Brain of Britain

Many thanks to Christian Lloyd (University of East Anglia) for this information.

'Brain Of Britain', devised by John P. Wynn, was first broadcast in the early 1950s and is one of the most durable of the UK's difficult quiz shows. (Mastermind started in 1972, University Challenge in 1962). It has been presented by Robert Robinson and Russell Davies.

It's a purely 'general knowledge' show - no specialist subjects or weighting questions according to the teams' fields of expertise (a la University Challenge), with questions generally harder than Fifteen to One, though there's quite a lot of overlap. Pop music and sport rarely get a look-in, though TV shows average about 1 per week (e.g. the name of the dog in 'Frasier', or 'who are Chandler, Joey, Rachel, Phoebe, Monica and Ross?' They didn't get either.)

Each player is asked questions until they get one wrong, up to a maximum of 5 questions. If they get all 5 (which isn't often), they get a bonus point and we move on to the next contestant. If they get one wrong, or remain silent for 10 seconds, the bell goes and the others may buzz in. There's a slight debate over tactics at this point. Since there's nothing to be lost from buzzing and guessing wildly, buzzing quickly might be seen as advisable - but if a contestant guesses close to the answer, Robert Robinson's likely to hum and haw before saying 'no' - in which case, the next contestant might take it as a clue to the real answer. (E.g. someone guessed Frasier's dog's name as 'Edgar', rather than 'Eddie', which received the reply 'Mycroft is shaking his head'; code for 'a near miss'.)

For many years the Brain of Britain question setter was Ian Gillies, known as 'Mycroft' (from the name of Sherlock Holmes's supposedly smarter brother in the Conan Doyle stories.). This role is now occupied by Kevin Ashman known as 'Jorkins'.

The question setter sits at Robinson's right hand and nods or shakes his head as appropriate.

'Brain Of Britain' is sometimes criticised for not having a broad enough range of questions - there aren't many on science, or modern culture, though computing is quite well represented (despite the contestants' dread of it). Still, many contestants go on to play Fifteen to One - I remember Ian Wynn-Mackenzie winning his heat - and I think there's no bar to auditioning or appearing on Brain Of Britain more than once, either.

An edition of Brain of Britain lasts 30 minutes and during its season is broadcast on Monday at 13:30 and repeated on Saturday at 23:00.

The address to write to for contestant auditions is:

Brain Of Britain,
BBC Radio 4,
Broadcasting House,
London,
W1A 1AA.

The programme also invites listeners to "Beat The Brains" - submit 2 questions (on any topic but usually related to each other) for all four contestants to make a combined guess at. If one question baffles them, the listener wins a book token (but for how much??) and a round of applause from the sparse audience. Questions frequently come from as far afield as Africa or America, as this is a popular programme on BBC World Service too.

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