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TV Quiz Watch - Total Recall - University Challenge

Total Recall Wednesday 27th August - Channel 4 5pm



This newcomer is Channel 4's new vehicle for Terry Wogan. Its billed as a quiz with a difference. Well, aren't they all, nowadays ? This is the gimmick. 4 individual contestants compete against each other in the first round. Terry asks 20 general knowledge questions. First one to buzz in gets to answer. Correct answer gets a point, incorrect loses a point. If the wrong answer is given then its thrown open once more, then that's it. The one with the lowest score at the end of round one is out.

The twist comes in round two. All the one answers to round one are on a board behind the contestants. They can't see them, but the audience can. In round two another 20 questions are asked. The answer are the same as round one, although the questions are different. Terry tells us that they are harder, but I don't think so. The main thing is that it does give the contestants a chance to buzz in and guess, and some of them do buzz in incredibly quickly and guess very well too. And some of them don't. At the end of this round the lowest scorer is ejected, and we are down to the last two.

Round three is much the same as round two , same answers, but different questions. Lower scorer is ejected. Then the last player gets a chance to play for the money. They will be given a series of clues to the twenty words on the board. They can elect to answer as many or as few as they like, but unless they go for most of them the money isn't that huge. If, for example, they try 13, the maximum they can win is £5000. If they answer 19 they get £50,000, and if they answer all 20 , they get £100,000. The clever thing is that they have been playing with these 20 words all game, so that should make the final a bit easier , shouldn't it ? You'd think so, but actually playing along at home I found it to be much harder than you'd think.

Could it catch on and be a success ? Who knows ? All I can say is that I enjoyed it. Terry Wogan is a very good and safe pair of hands. You know exactly what you're going to get with him. This is a quick moving, and quite exciting show. Keep it up !


I am delighted to say that the format produces a lot of guesses, one of which provides us with the Daftest answer of the week.

Daftest Answer of the week

Question : What was the nickname of PG Wodehouse ?

Answer : - Ginger ?



University Challenge Monday 25th August - London School of Economics v. University of Bath 8pm

I must come clean. I am an alumnus of Goldsmith's College, which the initiated will recognise as one of the colleges of the University of London, as indeed is the LSE, so I was a little biased for this show. As it was LSE won comfortably, and the best that Paxman could manage in his closing remarks to the University of Bath was "I'm sorry , but that's not a very good score !" Wonderful ! Where else would you get such honesty from a question master ?

On the Grapevine Word on the streets is that the next series of "Mastermind" begins on Friday 5th September. If its true I'm delighted. There's no quiz I play in on a Friday.

Compiling the quiz - TV Tie ins - Music Round

Today I finished compiling the Thursday night quiz for the rugby club. Just a couple of observations I’d like to make about that. I o use quiz books to help me compile a quiz. I don’t get all of my questions just from these sources, but they are a help. I’ve got quite a large selection of quiz books that I’ve built up over the years. A substantial amount of them are book tie ins from TV quizzes. In fact I would go so far as to say that I’ve become something of an addict, and collect all I find.

The point I’m driving towards is this. The oldest book in the collection is probably the 1969 First TV top of the Form Quiz Book. Under 50s might like to know that TV Top of the Form was the TV version of one of the longest running quizzes of all time – radio’s Top of the Form. Top of the Form ran on the radio from 1948 until 1986 ! The TV version had a good long run too – from 1962 to 1975. Basically it was a general knowledge quiz between teams of school children. There were at least 8 quiz books produced to tie in with the series.

Now, you might think that since the quiz was for schoolchildren, the questions would be too easy to use in my quiz. And some of them are. A great many of them though, are surprisingly good questions for a pub quiz. If I compare these books with, for example, the recent “Eggheads” quiz book, I would say that on average the questions are even a little bit harder than they are in the more modern book. What, I wonder, does that say about us in the 21st century ?

On the same note, on ebay this month I bought a rare copy of the 1978 University Challenge Quizbook. I can honestly say it is probably the most challenging quiz book I have ever read. There’s a much newer University Challenge quizbook which was bought out in 1995 just after the BBC revived the series, and this is good, but its nowhere near as difficult.

So this is of course just a personal opinion, but I tend to find that with more modern TV tie in quiz books you’ll usually get a lot more questions. For example – The Weakest Link quiz book has over 3,000 questions, and the last 15-1 quiz books all had at least 2000 in them. The afore-mentioned TV Top of the Form books had 700 questions, and that was good for their day.
However the questions on the whole were better in the older books. In the modern ones they tend to be too easy, and there’s far too much on entertainment and popular culture

I can feel a rant coming on. This brings me to one of the things that really irritates me about some pub quizzes. Many pub quizzes have a music round. This can take a number of different forms, but usually involves being played bits of songs, and then being asked to name the song, or artist or both. I’ll admit that its not my favourite thing, but there we are, plenty of people like it. But what sticks in my throat is the fact that in many of these quizzes, you’ll have a music round, and then between a quarter or a third of the general knowledge questions will be about music too ! Last Sunday night, there were no less than 35 sons in the music round. Then in a round of 20 General Knowledge questions, 6 of them were also about pop music ! There’s no doubt that pop music is a valid and even important quiz subject, but not to the detriment of all others.

For some reason its posting everything on 17th August today

TV Quiz Watch


Battle of the Brains , BBC Two Monday - Friday 6pm

This is the last week of The Battle of the Brains. I would really like to say that it has been getting better. However this would be an utter lie. My friends, the Ant Hill Mob lost out on Monday. Not because they were beaten however. No , the team captain, Gary , was given two stinkers for his team to choose from. It didn't matter which one the team chose, since he didn't know the answer to either of them.


What some of them have told me since is that they had been so badly treated by the production company they were seriously considering boycotting the next show if they had gone through.


My final thoughts about this show are that its an opportunity missed.

Positives : -

I love the fact that they have tried their hardest to entice great teams to take part.

Its one of the cheapest shows on television - which must make it an attractive proposition to the BBC

However they have never really given the teams a chance to show how good they are. If a team like The Clayheads can have 3 or 4 goes at getting the money, and fail, then its just too difficult.

I dislike some of the head to head battles they use.

Frankly the format is overcomplicated - and as we've seen in the past, overcomplicated quizzes don't often get a second series.

I predict that when it comes to an end tomorrow it will leave our screens for good,unmourned and unmissed.

Sport Mastermind Grand Final Wednesday BBC Two 7pm
If you'll pardon the pun there was a grandstand finish to the series tonight. Des Lynham returned to form, looking thoroughly at ease, and for once sounding interested in the show. A couple of points separated all 6 of the contenders after the specialist subject round. However, in Mastermind its a case of Specialist for show, and General for dough, as Chris Bell romped away from the pack to score a grand total of 32, winning by the impressive margin of 4 points. Delighted to see that he received a proper Mastermind glass bowl too - having one myself I think they're much nicer than the trophies they give for Junior Mastermind or Celebrity Mastermind.

Will it return next year ? I can only hope so.

The Weakest Link - Monday-Friday BBC One 5:15pmYou've seen one, you've seen them all. I noticed tonight that the programme is now 45 minutes long. Yet there's no more questions than when it was 30 minutes. All the more time for nonsense from La Robinson. Well and good if you like that sort of thing . I don't. Still, for the third week running, at least the show provides us with the

Daftest Answer of the Week

Question : - The American tennis player born in 1955 with the first names James Connors is usually known by which first name ?


Answer : - André

University Challenge BBC Two Monday 7:30pm
Selwyn College Cambridge took on St. Anne's College Oxford. I'll be honest, while I nearly always really enjoy the show, I have to say that an Oxford v. Cambridge match up rarely lights my candle. Call it inverted snobbery if you like. Still, a good show. Despite myself I always find myself amazed at the ease with which some of these students answer imponderable, and even interminable science questions. Here's an interesting thought. By the end of the show I hardly know anything more about any of the contestants than I did at the start of the show. Is it any worse for this ? I venture to say not, IMHO. Devisors of other quiz show formats please take note.

Apologies - blog playing up again