Round Britain Quiz

[ardcarp]

The new series got off to a limping start. The first question was so easy (needing the national car ID for Switzerland, Italy, Luxembourg and Spain to spell CHILE) that I was screaming at them to get it...but nil point. Dear old Fred Housego and Marcel Berlins seem to be beyond their sell-by date, and the other team wasn't much better. The programme gets really tedious if the questions are so totally out of reach of the contestants that it's all umming and ahing. Fresh new blood needed, I think.

BTW does this count as 'arts', general or otherwise?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I prefer this format to the original, which had a "resident" London team competing against different regional teams (which the London team usually won).

[mercia]

........ so how easy/difficult were the other questions today ?

[ardcarp]

...well, there was a 'way in' to most of them that seemed to need a lot of prompting from Tom Sutcliffe. Even then, they were slow to put two-and-two together. Have a listen and see what I mean.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b043wvxx

[french frank]

'A very low-scoring round.' There were a couple of occasions where I also didn't know the answer but did get the point of the rather laboured clues first ... I can't help thinking that Irene Thomas would have got those football grounds a lot quicker

[ardcarp]

Irene Thomas...what a phenomenal person! (But does this date us, ff?)

[french frank]

Irene Thomas...what a phenomenal person! (But does this date us, ff?)

Nah, 1995 isn't that long ago. I liked this from her obit, after years of winning everything on the BBC:

'But it took seven years of patient letters to the BBC before she was allowed to appear on Round Britain Quiz in 1967. "I had almost lost hope of disturbing the monastic calm of the Quiz with the presence of an ex-chorus girl," she recalled.'

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1310557/Irene-Thomas.html

With a 'privileged background' like that, how could she fail? :-)

[gingerjon]

Must admit I haven't heard this series yet. I found that I wasn't catching up with the last one much either.

Is it time to change the format a bit and have a few normal people/teams in a challenge/knock-out format or similar?

[Dermot]

Irene Thomas...what a phenomenal person! (But does this date us, ff?)

Who was the second quiz master with Lionel Hale in the 1960s? His name escapes me, but it was after Gilbert Harding. I think there was a 'mixed quatrain' question in every round in which the competitors had to identify four lines of verse which were assembled from different poems. The resulting 'poem' was either witty or inappropriate. The names of Jack House and Professor Denis Brogan remain in my memory as members of the Scottish team.

[mercia]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round_Britain_Quiz

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/comedy/rbq_about.shtml

http://www.radiolistings.co.uk/programmes/r/ro/round_britain_quiz.html

I think the person I remember most is Anthony Quinton
Louis Allen, Eric Korn were perhaps more recent

...... so have we all answered this week's teaser question ?

With only minor changes, can you turn a measure of physical health into a pastime that might lead to injury, and then into a publication where you might read about both?

[french frank]

...... so have we all answered this week's teaser question ?

With only minor changes, can you turn a measure of physical health into a pastime that might lead to injury, and then into a publication where you might read about both?

Well, I have pulse, skiing and The Lancet and all I need are the minor changes that lead from one to the other

[mercia]

got it !!! - phew !

[Sir Velo]

got it !!! - phew !

BMI; BMX; BMJ?

[ardcarp]

I thought BMI and BMJ but am not convinved about BMX....would you read about that in the BMJ?

[Flosshilde]

You'd read about the injuries caused by it.