How Quizzing Got Cool: TV's Brains of Britain

This is a game that everyone can play,

and I hope you'll play it with us.

We all love a good quiz.

There's something about the chaos of a lot of clues

sorted into the neatness of an answer...

..that has a sense of relief about it.

Who was known, in the music halls, as the Handcuff King?

So here's a question...

Big one coming up - here's your starter for ten.

..when did ordinary contestants turn into the pro quizzers of today?

BELL

Quizzing can't be a hobby for me cos it's my job.

These are just some of the quiz experts

who've taken the casual act of quizzing to a new level...

-Ecuador.

-Correct.

-Edison.

-Correct.

-Pyramus.

-Correct.

..and have made a career of

acquiring more and more knowledge.

The sort of mantra that you have when you're right at the top

in quizzing is, "Ooh, that might come up."

Cosmo Lang. Trompette Militaire.

-John Robotham.

-Correct.

-BUZZER

In this show, we'll visit some key moments and key players

in the history of quiz.

I was pretty damned excited,

cos I was about to give somebody a million quid.

-You've just won £1 million!

-CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Well, I think it is the equivalent of sport.

And it's mental. It's a mental sport.

Where did they come from?

How did they start?

And why do they do it?

Winning the best and toughest quiz show the world -

it doesn't get any better than that.

We wouldn't be doing this if we weren't competitive by nature.

First, a potted history.

Quizzing as we know it began life as a Victorian parlour game

where the questions were probably about Dickens,

horseless carriages or the chemical properties of laudanum.

In the 1930s, the BBC began to make its own such parlour games

and, during the war, General Forces' radio show Merry-Go-Round

let real people on-air as contestants to quiz for money -

a relaxing of the general no-cash-prize rule to boost morale.

Is it possible for the team that scores a goal

to take the next kick-off?

Yes.

If half-time intervenes between.

You're perfectly right. Well done.

APPLAUSE

Very good. Half a crown to Tim.

Half a crown? That's 12½ pence to you.

The idea of mixing knowledge with chance

is sort of irresistible, really, especially in a very new medium.

Everybody wants to have a part of it.

The BBC presents Wilfred Pickles and Have A Go.

GONG CLANGS

-AUDIENCE:

-# Have a go, Joe... #

And, after the war, we were hooked - 20 million listeners

found Have A Go with Wilfred Pickles totally irresistible.

A show where contestants could now quiz their way

to winning a whole guinea -

that's £1.05 in the new money.

Ladies and gentlemen of Bootle, how do?

-ALL:

-How are you?

Wilfred's a great personality.

He used to chat to people and talk to them.

And then, at the end, they'd ask them a few questions

and say, "Have a go."

And, if they got the answers right,

they gave them a little bit of money.

Now, here we go, Pat, with the guinea question,

and I want you to tell us, if you can, who was Aircraftsman Shaw?

Corporal TE Lawrence.

Well, he was Colonel but you're right with TE Lawrence.

Lawrence of Arabia. You've won the money.

APPLAUSE

When TV came along, quiz contestants as we now know them

made their debut on the Charlie Chester Show.

The BBC had again broken its own rules

and contestants could win such - ahem - "presents"

as tickets for a boxing match or a pair of scissors.

BELL RINGS

But opportunities for your average quizzer were about to explode.

ITV was launched and they decided to make their "presents"

somewhat more generous.

This is the master of ceremony and the star of tonight, Hughie Green.

APPLAUSE

Thank you. Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you, friends.

All right. I thank you. Thank you, friends.

Thank you.

Thank you, friends. Bless you all. Thank you very much indeed

and welcome to our very first show on television of Double Your Money.

And for the young, emerging TV networks,

these were wonderful because they were these magical things,

they got good ratings and they were cheap.

Now, the first question here is for £1.

Does a polecat live up a pole?

-No.

-LAUGHTER

-What?

-No.

No? You're perfectly right, it does not live up a pole.

You've won a pound.

Next question here is for £2 - double your money.

The mandarins of the BBC would have had a conniption over it,

no doubt. This idea that, you know...

"We shouldn't be giving them money, let alone doubling it."

The very notion of offering ordinary people big prizes on TV shows

and the potential for warping the morals of the nation

was hotly debated in Parliament.

There were all kinds of quite, er...

..powerful, emotional speeches made, particularly in the Lords.

That this... If we had commercial television,

it would change the whole nature of our society

and debase the values that we'd all lived and breathed by.

I find that anxiety completely bizarre.

The idea that you would somehow lead, you know,

to dissolution and a breakdown in public morals

by sending people out into libraries to learn facts...

..is just astounding.

I mean, where do you even begin with that? You know?

Also launched in the opening week of ITV

was Take Your Pick with Michael Miles.

Like Double Your Money, the show recruited many of its contestants

directly from the audience.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Take Your Pick.

Good evening. What's your name?

Thomas Daniel Price.

That's a very good, loud voice and, Tom, you're even taller than I am.

What kind of work do you do?

I'm retired, Michael.

May I ask how old you are, Tom?

79.

You're not! Are you really?

Well... My gosh.

Those quiz shows hastened the oncoming of the have-a-go heroes.

"Oh, I fancy being on the telly, that must be great.

"I get to go to a glitzy studio and get my make-up done

"and meet the host, and maybe win some prizes."

You have won...

tonight's star prize!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

And tonight's star prize is a Mediterranean cruise for two.

I think there's always a fear of popular entertainment

when it gets really popular. There's always that,

because people don't know what it's going to lead to.

I think, with quizzes,

there was a very specific reason to be anxious about it

because there had been a sort of big money corruption scandal in America

with, er... I think the quiz was Twenty One.

Tonight, here on Twenty One, Edward Stemple,

our 29-year-old GI college student can win 111,500.

Bubbling away across the Atlantic was a full-on scandal

from which game shows, to some degree, have never really recovered.

I mean, it was virtually a soap opera.

One contestant had been coached to be a bit of a schlub -

you know, a sort of working-class guy, bit awkward on screen.

I know I'm putting an awful lot of money on the line,

I'm certainly risking an awful lot of money

but, by the same token, I could win a lot of money too,

which is also very important.

So this Harvard patrician, Charles Van Doren, was brought in.

Oh, yes. I know his name...

Er, Halleck. General HW Halleck.

You're right. You've got eight points.

APPLAUSE

So, essentially, quiz show producers then became drama directors.

Did he behead Catherine Howard?

He did - you've got 18 points.

APPLAUSE

The drama direction even included instructions

on how contestants should mop their sweaty brows.

In 1958, the suspicions that contestants

on US quiz show Twenty One had been cheating were finally confirmed.

The nation was shocked and the show taken off air.

I think that probably had some influence on British suspicion

of this kind of particular popular entertainment.

When British contestant Stanley Armstrong

suggested that he'd been given leads to questions

on ITV's version of Twenty One,

the fear that quizzes were being contaminated with cash

seemed increasingly justified.

The television authorities,

already looking for an excuse to curb this wave of quiz mania,

took the opportunity to set strict prize limits,

which remained in place for the next 30 years.

But quiz shows were available where money was not involved,

and contestants mainly competed for...

fun!

Big one coming up. Here's your starter for ten.

What man has been shared by all of these women?

-Sylvette...

-BELL

Picasso.

Murray. In which country did spaghetti originate?

-Italy.

-Two marks.

Now, this is a question for everyone again.

Here are four sums which all look similar.

Which two of them yield the same answer?

BUZZER

-The Duprees.

-A half minus a third and a half times a third.

You're quite right. What do they equal?

-A sixth.

-They certainly do.

In the '60s, the snobbery and disdain towards quizzing

for cash prizes continued,

and Take Your Pick host Michael Miles

was to bear the brunt of the criticism.

Oh!

This sort of show has become,

to a very large number of people,

almost nauseating.

-I

-watch it for the very worst possible motives.

What I am worried about is that you misunderstand

why people watch this show,

but I'm sure a significant number of people who watch it

are revelling in the discomfort, the gaucheness the awkwardness

and sometimes sheer horror of the situations that take place on there.

That is a typical BBC attitude

because the BBC have never, ever enjoyed quiz shows.

You can't honestly deny that,

if we were able to recreate the Roman games,

killing and all, chariots turning over, bear baiting, public hangings,

that people wouldn't watch them.

You're a showman, you know they would.

This is absolute bunkum.

Bunkum or not, in the early '70s,

quiz contestants across the country flocked to Norwich

to take part in what became a surprise hit.

And sitting at home, shouting out the answers from the sofa,

were our future super quizzers.

And now, from Norwich...

DRUMROLL

..it's The Quiz Of The Week.

I thought that intro gave it a grandeur

that it had earned or merited somehow.

I thought, "Oh, wow, I'm going to watch The Quiz Of The Week."

In what sport where Max Schmeling and Max Baer known?

-BUZZER

-Mike.

-Boxing.

Yes, it's as simple as that, Mike.

You have £5 for a correct answer. 22 now.

Nicholas Parsons is the guy that you desperately wanted to be your uncle,

who'd come round and ask you a load of general knowledge questions

to keep you happy.

What is the colour of the present standard postage stamp of 3p?

-BUZZER

-Mike.

-Blue.

-Blue is correct.

It's a dark blue, actually. Mike, you have three more pounds.

I was just fixated by the speed of the questions,

the speed at which they came,

and the occasional pride in knowing an answer to a question

that the contestants didn't.

That's the deepest appeal of the quiz,

is that you can get something someone else hasn't got yet.

What do you need to make a haggis?

-BUZZER

-Mike.

-A sheep's liver.

It's the sheep's stomach you take.

Host Nicholas Parsons was soon charged

with badgering his contestants like a stern school teacher.

An allegation he has always denied.

I used to meet the contestants beforehand and get to know them,

and chat to them, and I always said,

I remember I would say,

"Towards the end, you know,

"in the last sequence, no matter where you are,

"I'll be putting the pressure on a bit.

"I want you to know now, I'm working for you."

What are you doing? Come on, say something!

And so the idea that I was being antagonistic

was absolutely ridiculous.

Another home for amateur quizzers was 3-2-1.

Future BBC DJ Janice Long took part in the very first episode in 1978.

Well, this is Trevor Long and his wife, Janice.

They both come from Liverpool and manage a record shop.

They explained there'd be a general knowledge round,

then some other little bits and pieces and, if you got through,

you had that ridiculous round

where nobody understood what Ted Rogers was talking about.

All of those weird clues that he gave.

"Although I'm slightly rusty, me motor's quite all right,

"I'm getting married in the morning, should I stay out all night?"

Now what could that mean?

That goes with the hat.

3-2-1 was great entertainment but I still, to this day,

defy anyone to actually say they solved any of the clues.

"There was a little love match, of course -

"did he give her the runaround?

Well, he certainly did and what better to run her around in than...

-A car.

-Than a beautiful car. That's the prize.

The ship's officer hit it right on the note with a triangle.

Ladies and gentlemen, the new Chevette car.

Oh, dear.

The car was meant to be the star prize.

That's what everybody was aiming for -

you must get the car.

And there were various other prizes.

One was a boat...

..which we'd have had no use for whatsoever.

One was a Saint Bernard with a year's supply of rum.

I don't know where we'd have kept the Saint Bernard.

A huge thing. A strange prize.

And your prize, not pieces of eight that we had in the sketch,

but a five-piece sterling silver tea service worth nearly £2,000.

How does that grab you?

You can see...

Read my lips with me going to Trevor,

"We've got the bloody tea set."

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

We've got the bloody tea set.

'But it was a solid silver tea set.'

Even though it was in a fancy box, when they opened it,

I think you can see the expression on my face is like...

"Oh, no, really?"

Two grand's worth of that. That can't be bad, can it, eh?

And my dad had a mate who said he would buy it

and, as a result, we got the £2,000

and used it as a deposit on our first house.

And if you didn't get selected to be on Sale Of The Century or 3-2-1,

you could always target this show.

I loved Bullseye. What struck me was that the general knowledge

was actually quite testing.

Just because it was a darts-based show

didn't mean that they'd dumbed down the questions.

In 1978,

which Egyptian President joined with the Israeli premier, Menachem Begin,

in negotiations towards the Camp David accords?

Anwar Sadat.

What a good answer, sir.

But as the '70s gave way to the '80s,

the dawn of the super quizzer was upon us.

Mastermind has been the cradle of quizzing for 44 years.

But for the show's first eight years,

the winners were pretty much all from the professional classes.

Until this man came along.

Your name, please.

Occupation.

I was always called "the working class hero" for a while

and the one not expected to do it

cos all the others were solicitors, barristers,

civil servants, retired teachers, librarians and so on.

Fred Housego in 1980 just shattered that myth.

You know, an ordinary taxi driver, you know,

winning the world's most prestigious quiz.

I said, "Are you going to apply?"

"No."

So I said, "Well, I'll do it for you if you want."

Did you expect him to do so well on Mastermind?

Yes, I did. I wouldn't have put him in otherwise.

Why did you...?

He's very clever.

Very knowledgeable. And...

..I think he can do it.

I fill all the forms. Any forms. He won't fill them in.

His excuse is that I've got better handwriting, which I have,

but he's lazy.

-SHE LAUGHS

-Yeah. That's fair enough.

THEY LAUGH

But Fred made it to the final,

where he took on the traditional two civil servants and a student.

So let's now find out who is about to become Mastermind 1980.

My primary aim was to do well enough so I could come out

and no-one's going to say, "Well, you bombed, didn't you?"

What is remarkable about the church at Greensted near Ongar in Essex?

Wooden walls. Anglo-Saxon wooden walls.

Anglo-Saxon log church is correct and, at the end of the round,

Mr Housego, you have scored 33 points.

APPLAUSE

The final, I think, I took in my stride.

I think where...

..there was any doubt...

..was in the final round,

when Sam Mortimer was getting question after question correct.

-Algeria.

-Correct.

-Russia.

-Correct.

-Mekong.

-Correct.

-Esther.

-Correct.

But how can you keep count?

I didn't know where I was.

I knew I had 33 and he came after me.

What is the literal meaning of "Stabat Mater"?

-"Mother stood".

-Correct.

'I was behind him...'

..and I was counting on my fingers.

-Pass.

-BUZZER

AUDIENCE GASPS

That was the first time I realised I had won.

Mastermind 1980 on 33 points

is London cabbie Fred Housego.

It's the first time in my life I felt inhibited

because I wanted to go, "Yeah!" And I went...

..which was rather sad, really.

Like a little boy who's just been told, "Don't make a noise."

So, would the Mastermind winner for 1980, Mr Fred Housego,

come and collect his prize?

INAUDIBLE

There she is, with the Nine Graces.

And that's how you sat there, having your photograph taken.

But it was everywhere. Every paper, I was on the front page.

I was, for that brief moment, the most famous person on Earth.

Because of the fact that he was just an ordinary citizen.

That had a profound effect on people like myself.

It just goes to show,

you don't have to become from a particular social group

or particular social background to appear on these shows,

cos you are just as clever, just as determined,

just as focused and just as motivated.

Fred Housego was popular because people could perceive him

as one of them, who was just able to do this stuff.

He was from a background that people could relate to.

And yet he was taking on your more academic quizzers and winning.

-We're all proud of you, Fred.

-Very proud of you.

-Tremendous.

Even my wife was saying, "Go on, Fred."

"If he can do it, there's hope for everybody else."

It just shows that all cab drivers ain't ignorant.

-Eh?

-You're right, you're right. So right.

He's a very early example of the celebrity quizzer.

We have quite a few of them now but he was the first one, I'd say,

that really captured the imagination,

this unassuming taxi man,

as well as having the A-Z in his brain,

has all world knowledge to boot.

In a way, I suppose it's not that surprising that a cab driver,

who can remember all those names of streets and so on,

was also able to win Mastermind.

Perhaps it's more surprising there haven't been others.

Fred's talents found a home on radio show Round Britain Quiz.

Probably the longest-running -

and arguably the most demanding - quiz in the world.

Hello, and welcome back to another series of Round Britain Quiz.

The one where you can't just google the answers because it isn't

the facts so much as the fiendish way they fit together.

I suppose the first time I heard Round Britain Quiz,

it would be driving at night and I always found it extremely hard.

And then I went along for the audition.

They asked me to do the programme.

It started off, we all did the thing at Broadcasting House,

which suited me cos I could park on the rank outside, go in, do it,

get paid, come out, jump in the cab and go to work.

Which mighty warrior, never crowned but married twice,

calls to mind a dancing bag and a little girl

who was much cleverer than her headmistress?

-CONTESTANTS:

-Oh, God.

-Matilda.

-Matilda.

-Very good.

-Henry I's daughter.

That's right. Can you say who she married?

She was first married to the Emperor.

So, which made her Empress Matilda.

That's right. Then she was married to Geoffrey, Count of Anjou

and, through him, she had Henry II,

who was king of England from 1154 to 1189.

'You never just got the answer,

and that's the good thing on Round Britain Quiz -

you like to have that sort of...

All of these facts come up

and they trigger off other facts and more little details

and little anecdotes. I think that's when the programme works well.

He was very good at that.

It's a real connoisseur's quiz, even now.

Because there's so many different things that you need to unpack.

There's so many bits of information that you need to pull on

and connect them together, and that is, for a quizzer,

absolute manna from heaven.

I'd prefer a pint, actually.

And if you happen to want a bit of brain work with your bitter,

you could also join in a pub quiz.

What opera is set in the borough

-which is a fishing village on the coast of England?

-Peter Grimes?

Peter Grimes is absolutely correct for five bonus points.

Today, it's difficult to visit your local without being asked,

"How many gallons of beer are in a firkin?"

It's nine. It's actually nine.

In the same way that quiz shows on television

started from parlour games in the front room...

By the same token, people moved out of the living room

and went down to the pub to start quizzing as well

and tried their luck in a bit more low-key atmosphere.

I know a few people who do them, and they really gen up.

They really swot all of the time.

I've been in conversation with friends

and I've said something that you think is just a little bit of a...

"Oh, did you know?" "Oh, I must remember that for the pub quiz."

So they're storing constantly.

I read an article that said quizzers drink something like three times as

much as people who go down the pub to watch sports on the big screen.

Which I think is quite...

It's a recommendation for landlords if nothing else, isn't it?

Cancel your sports subscription and run a pub quiz instead.

I don't tend to go to pub quizzes

because it's slightly difficult for me.

It's a slightly lose-lose situation.

If I win the quiz, people think, "Yeah, well,

"that's not fair because she would win a quiz

"cos she does quizzes all the time. It's not fair."

If I don't win the quiz, people go, "I thought she was clever,

"turns out she's sort of a moron."

So it's safer for me not to.

And for the increasing number of pub quizzers

who are taking it seriously,

there was inspiration in the shape of quiz star Kevin Ashman.

The first thing I did on television was Mastermind

because it was simply a case of a lot of people saying to me,

"You ought to go in for Mastermind."

I was doing more little competitions off-screen and...

I just thought, as I say,

that I was in a rut at the time and said I'd just try something new.

Your name, please.

And I found that the nerves did get to me,

in the sense that I was extremely nervous beforehand.

I mean, I really was. I had a pounding head.

I felt, I suppose, physically sick.

But I found, and this is something

that then encouraged me subsequently to start going in for other things,

that, when it came time to perform and Magnus said,

"Can I have in the next contestant, please?"

And the lights... You do your walk to the chair,

the lights go down and then it was just me and Magnus.

William Rogers is right.

At the end of that round, Mr Ashman,

you have scored 18 points and no passes.

Thank you very much.

Having lost in 1987, Kevin came back in '95

and, this time, he was unstoppable.

In his confessions, which saint described how, as a youth,

he prayed, "Give me chastity and continence but not yet."

-Augustine.

-Correct.

Which dramatist and actor wrote the play A Question of Attribution

about the art expert and spy Anthony Blunt?

-Alan Bennett.

-Correct.

The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra is based in which Dutch city?

Amsterdam.

Amsterdam is correct.

At the end of the round, Kevin Ashman,

your score has risen to a record 41 point and no passes.

-Thank you very much.

-APPLAUSE

I had no idea that that was the case.

It was only when, at the end of it, Magnus said,

"And with a new Mastermind record score,"

and I was as taken aback as anyone.

I knew I'd done well because I'd answered virtually everything,

but I didn't realise it was that good.

Kevin Ashman.

Over 20 years later,

Kevin's record score of 41 in the heats remains unbeaten

and, in the final, he went on to win.

The following year, Kevin achieved another record score

on prestigious radio quiz Brain of Britain, which also still stands.

Blimey.

I've talked about quiz at length with Kevin Ashman,

the greatest quizzer who's ever lived,

and he never strikes me as being somebody who's

as obsessed with talking about quiz as I am.

He just gets on with being incredible.

-Ecuador.

-Correct.

-Edison.

-Correct.

-Pyramis.

-Correct.

-Woodhouse.

-Correct.

-Brahms.

-Correct.

Kevin's just an incredibly modest person for the sheer...

power of what he can do with his brain. It's just astonishing.

I think he should be a national treasure, personally.

APPLAUSE

How on earth does Kevin remember all this stuff?

People often assume that I've got a photographic memory.

I don't. I have a very good memory, but it's not photographic.

I wish it was at times.

That would be a blessing and a curse, I think.

He remembers faces,

he remembers conversations that you had several years ago.

He just has the best memory of anyone I've ever met in my life.

His memory is astonishing.

And I really think it should be medically investigated.

I've never actually been...

approached to do any kind of scientific testing...

..which, in some respects, I find slightly surprisingly, in a way.

The architecture of the style and period...

But how do other serious quizzers managed to perform

such feats of memory and recall?

Then down to memorials and monuments.

I've been asked about my memory on numerous occasions.

People say, "Is it photographic?"

No, it is not.

In the Tower Army, there's a BAF jacket belonging to Colonel Hacker.

What is this to do with Charles I?

When Charles I was executed,

Colonel Hacker was in charge of the execution detail.

Get out.

-What?

-Get out, I need to go to my mind palace.

Sherlock Holmes helped me out no end here cos I used to refer to it as a

filing cabinet, now I can call it a mind palace and people know

what I'm talking about.

Mind palace...

It's a memory technique, a sort of mental map.

I start getting irritable if I haven't learned a fact

in the last few hours.

Pat Gibson always says that the best way of learning is to read

the papers from cover to cover.

The real, sort of, next level quizzers,

I think they'll have a sort of system that they draw on.

Some people choose pneumonics.

To give you an example, "lead" is element number 82.

And in 1982, Daley Thompson won BBC Sports Personality Of The Year

for winning the European Decathlon Championships,

where he "led" from the very first round.

When it comes to learning general knowledge,

I'm one of the lucky people who has got what I call a sticky memory.

And I go through life absorbing facts.

So at school when you're bored in a class,

I'd look up at the map and I'd learn where places were in Europe.

Quizzers obviously have the ability to actually retain and recall

at an instant under pressure.

That is a different skill.

That is a skill which, obviously, takes years to develop.

Hound.

I do have weak spots, but, of course,

that would be telling, wouldn't it? That would really be...

giving too much away.

Well, I bet he's not got that many weak spots.

Kevin now has an actual job as an official egghead,

where his co-workers share a background in serious quizzing.

Welcome to Eggheads, the show where a team of five quiz challengers

pit their wits against possibly the greatest quiz team in Britain.

They are the Eggheads.

I thought this whole move towards quiz panel games

was a good idea because, before it, you had these

amazingly talented people, like Kevin Ashman,

who weren't been showcased in the way they should have been.

It's given people like Kevin the opportunity to demonstrate

their knowledge and it's an interesting format,

having members of the public against these quiz professionals.

The development of the quiz show format actually is all about

tapping into that psyche and the most successful quiz shows now

are the ones that play on that idea of, "Well, you could do this.

"You could take down the Eggheads."

Ptolemy I Soter, Macedonian General under Alexander the Great,

became ruler of which civilisation?

Well, when Alexander the Great died,

his various leading generals all contended for parts of the Empire.

About three or four of them wound up with different large chunks of it.

Ptolemy got Egypt.

OK, Kevin. Thank you for that.

It's the right answer.

We wouldn't be doing this if we weren't competitive by nature.

So, even though I may appear fairly relaxed,

when the competition is going on,

there is the adrenaline pumping and I want to get the answers correct.

I don't want to get them wrong.

Fellow Egghead Judith Keppel burst onto the quiz scene

in a rather spectacular way.

The strict cap on prize limits, first put in place in 1960,

was now gone and, by the '90s, quiz shows could offer

contestants huge amounts.

Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? was on every night

and became compulsive viewing.

That was a game changer because it was a real step up in terms of,

if you like, regular prize money.

But after two years on air, 121 shows,

and the whole country seemingly desperate to take part,

the top prize of a million quid was yet to be won.

The reason I applied for Millionaire was cos I was feeling rather skint.

I didn't have enough money at that time.

And I watched this programme. I thought it was extremely good

and I thought the questions were quite easy,

and the sums of money you could win were huge.

The Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? prize money millions

were funded by a premium rate phone line.

Out was the stamped addressed envelope, in was a phone frenzy.

If you want to win, you've got to ring! 0891 44 44 44.

Anybody could get on and that's why this huge audience was going...

"Get me the phone, I could ring, I could be there.

"I could be there tomorrow night." I mean, that's how it was.

For the first four or five years, it was like that.

I think I rang up about 250 times before they rang back.

And BT rang me up in the middle of all of this to say,

"Do you know your telephone's being used rather a lot?"

I just went on ringing till they rang back cos I thought,

rather naively, that if I did £1,000 worth of telephone calls,

I'd get it back.

Well, being on the show, I found absolutely terrifying.

The minute I knew I was on it,

my heart started thumping.

How do you think you've done?

I've no idea.

-You just won £64,000.

-Wow.

You're in the chair, the lighting is on you, the audience is blacked out,

and so you're very isolated in this bubble.

If you give me a wrong answer, you still get £32,000.

You lose £468,000.

AUDIENCE GASPS AND LAUGHS NERVOUSLY

Gosh.

I had an insane thought at that point, which was,

"If I'm wrong, at least it would be a heroic loss...

"I'll be a heroic loser."

I think it's Henry II.

AUDIENCE GASPS

And I could hear... At that point, I could hear the audience.

-They did a sort of...

-SHE GASPS

Like that. The whole lot of them.

I saw her tomb, funnily enough,

in France this summer.

I'd been in France and I'd driven back through France,

literally two months before the programme.

And stayed at this place called Fontevraud,

where there was a big abbey.

In the church were these four tombs and one of them was Eleanor,

and one of them was her husband, Henry.

So it was quite sort of spooky, that, actually.

I think it's worth going for.

AUDIENCE GASPS

I always wondered, with myself...

..if we get someone to £1 million...

..will I feel brave enough to go,

"We'll take a break"?

Cos I thought, "I can't do that." I really...

It's wonderful drama, but I can't do it.

We'll find out what the right answer is in a couple of minutes.

-AUDIENCE GROANS AND LAUGHS

-Oh, Chris!

And then he came back and then he sat down, and you know how Chris is,

the way he looks, and I noticed his voice was very husky

and that, I thought, "Maybe I've done it."

APPLAUSE

Welcome back to the third part of tonight's

Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? Just before the break, Judith Keppel

was asked this question.

I've always thought that Judith...

read too much into that. I've always thought.

It's very much with Judith in hindsight, I don't know.

I was pretty damned excited because I was about to give somebody

a million quid.

You've just won £1 million!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

You are amazing!

I can't believe it. £1 million!

Within hours of Judith actually becoming a millionaire,

the press were in hot pursuit of her story,

and the papers discovered a distant royal connection.

Very distant.

One of the headlines was "Camillionaire".

So ridiculous.

It was something like 300 or 400 years ago,

there was a very vague tie-up.

You know, but if you go back far enough,

I'm probably related Hereward the Wake.

I was beginning to think we'd never ever show this.

Have a look at this. "Pay Judith Keppel £1 million."

Look at that.

Well, it did change my life, actually.

I mean, it really did change my life...

in the nicest possible way.

It gave me security.

Probably the second most famous contestant to appear on Millionaire

was Major Charles Ingram.

With accomplices embedded in the audience,

he attempted to cheat using a system of coded coughs.

It's such a...

surreal story, the whole thing.

And the way they tried to win money - and actually nearly did,

I mean, they nearly got away with it -

was so naff, the coughing thing.

It's so silly but, I mean,

we should have been more alert cos we're talking about

a million quid.

I think it's a hat.

I think. I mean, again...

COUGHING

..I'm not sure, but I think it's a hat.

I think it's one of those really

sort of tall hats that came

into fashion, presumably when he was prime minister.

COUGHING

Pretty confident it's Aristotle Onassis.

COUGHING

The show's host Chris Tarrant gave evidence in court

against contestant Major Ingram and his two expectorating sidekicks.

A-hem, excuse me.

All three were found guilty, but they didn't go to prison.

They were lucky not to.

An audience member coughing on this show would just be annoying.

Finish that round.

Let me know when you're happy, everyone. Yep? So, off you go then.

Our next super contestant made a name for himself here in 2004.

-And your name is?

-Shaun Wallace.

-Your occupation?

-Barrister and part-time lecturer.

Your chosen subject in the first round was

the European Champions League.

This time it is...

England at the European Championships from 1968-2003.

It's a tribute to my training as a barrister because, as I say,

I've appeared in Crown Court trials, I've appeared in the

Court of Appeal.

And if you can appear in front of a stern judge,

you're prepared to actually face what may come at you,

then sitting in the black chair, it's not daunting at all.

In his 50th and last game for England,

who conceded the penalty that gave Denmark a vital win

over the home side at Wembley in September 1983?

-Phil Neal.

-Yes.

Who embarrassed David Seaman by scoring direct from a

corner when...

-BLEEPING

-I'll finish the question.

When England drew 2-2 with Macedonia at the

Saint Mary's ground?

-Artim Sakiri.

-It was indeed.

You had no passes, you got only one wrong.

Shaun Wallace, you have 14 points.

APPLAUSE

When I did my research,

it wasn't a chore for me because I remember watching

those matches vividly

and the way in which I prepared for Mastermind was not to

think like a contestant, think like a question setter.

What questions could they ask me to catch me out?

And that's the way I prepared.

The winner of Mastermind 2004, with 24 points and no passes,

Shaun Wallace.

They had to stop the recording because I just sat there

for two minutes, tears of joy.

I thought of everything.

The hardships I went through, the difficult times,

how people were going to react.

I remember I just sat there and the production assistant came up to me

like, "Shaun, you all right?"

I said, "Yep, I'm fine."

It's all yours.

You know, winning the best and the toughest quiz show in the world,

it doesn't get any better than that.

A very tight contest.

It was. It was really close.

And you are... If I'm not mistaken,

-you had a little tear in your eye at the end.

-I did.

And I slept with the trophy that night.

And when I woke up the following morning,

I realised this really did happen.

I would always bring my trophy into schools cos children have never

seen something like that.

I remember I was going into a school, one of the teachers said,

"Do you want a hand?"

I was about to hand it to them and I sort of stumbled...

Ouch.

I mean, I'm going to try and get a replacement.

Even though it sort of shattered into little pieces,

the one thing that's not shattered is my title.

With his Mastermind trophy broken, but his pride intact,

Shaun was able to find a more permanent outlet

for his quizzing talents

and somehow juggle a career as a barrister with a new part-time job.

The destroyer that is Shaun Wallace.

-Good afternoon, Gill.

-Good afternoon, Shaun.

I got a phone call from ITV.

They said to me, could I come long for an audition for

a new exciting game show? I said, "All right."

They said they were looking for someone who's

brash, flash and cocky. They asked me 30 questions, I got two wrong.

Prime Suspect. He's got it wrong. Fantastic.

Can't believe you've got that wrong, you being in that business.

I prefer Law and Order.

I love you for that.

But I wouldn't say I'm adopting a specific persona.

That is just me, because I'm quizzing.

I'm there to win. I'm not there to smile.

I'm not there to have a laugh. I'm there to answer questions.

Me and Bradley have a great rapport on the show.

When he's trying to crack a joke, I just give him a look.

It's a genuine look. "Look, mate, I'm not here too...

You know. Listen to your badinage."

Fantastic. Well done.

-Congratulations. Chaser.

-Well played, Susie.

-Thank you.

-Well, I'm going to get you in the final.

-I'm going to get all the others.

-I've got my eye in now.

Yeah, she has an eye in now.

Watching you. Smiler.

Shaun's the nicest Chaser.

It's just that he's playing a role.

Shaun is a man with a constant smile on his face, who has an incredibly

upbeat and gracious attitude towards life.

He's playing a role.

I get stopped every single day and I never get tired of that.

It's not an ego thing,

it's a sign of gratitude from people who do stop me that they love the

product and show I'm on,

and I'm grateful for their watching it,

because, if they wouldn't watch it, the show wouldn't be a success.

Doctor, comedian and self-confessed king of trivia Paul Sinha somehow

finds time to seek quiz glory on national television.

Welcome to the Weakest Link.

In 2002, I kind of fluked my way onto the Weakest Link.

Paul, remind me what you do.

I'm a doctor and a stand-up comic, Ann.

-Which is more important?

-They are both equally important, Ann.

-Oh, really?

-Yes.

So, when you've got a patient, you say,

"I must go off and tell jokes."

I make sure I never allow the two to interfere with each other, Ann.

-OK, well, you can today. Tell me a joke.

-Tell you a joke?

How many male chauvinists does it take to change a light bulb?

-I don't know.

-None, the wife can cook in the dark.

ONLY A FEW PEOPLE LAUGH

And given that I normally sit and watch the show,

and just go bang, bang, bang, bang, bang,

it kind of breaks my heart that, on my first go at an actual speed quiz,

I just didn't bring anything to the show.

Paul, in agriculture, mangelwurzel is an important fodder variety of

which crop - beet or maize?

-Maize.

-Beet.

What name is given to a small square of rich chocolate cake,

and also to a kindly elf said to do household chores at night?

-Pass.

-Brownie.

In language, what is the Spanish translation

for the English number two?

-Duo.

-Dos.

Paul, the joke's on you.

You are the weakest link. Goodbye.

You'd think that, when someone says,

"You are the weakest link, goodbye,"

you are feeling devastated but you're just devastated because

you lost. The fact that Ann's gleefully rubbing salt in your

wounds is neither here nor there.

I wanted to win, because I'm good at quizzing

and I just played really badly.

An Eggheads spin-off show was another opportunity

for serial quizzer Paul Sinha to break his TV quiz duck.

What I really wanted to do was win an episode of a quiz show,

because I'd already done the Weakest Link,

I'd already done University Challenge: The Professionals

and I'd already done Mastermind.

And I hadn't won any.

And they gave me an opponent who was very much beatable.

A guy called Rob Huxley,

who worked at the Natural History Museum, but didn't appear to have

any background in serious quizzing.

Paul, you've got all five eggheads to call upon should you need them.

Rob, you are playing on your own.

I had five eggheads that I can use once each

and not one of them gave me a correct answer.

I had to watch my hopes wilt away.

Rob, you're through to the next round.

I think we are all shattered.

I mean, no-one more shattered than Paul in this studio. I mean...

I return chastened once more.

I just decided, "Well, that was it, Paul.

"That is the end of your journey in television quiz,"

and then, two years later, I got a phone call

from my agent going, "You've done it.

"They picked you." And I could not have been any more excited.

Yeah, forget Eggheads,

Paul Sinha's talents were finally recognised by The Chase.

Sarcasm is no sin for the Sinner Man.

-It's Paul Sinha.

-Hi, Paul.

-Hello, Sean.

A lot of people go, "You know, you're the loveliest chaser.

"You never seem to say anything nasty to the team," and it's like,

it's because I can't bring myself to do it, because I know,

through being a failed quiz show contestant,

what they've gone through

and I know what it's like and I know that pressure.

Unlucky, Sean, I never really put down the guy

that goes for the higher offer, because

I think it's very, very brave. You backed yourself,

it didn't work out. Unlucky. I'm delighted,

because I know you're a good player and I know that

it'll dispirit the other three that are sat back there.

I'm not the most ruthless chaser.

I'm not there to emotionally destroy the team.

I'm there to try and win a quiz.

What did the poet John Keats call a joy forever?

A thing of beauty.

Correct. Which singer and actor was Joan Collins' second husband?

-Anthony Newly.

-Correct.

And if, like Paul, you have a serious quiz itch

that needs scratching, maybe try this.

It's in a pub, it looks like a pub quiz,

but it is in fact a quiz league.

If you fancy yourself as a pub quizzer

and then you think you are ready to go to the next level,

then you go to the quiz league and those first instances are

a big shock, because then

you realise you're all tip and no iceberg, really.

There are people who are really serious about this.

They are a step on the way

to working out whether you want to be a quizzer

with a capital Q or not.

With species including the Indian and Egyptian,

by what common name are snakes of the genus naja, N-A-J-A, known?

The growth of quiz leagues... I think it's terrific,

but it's hard to come up with an explanation for it.

Unless it's the fact that we do live in a far more complicated world.

We live in a world where a lot of things are uncertain

and it's a very, very sort of psychologically satisfying thing

to have the world represented as a set of known facts,

to which there are right answers and wrong answers.

That's not true in life, mostly.

The satisfaction of quizzing is somehow tied into that.

There's something about the chaos of a lot of clues sorted into the

neatness of an answer

that has a sense of relief about it.

And it's not just a British thing -

Quizzing is now an international phenomenon.

The World Quiz Championships is quite amazing, because you do have

thousands of people across the world doing it, all on the same day...

in a venue, in their own home country.

Waiting for the results to filter through is quite exciting.

Now, in 2012, when I did it, I was very, very lucky

and a lot of the questions I had been thinking about

just magically did come up.

As a result, I won it by nine points,

so that was just one of those strokes of luck,

and I've actually since retired from quizzing and I think part of the

reason for retiring is I knew nothing like that

would probably ever happen ever again,

so it was good to get out while I could.

I'm very much aware that Jesse was part of a golden quartet, involving

Kevin Ashman, Pat Gibson and Olav Bjortomt,

who I think realistically are significantly better

than any four British people who have ever walked the planet.

Virginia is correct.

That is the end of round eight.

The standard in the British quiz scene is so much higher than it was

20-30 years ago, but there's no doubt also the thing that now

there are now TV shows where, actually,

you can show off this knowledge.

And Mark was able to show off his knowledge as a postgrad student on

the show that kick-started his TV quiz journey.

University Challenge.

In one sense, it was a lifelong quest from about whatever it is,

the secondary school age,

I looked at it and I were starting to get more questions right

and I thought, "I would love to go on that show."

-Glamorgan, Labbett.

-Princess Royal.

Princess Royal's right, well done.

-Glamorgan, Labbett.

-First encounter, second encounter, third encounter,

close encounters. Close encounters is correct, yes.

John Bird is one half of a duo...

-Glamorgan, Labbett.

-John Fortune in the Long Johns.

That's correct. He's the other half.

We won it, and, afterwards, I'm going...

"I'll never play that well again." If only I'd have known what was

going to happen since, but that was just my magic...

Suddenly, everything that could go right, did go right.

And this mild-mannered student has now transformed into the Beast.

I think I bring of The Chase, more than any of the others, that,

if you like, element of confrontation.

I don't mean the, "Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough,"

but you may notice the little quips. Anything that...

Well, in sporting terms, I call it sledging.

Anything that can put them off a little bit -

I think sledging's fine, abuse is wrong.

I admire Ian's bravery,

but I'm going to punish you for it.

I thought I was having a bad day.

Oh, well, this won't take long.

The United Kingdom tax year ends in what month?

-April.

-Correct.

-The TV series Doc Martin is set in which county?

-Cornwall.

-Correct. Which Charlotte Bronte heroine married...?

-Jane Eyre.

-Correct.

Obviously I never expected it to be a career, because it didn't

exist up until seven years ago.

Then I'm lucky enough to fall in the job I was designed to do.

Launched the same year as The Chase,

even recorded in a studio next door,

is arch rival Pointless.

Thank you very much indeed. Hello, I'm Alexander Armstrong

and welcome to Pointless - the show where we are always striving to find

-the most obscure answers.

-The Chase and Pointless,

I think the two shows make each other stronger,

because we've got such a good, strong rivalry.

We are killing everything else in that time slot.

-Jemina Balme.

-Jemina Balme.

-Inese Jaunzeme.

-Inese Jaunzeme.

And Mihaela Penes.

You have done it!

Pointless is the most ingenious idea to come out of anybody's quiz

workshops in years, because of the simplicity of it.

It's all about that kind of quizzer's desire

to be able to one up the next person with how much rubbish they

know about a particular topic.

And how irrelevant they can be.

That's in everybody, that desire to one up the next person.

It's in every quizzer.

But back to University Challenge and some potential super-quizzers of the

future. This lot upped the ante with their formidable preparation.

Hi, I'm Ted Loveday.

I'm from Hammersmith in London and I'm studying law.

Our training regime was basically, every day,

maybe five days a week or so, we would go to the college bar,

we'd go to a little dingy cellar underneath it,

which after we'd spent enough time in there,

we called it the Quiz Dungeon.

We would go down the cellar underneath the college bar

and we would watch an episode together,

or two episodes or three episodes.

They, I think, looked at pretty much every single question

that Jeremy had said out loud in five years.

Looked at every book of everything before that.

Every gram of the internet that they could weigh,

they got questions out of it.

We call it doing a Caius now.

-Caius, Loveday.

-Is it Menander?

It is. Yes.

If you were representing your university in a national sports

competition, you would take it really, really seriously.

You would probably be training at their every single day.

Right, ten points for this. Meaning said only once,

what two words Greek term denotes...?

-Caius, Loveday.

-Hapax legomenon.

Correct.

I was in the studio that day.

I was sitting watching him do this and I buzz in

and you can sort of hear everybody going,

"What on earth is he doing buzzing in there?

"He has no right to buzz in there."

And then he said, "Hapax legomenon."

People go, "Oh, I'm checked out.

"What has he just...?" And Jeremy goes, "Yes!"

And everybody is in a rapture.

Well, the internet was certainly in raptures

and Ted became an instant meme.

You know, there are a fair few accounts that

tweeted just that clip. Not any of the others.

People didn't even know what quiz show it was from.

So, someone once came up to me and said,

-"You're that guy from Mastermind."

-What two-word Greek term...?

-Caius, Loveday.

-Hapax legomenon.

-Correct.

What? "Hapax legomenon"?!

"Hapax legomenon"?

What planet are you on, son?

It's a crazy word and it sounds great.

It sounds a bit like abracadabra or an incantation of something.

I really think JK Rowling should have a spell called Hapax legomenon.

Come on, chaps.

Well done.

They absolutely demolished all-comers.

It was the most stunning thing that I've ever seen on Uni Challenge.

-That's it. You've done it.

-Thank you.

I finally got to meet Jeremy Paxman afterwards to shake his hand.

Yeah, it didn't get much better than that.

And finally, if there are any contestants out there looking for

the ultimate challenge,

there is one more quiz rabbit hole you can tumble into.

Hello, and welcome to Only Connect -

the quiz that this use mental excellence,

like James Bond at a bad guy in the opening sequence of...

Well, take your pick.

Only Connect is a relative new kid on the block,

but one of the most well-regarded and definitely one of

the best quizzes out there.

I think it's fair to say, at the team level,

Only Connect is the toughest quiz by a country mile.

I find Only Connect very difficult.

I mean, that is very cryptic and also you need extraordinarily good

knowledge, I think, for Only Connect.

It's Thymine.

Brilliant. Coming in after one clue, you get five points.

Very well done. As a matter of fact, I heard you say,

if we were being evil, it would be Uracil.

I would have accepted Uracil.

Oh, man, that would have been really cool.

It's a little bit like what I think you get out of watching athletics in

the Olympics or the Paralympics.

Some people find it very exciting

and moving to see what the human body can do.

A great, talented, skilled athlete pushing themselves to their limits

and you go, "Well, that's amazing, because I can't even get the biscuit

"tin off the top shelf." Only Connect, for me, is like that,

but with the mind.

Well, Only Connect is more like Round Britain Quiz, I think.

It's doing that thing and expecting you to be able to, sort of,

manipulate the facts that you have into a new shape.

It's a very, very pure form of quizzing

and it does encourage quizzing to another level,

because you have to make those connections that are so

beloved of your top level Grand Prix quiz setters.

I know myself and my two colleagues

are fantastically proud of having won it.

120 is a regular hexagon, 108's a regular pentagon,

90's a square and 60 is an equilateral triangle.

That's it, they're the interior angles of polygons.

Very good, so you get the bonus point.

Only Connect breaks so many of the rules.

But it never tries to be anything other than really unashamedly nerdy.

A show that can be at times comically gauche and proud of it.

If I hadn't looked at the answer,

I could stand with your team for 47 years and not get this.

They are filters on an Instagram,

so I don't blame you for not getting that.

Our question writers are the sort of people that would be writing those

questions even if there wasn't a show to put them on.

So, when a series finishes and we don't know if we've got another

series, they are writing the questions anyway just,

because it's a fun thing to do. What are they going to do,

-watch the X Factor? No.

-It's made itself a lovely niche.

It is the quiz show to people who really want to be stretched.

Not only has Mark appeared on the share and won it, of course, yes,

he's even had the ultimate accolade of being turned into a question.

And who is in that last picture?

Is it Mark Labbett?

Yes, it is. From The Chase.

And of Only Connect as well, of course.

Known as the Beast, they are all known as the Beast.

It gives me joy unconfined, really, to see a programme like Only Connect

succeed to the level that it has.

It started out as this really obscure cult quiz show

and now it's big, which is fantastic.

It's good news for quizzing as a whole.

It proves how many people there are in Britain

that are up for TV that pushes them a bit harder,

where not everyone has hair extensions, false nails.

I mean, I do, but the teams don't and that sort of deeper,

cleverer stuff is appealing to an awful lot of people

and that's really pleasing.

So, that's it. Some of our devoted quizzes have managed to become

professionals. Many take competing to new heights and all of us are

seemingly surrounded by quiz.

But the final question is, are quizzes now cool?

The whole attitude has changed.

Certainly when I was younger, people who were

quiz show buffs were considered a little bit like anoraks.

Now they are highly respected, like Kevin Ashman.

Because quizzes are so widespread and they're just so much part of

British culture now, it's much more accepted amongst

the general public than it perhaps once was.

We don't have a quizzers hall of fame.

Actually, maybe that's something we should get, a quizzers hall of fame.

That might not be a bad idea.

It's the knowledgeable ones and the ones that got picked last for sports

that came top in maths who are inheriting the earth.

This is my world.

I have found what I want to be doing for the rest of my life

and it's quizzing.