, “whilst not impossible, were unlikely to be readily identified and were therefore inappropriate”. It promised to avoid answers that could be perceived as “arbitrary or random” and said that the Play channel had cancelled Quizmania.

MPs have called for tighter regulation of “call-in” quiz shows. At a hearing last November, William Van Rest, controller of ITV Play, was questioned over the “Rawlplugs” answer. He told the MPs: “We were surprised by the decision to put that as an answer.”

It also emerged that on the ITV1 show The Mint, 400,000 callers phoned over four hours, but only 1 in 400 had a chance of getting through.

Ofcom said that such shows prompted 800 complaints last year. It is considering a regulatory regime that would treat premium-rate quiz programmes as advertising, which would limit the airtime available to them on general channels.

Game plan

• In recent years 14 specialist cable and satellite channels have emerged, led by ITV Play and QuizNation, creating an industry worth £160 million a year
• Shows include The Mint: running from midnight to 4am on ITV Play, which also screens Make Your Play
• On one occasion contestants on another show, Quiz Call (run by a former subsidiary of Channel 4) were kept on hold for 40 minutes before being put through

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