Carrying on from my previous post on the benefits of improving one’s language skills by following some italian quiz shows I mentioned that I too have been involved in these often entertaining and educational programmes.

The first time was in 1966 when I was chosen by my school to be part of a team of four contestants in Granada television’s less senior version of ‘University Challenge’, this time called ‘Sixth Form Challenge.’ I don’t quite know how I was chosen as I felt I was not a particularly distinguished pupil at Dulwich College. Furthermore, my school had great reservations about entering a television quiz show and almost refused the invitation to participate in one. I think it was the father, who worked in media, of another pupil who suggested the idea in the first place.

Anyway, we were whisked off to Manchester on my only trip so far to that northern city and were televised on video tape for the TV broadcast which took place in spring 1966.

I don’t remember much about the questions asked except for two of them. One was on Rossini overtures: I had to guess four of them and if anyone knows anything about Rossini overtures then they’ll realise it’s really easy to get them mixed up for one overture’s crescendo sounds so similar to another’s. In retrospect I feel it was a very unfair question to ask a seventeen-year old and I suspect that some sort of machination was behind it. In any case I managed to answer the last question which was about a Britten opera. I blurted out ‘Peter Grimes’, the gong went and we found we had beaten our opponents, Wellington College.

I viewed the broadcast in the company of my family and a gathering of friends at our home in Forest Hill, London. Of course, we had no VHS machines in those days but I managed to record the programme’s sound on a reel-to-reel tape . Goodness knows where that tape has gone now. However, I still have the Shorter Oxford Dictionary which Granada generously donated to the victors. It remains the thickest book on my shelves.

Our quiz-master was not the Bamber Gasgoigne of University Challenge fame but Chris Kelly who has also presented such programmes as ‘Wish you were here…?’ and ‘Clapperboard’.

My second foray into the television quiz world was less successful. It was ‘Mastermind’, famous for its original presenter Magnus Magnusson and his catchphrase: ‘I’ve started so I’ll finish’ which was also the title of Magnusson’s book on the show’s history. I was invited to turn up at the BBC’s television centre in White City and told that I had been privileged to be asked to be there and that I would have to pass a final test before being given a chance to sit on the programme’s menacing black armchair. Unfortunately I failed a question on cricket, not my forte, and so left the interview room without ever having had an opportunity of getting the prized winner’s crystal goblet.

I’ve often thought of joining in pub quizzes but not being a traditional pub goer never have. The most I dabble in quizzes these days is on-Line at Quiz Planet! Any one wish to challenge me or, better, anyone wish to start a bar quiz in Bagni Di Lucca?