UK Game Show FAQ
This Good Game Guide lists common questions we receive about UK game shows. If you have a question that you think should be included, please Contact us.
Q. What was the first game show ever?
Spelling Bee, shown by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on 31st May 1938, transmitted live from Alexandra Palace. The first game show with money prizes was Take Your Pick, broadcast on 23rd September 1955 by Associated Rediffusion.
Q. What is the longest running UK game show?
Technically, it's A Song for Europe, which first aired in 1957, and annually since 1959 (sometimes under different titles). The Eurovision Song Contest has been broadcast annually since 1956, but is not usually a UK production.
The all-time longest-running game show series was Come Dancing, which ran in its knockout format from 1953 to 1995. Though there were a few years within that span when it wasn't produced, that's still around 40 years in total.
A Song for Europe aside, the longest-running current game show (and longest running quiz overall) is University Challenge with over 35 years clocked up; not far behind are A Question of Sport which has run since 1970, and Mastermind which has been going since 1972, albeit with a few years' break in the late 90s and early 00s. Credit must also be given to Call My Bluff, which ran for 23 years originally, and another nine in the revival.
The game show with the most episodes produced is Countdown with 4000 as of 3 January 2006, and counting.
Q. Who is the longest serving UK game show host?
Magnus Magnusson's span as host of Mastermind lasted ten days short of 25 years, beating Bamber Gascoigne's tenure on University Challenge by eight days. Of course, if you count Bamber's appearance on the 1992 special, then he beats Magnus easily, and even more so if you include the 1998 Red Dwarf special. But then you'd also have to count Geoffrey Wheeler's technical 44-year span on Television Top of the Form, which beats all comers.
Q. Who has hosted the most UK game shows?
Bob Monkhouse - to our reckoning, he had at least 12 different hosting roles to his credit. Chris Tarrant can claim 13, but one was an unbroadcast pilot, and PSI and Crazy Comparisons were just different titles for the same show, so we reckon he's only got eleven shows to his credit, really, and Bob still holds the record... for now. If you count guest hosting and co-hosting spots, Carol Vorderman has now hosted 13 formats. Technically, Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly have done fourteen, but seven of those were for the Gameshow Marathon, and that's just cheating.
Q. What was the first game show to be broadcast six days a week?
Q. What was the most expensive game show set ever?
Undoubtedly The Crystal Maze set, which cost a few million pounds over its lifespan. Second place probably goes to Ice Warriors, which cost 1.5 million pounds.
Q. Has anyone ever presented a game show they've devised themselves?
Yes, Geoffrey Wheeler was both the devisor and voiceover for the original version of Winner Takes All, and hosted a later incarnation. Robin Ray devised and hosted Film Buff of the Year. Jonathan Ross co-devised and hosts It's Only TV... But I Like It. Maria McErlane co-devised Carnal Knowledge. Gordon Burns has had a lot of influence in the shows he's presented. Confessions was partly devised by Simon Mayo. Andrew Lynford created Arty Facts. Cathy Rogers co-devised Scrapheap Challenge/Junkyard Wars and also created Full Metal Challenge. There was also Fluke, which was basically a vehicle for the comedic talents of creator Tim Vine; likewise Al Murray's Fact Hunt and Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer's Families at War. But leading the pack is Roy Ward Dickson, who - as well as devising numerous other shows - both devised and hosted Abracadabra, Pix and Turnabout.
Q. Have there ever been any game show hosts that have been related to one another?
Yes - Paul Daniels and son Martin; Richard Dimbleby and sons David and Jonathan; Roy Walker and son Mark; Jimmy Tarbuck and daughter Liza; Johnny Ball and daughter Zoe; Alan Coren and daughter Victoria; brother and sister Keith Chegwin and Janice Long; and brothers Jonathan and Paul Ross. Married couples include Vernon Kay and Tess Daly, Paul Coia and Debbie Greenwood, Katy Hill and Trey Farley, and Mike Smith and Sarah Greene.
Q. What's the highest ever rating game show?
This rather depends on who you ask and when you ask them. In 1992 Boxtree published 40 Years of British Television, which included as an appendix month-by-month top 20 TV listings charts.
From this we glean that during the final week of the 1979 ITV strike, the BBC mustered an audience of 23.9 million for Larry Grayson's Generation Game. That week's editions of Blankety Blank (23.3m) and Mastermind (21.9m) are the second and third highest-rating game shows.
The Generation Game was also the top-rating show under the pre-1977 ratings system (which counted households rather than individual viewers), 9.7 million households tuning in for a Christmas 1976 edition.
ITV's best rating for a game show came on 22nd December 1978 when an all-out strike at the BBC meant that 21.2 million viewers watched Sale of the Century.
This is all well and good, except that in 2005 Channel 4 broadcast a programme called Britain's Most Watched TV, for which the British Film Institute provided the lists (A top 20 for each of the 60s, 70s and 80s, and a top five for the 50s and 00s). Even though these lists drew on the same source material, they came out rather differently. It seems likely that the BFI disregarded high ratings that were attributable to a strike by "the other side", since otherwise there's a suspicious-looking hole in the autumn of 1979. Two other differences are pointed out by the BFI website: firstly, they multiplied "household" figures by 2.2 to produce an estimated audience in terms of individual viewers; and secondly the demands of the production company (Objective North) meant that "in some cases only the highest-rated example of similar programmes have been included to avoid repetition ". This may account for the non-appearance of The Generation Game in their list. So according to the BFI, the top-rating game shows are:
1960s: Double Your Money, 8 November 1966 (19.47m); Take Your Pick, 2 Dec 1966 (19.36m). Top 20 cut-off: 19.14m
1970s: Eurovision Song Contest, 7 April 1973 (21.56m); Sale Of The Century, 24 Dec 1978 (21.15m). Top 20 cut-off: 20.57m
1980s: Mastermind, 9 Nov 1980 (19.15m); A Question Of Sport, 5 Feb 1987 (19.05m); Blankety Blank, 26 Dec 1980 (also 19.05m).
1990s: National Lottery Live, 19 November 1994 (20.17m); Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, 7 March 1999 (19.21m)
2000s (to 2004): Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, 19 January 2001 (15.9m); I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!, 9 February 2004 (14.99m); Pop Idol, 9 February 2002 (13.34m); Popstars, 3 February 2001 (12.36m).
It should be mentioned that for the 2000s, the Tonight with Trevor MacDonald special about the Ingram affair got an audience of 16.10m.
The BFI listing for the 1950s only includes shows from the last three months of 1959, presumably because figures for BBC shows are not available until then. Take Your Pick is the top-rating show for the period, with a peak audience of 13.16m.
The full top 20 lists can be found on the BFI website.
Q. What's the highest prize ever awarded on a UK show?
£2 million in total was awarded as venture capital to two winners (£1 million each) on 16 July 2000 in The E-millionaire Show.
£1 million in cash was won on 24 December 1999 in Someone's Going to be a Millionaire, a quiz segment run during late 1999 by the Channel 4 music and entertainment show TFI Friday. For subsequent £1 million winners and other large prizes, see Good Game Guide 8.
