Fondly Remembered Old Show

Well, I am going to tell you about some quiz shows that I used to enjoy and so let's start with the first quiz show that I fondly remember from days gone by. I’ve mentioned it before, in fact I’m sure it featured in one edition of the LAM podcast I used to make several years ago. This is “Ask the Family”. Now, yes, I know that you’re much more likely to be biased towards something you enjoyed while you were growing up, and the show was in its heyday in the 70s when I was doing just that.

As it happens, I wasn’t that bothered about the show’s USP, that it was contested by family teams. What I did like were the different types of questions on the show, and the original host, Robert Robinson. I’ve written about him before, so I shan’t labour the point here, but there was something about his dry delivery that I really liked. I still sometimes use his oft used phrase ‘the mental equivalent of a quick jog around the block’ to refer to the first round when I’m being quiz master myself.

As for the rounds, this wasn’t just a straightforward General Knowledge quiz. There were rounds that required a real amount of working out, as well as visual rounds like the popular – familiar object seen from an unfamiliar angle -.

Ask the Family was a thing of its time, and the couple of revivals never really worked. A faithful resurrection presented by Alan Titchmarsh never set the screen alight, and it’s best to draw a kindly veil over a very strange show presented by Dick and Dom which borrowed the title. By about 1980 the show was being mocked by “Not the Nine O’Clock News” for its obviously middle class values, in a skit which pitted Giles and Serena Brainee (both quantity surveyors) and their children Julian 16 and Nigel 14 (also both quantity surveyors) against Giles and Serena Smart-Awse (both quantity surveyors) and their children Julian 16 and Nigel 14 (also both quantity surveyors), answering questions about quantity surveyors.

In recent years we’ve seen a couple of shows do something similar to the concept of "Ask The Family". Sky’s ‘Relatively Speaking’ which came and went without causing much a stir, and even more recently ITV’s ‘Britain’s Brightest Family’ have both presented family quizzes, although both took a thankfully wider definition of family more appropriate to the times we live in. Of the two I preferred ‘Britain’s Brightest Family’  - it was nice to see Anne asking rather than answering the questions.

I’m not saying "Ask the Family" should be revived – as I said, it was a thing of its time. But I liked it a lot.