From TES issue 67 (January 2011)

Series 8. Level 2/3.
SNAPPER-JACK
When I first read Paul McIntosh’s review of this character back in issue 7, I was quite surprised how much hatred for the man with the butterfly net it exuded. Yet it seems that this is the popular opinion of Snapper-Jack – a ridiculous and pointless character who should never have been allowed on the show. I suppose he is ridiculous in many ways – the voice, the net, the sock-puppet snapdragon – but perhaps he would have been reviled slightly less if he had actually bagged (or netted) himself a victim – thus eliminating the notion that he was not a genuine threat – which he was practically on the verge of doing a couple of times, as some teams just managed to sneak through with a marginal two out of three.

Despite the fact that I’ve never been a fan of the whole “my arm was bitten off and grew back as a snapdragon” aspect of the character, I really didn’t mind Snapper-Jack when I first watched series 8, and I still think he’s no more or less awful than many other aspects of the series. I do like the way he introduced riddles back into the programme, asking the teams three at a time in very much the same way as the wall monsters had done, right back at the very beginning. (You could argue that the Brollachan did this in series 7, of course, but I don’t think it counts because he didn’t know the answers himself.) Some of Jack’s riddles contain interesting subject matter and are quite cleverly phrased (“Give me a coin you can keep animals in”) so although I’m not exactly a fan of the character, I do think there are some positive aspects to him.

Whatever Snapper-Jack’s shortcomings, we mustn’t blame Bill Cashmore, who doubtless did as much as he could in the role. It’s a shame that playing this character didn’t really allow him to improvise proper conversations with the dungeoneers, as Bill proved himself very adept at this whilst playing Honesty Bartram, which he sadly got to do much less than playing Snapper-Jack. This, then, is a very strange character, but one whose role in the quest did remind me of the early days (bringing a slight smile to my lips) and who, in a series literally overflowing with interesting ideas pulled off very badly, doesn’t particularly stand out to me as being very bad!

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