Time was when the chance of seeing someone win a million quid was reason enough to tune in. Or watching someone gamble on the half-million question, and tumble back to a measly £32 grand (measly in the sense that most of us wouldn’t think too hard about giving up a non-essential body part for that much money). The swivelling blue lights, the tension-building music, the spotlight on the centre stage, the audience arranged as if around a bear pit – the whole thing was essential viewing for a while.

But these are hard times for Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Has Tarrant lost his tarantara? Is it a simple case of overexposure? What can the producers do to spike interest in a formula that spread across the TV world faster than Martian red weed?

According to The Sun (a phrase which, to anyone with prior experience, comes with an automatic health warning) the aging quiz show has a plan to address its alarming slump in ratings: they’re going to audition the contestants.

That’s right. Because the format is so riveting, it couldn’t possibly be that we’ve all become terminally bored with sitting through the low-money rounds could it? Watching an increasingly twitchy Tarrant, who has long ago exhausted his repertoire of pithy one-liners to get us as quickly as possible to the 8- or 16-grand point where it starts to get interesting.

Let’s face it, the set isn’t designed like a gladiatorial arena by accident. We’re all out for blood. OK, it’s fun to see someone win a million, but it’s even better when they lose a packet. When, armed with nothing but gargantuan hubris, they fall under the spell of the numbers and guess at an answer they have absolutely no clue about, in the hope of ratcheting up their winnings by another hundred grand or so. And then, failing, they can shrug and mutter “well, I came wi’ nowt anyway, so 32 grand in’t bad” and we can smirk and think “Ha! They’re no better than us after all.”

The amazing thing is not that viewers have begun to desert the programme, but that it’s lasted as long as it has. So now, rather than changing the format to abandon the low-money rounds, or skip through them without pausing for breath (which would have the unfortunate side-effect of having to pay out more money), they’re going to hand-pick the contestants. You’ll still be able to apply the old way, by phone or net, and hope to be picked randomly. But to stand a better chance you’ll have to get online to itv.com/millionaire and explain why you’re an “interesting” player and why you’d be good on the telly.

The producers will then pop round for a cup of tea and if your custard creams are up to scratch, you’re in.

Tarrant is quoted saying: “We’re looking for all kinds of people.” Which roughly translated means “please help me keep my cushy job.” So now you all know the answer to the question “Who wants to be a millionaire?”