The LAMMY Awards 2024

Well, Dearly Beloved, 2024 has certainly been a historic and epoch making year in my life in general, but how does it rate as a quizzing year? Or put it another way, who will be taking home the coveted LAMMY Awards?

Well, let us begin with the LAMMY for . . .

Award for the Best New TV Quiz Show of 2024

In 2023 we had 6 new shows to choose from. In 2022 we had 7. In 2024 we had . . . well, we only had 2. These were:-

Jeopardy!

The Answer Run

It is arguable whether Jeopardy! can even be counted as a new show. This venerable warhorse which has stood proudly at the top of the American quiz show pyramid for forty years has been tried on UK TV four times before.

The main USP of the latest revival was Steven Fry as QM. I would pay to watch him reading our selections from the London Yellow Pages. The gameplay is reassuringly simple and old fashioned. But, the show did feel rather padded and there wasn’t a great deal of variation in the gameplay.

The Answer Run, which hit our screens in August also benefitted from a top notch host. Some QMs manage to make the shows they front worse. More of them do manage to avoid making their shows worse without necessarily bringing that much to the party. A small number manage to take what they’re given and make it better by their presence. Such a presenter is Jason Manford. The show has a fairly simple game mechanic behind it – basically swiping a succession of answers into one of two categories to which they belong. It does have a certain amount of play-at-home-a-bility, which is an essential for a LAMMY Winner.

Which means, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, that the winner of the Best New Show for 2024 is

The Answer Run

The Award for Outstanding Performance in a Broadcast Quiz

Nominees

Ruth Hart – Mastermind

Brain of Britain – Tim Hall

Brain of Brains – Karl Whelan

Only Connect – The Thrifters – Will Chadwick, Sam Haywood, Jack Karimi

University Challenge – Imperial University , London - Justin Lee, Adam Jones, Suraiya Haddad, Sourajit Debnath

Every single one of our nominees would be a worthy winner of the big prize. But I think, on reflection, I probably enjoyed the Grand Final of UC slightly more than the other grand finals, and so the award goes to

Imperial University , London - Justin Lee, Adam Jones, Suraiya Haddad, Sourajit Debnath

The Award for Achievement in Question Mastership

There have been three question masters at the club this year whose quizzes have reached the level of consistent excellence to earn nominations. It probably won’t come as a surprise that they are the same three nominees as last year’s. namely

Dan Ayres

Jessica Ayres

Adam Cook.

I have thought long and hard about this, bearing in mind that they are all members of my team, Adam is my friend, Dan my son in law and friend, and Jess my daughter and friend. But in all honesty, I think if you took the average quiz my nominees produced this year, and compared them with the average quizzes that anyone else produced, an unbiased observer would agree that the nominees' quizzes were a cut above the rest. It’s not the time or place to go through the other question masters' shortcomings, but my guys put a level of love and care into producing their quizzes which refresh the parts that other question masters just can’t be bothered to reach.

Without further ado, the winner is

Jessica Ayres

In all honesty I couldn’t not give it to Jess. On top of the excellence of her usual quizzes throughout the year there was the wonderful quiz she produced for my 60th birthday party, which was just a perfect evening. Well deserved.

Congratulations to all nominees and winners - here's wishing everyone a great quizzing year in 2025