The Great British Quiz

Host

Janice Long (1994)

Philip Hayton (1994-5)

Broadcast

Analogue and BBC North for BBC1, 31 January 1994 to 24 October 1995 (112 episodes in 3 series)

Synopsis

Off-beat afternoon quiz that was mostly memorable for its Irish-jig theme music and its very bizarre sculpted set designed by a renowned (read: anonymous) provincial architect. Think giant coloured shoelaces.

Two teams of three competed in a competition with highest scoring teams on a leader board coming back for a series of knockout finals. Despite the title, links to Britain in some of the questions were very tenuous.

During the Philip Hayton era at least, the show was essentially a remake of Masterteam (complete with a former newsreader as host), albeit with a few additional features, including a 'What Am I?' type of round, which has also been seen on other shows, i.e. the teams having to ask Hayton yes/no questions in order to establish who or what was the answer, à la Twenty Questions. Other than that, no other features particularly stick in the memory - buzzer, individual and team rounds were trotted out one after the other.

So not exactly the most original or unusual of quizzes, but certainly very watchable, if only because it borrowed so much from an already proven format.

Trivia

The 1995 winning team won a holiday to Newcastle - not in this country, but in Australia. Well, it was only fair that the overall prize should be something exotic!

Originally developed as one of three programmes on short notice to fill the lunchtime repeats of the BBC soap flop Eldorado, the first two series aired in the 1.50pm Going for Gold slot from Monday to Thursdays (alongside its predecessor XYZ) as Fridays were taken up by The Travel Quiz, the third series aired just before Children's BBC programming at 3.05pm.