Election Night Drinking Game!

Heeeeeeeeeere’s Fiona!

But anyway. Thanks to Twitter’s @lonesbones for giving us this idea, it’s probably a good time to get started on The Official BrokenTV Election Night Drinking Game. Dash down the 24-hour supermarket quickly, while nothing much is actually happening, and get ready for the following:

OUTSIDE BROADCAST REPORTER’S MICROPHONE NOT WORKING: Take a drink

LARGE IN-STUDIO DISPLAY BREAKS DOWN: Take two drinks (and squint to make sure it’s not your own TV playing up)

MP FROM LOSING PARTY STILL CLAIMS THE NIGHT ISN’T OVER DESPITE THERE ONLY BEING TWENTY SEATS LEFT TO DECLARE: Finish your drink.

CHIEF RETURNING OFFICER DOESN’T READ OUT THE NAME OF THE PARTY EACH CANDIDATE BELONGS TO, LEAVING YOU WONDERING WHO ON EARTH HAS ACTUALLY WON THE SEAT FOR ABOUT TEN SECONDS: Take a drink.

TRIUMPHANT TORY MP MAKES A REFERENCE TO D:REAM’S “THINGS CAN ONLY GET BETTER”: Pay your own tribute to 1997 by drinking an alcopop.

STUDIO COMMENTATOR BLAMES IT ALL ON ‘BIGOTGATE’: Take a drink and flick some V’s at the screen.

ANDREW NEIL MAKES A JOKE THAT NOBODY LAUGHS AT: Take a drink to mask your embarrassment.

SOMEONE YOU KNOW FROM WALES, SCOTLAND OR NOTHERN IRELAND TWEETS IN ANGER THAT IT’S 3AM AND THEY’VE ONLY JUST REALISED THAT THE NON-REGIONAL COVERAGE OF THE RESULTS IS GOING OUT ON BBC TWO IN THE NATIONS: Take a drink whilst wondering why the BBC still goes to all that bother.

PIERS MORGAN APPEARS ON THE TELLY AND YOU RESIST THE URGE TO PUT YOUR FOOT THROUGH THE SCREEN: Give yourself a pat on the back.

“A GLANCE AT THE MORNING’S NEWSPAPER FRONT PAGES” TURNS OUT TO SHOW THE NEWSPAPERS HAVE ALL GONE WITH TREMENDOUSLY INCORRECT FRONT PAGE HEADLINES: Grin to yourself, then take two drinks.

NIGEL FARAGE’S NAME GETS A HUGE ROUND OF APPLAUSE WHEN MENTIONED IN THE REUSLTS FOR BUCKINGHAMSHIRE, THEN HE ONLY GETS ABOUT 300 VOTES: Drink some medicinal brandy.

A NORMALLY SERIOUS MP TRIES TO ‘CONNECT’ WITH THE ‘PEOPLE’ BY MENTIONING DOCTOR WHO, OVER THE RAINBOW OR GLEE IN HIS VICTORY SPEECH: Sigh, then finish your drink.

JON CULSHAW APPEARS: Drink an entire bottle of vodka and switch channels.

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Election Night in Screengrabs: Part One

[21:55] A quite nice opening title sequence by the BBC, there. ITV News and Sky probably had quite nice title sequences too, and it’s a pity only about 250,000 people combined actually saw them.

[21:56] A huge studio, a massive screen, and rows upon rows of computers. Remember the days when the computer jockeys were hidden away off camera, behind a massive beige room divider? A different age.

[22:00] Exit polls revealed, and they suggest the Conservatives just 19 seats short of an overall majority. If (and it’s a big if) that turns out to be accurate, they should probably be able to make enough alliances to sneak into power without giving Nick Clegg the electoral reform the British public deserve. However, in 1997, over a decade of being ruled by an increasingly unpopular government saw a record-breaking landslide for Labour. This time, and with Labour posting less impressive majorities in every election since 1997, one might expect the Conservatives to storm back into power, but that’s clearly not the case. After everything that Labour have messed up over the last five years, the fact the Conservatives are limping forlornly towards a slim overall majority at best really does prove how bad their campaign really has been.

Oh, and the screen is broken already.

[22:03] Just to show off, the BBC are projecting the latest results not just onto a big screen in the studio, but ONTO BIG BEN ITSELF. (Yeah, no comments informing us that “Big Ben is the bell inside, the clock itself is actually called blah blah blah.)

Showoffs.

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Election Night Lookalikes: Number One

No wonder those teenagers behind him look so unenthusiastic about their cause.

“Daddy said he’d buy me a bloody iPad if I went along with this, but I’m sooooo bored.”

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Prelude To Disappointment… It’s Election Night!

Welcome to BrokenTV’s Live Election night blog! Indeed, unlike certain national broadcasters we could name, we haven’t suddenly remembered the rule on political programming while the polls are still open and have subsequently had to swap places with a QI blog, we’re here now, and can say what we like. “Don’t vote Tory! Unless you hate people working in the public sector, the homeless, the impoverished, the unemployed and the disabled, in which case they’re probably the party for you!” See?

First up, as nothing is really happening yet but it’s too early to use our pre-prepared election night update yet, how are other broadcasters around the world covering our election? Let’s take a look!

CNN

For the UK Election, Ted Turner’s rolling news channel doesn’t seem to be employing the hologram technology it famously used for the 2008 US Election. They’re keeping things a bit more, well…

BEER PUMPS!

CARDBOARD CUT-OUTS!

A RACECOURSE BOOKMAKER TOTE BOARD!

Oh, right. They aren’t even going to beam in P Diddy for this one?

FRANCE24international

The globe-spanning French news service is pulling out all the stops to avoid tarring us Rosbifs with a stereotypical brush. Instead, they seem to have been focusing on a couple of aspects they seem to be assuming will be paramount in the minds of British voters.

FOOTBALL and

FOX-HUNTING. Britain in a nutshell, there. Silly The French, eh? Assuming we’d be primarily concerned with actual policies! In actual fact the entire political system of the UK is based wholly around voting for whichever party leader seems the nicest, then letting them do whatever they want for the next five years. Pof!

FOX NEWS

Ooh, Fox News! Which one of the party leaders is about to be outed as a secret Muslim communist born in Kenya? Which one will Bill O’Reilly be most disgusted by? Will Glenn Beck have to get his chalkboard out in order to prove why the Soviet Union has been alive and well in being run from London for the last thirteen years?

No, sadly, it’s all pretty much (gnnngh) fair and balanced. Although the reporter’s end piece to camera just happens to have a “Delice de France” van going past the camera as she speaks, so maybe they’re trying to suggest we’re all just as bad as Fox News likes to pretend the French are? Yeah, we’re clutching at straws here. If anyone does notice anyone on Fox News saying anything demented, please let us know.

 

MORE TO COME

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In Unabashed Two-Facedness We Trust: It Must Be Election Day

It’s May the 6th, the day of the UK General Election, and The Sun are up to their usual tricks, shamefully appropriating Shepard Fairey’s iconic Barack Obama “Hope” Poster for their own needs, handily ignoring the fact it was another News International outlet that told so many desperate smears, half-truths and outright lies to try and prevent Barack Obama getting elected. 

 

Utterly disgraceful. But then, it’s The Sun, a newspaper which this week has been so desperate as to invent a campaign along the lines of “if Labour get in, they’ll have YOUR page three stunnas in berkas before you can say ‘aw, where the tits gone?’”, never mind the fact Labour haven’t made any such noises throughout the thirteen years they’ve been in power. After that, this front page probably shouldn’t be that much of a surprise.

Earlier tonight, we quickly knocked up a ‘corrected’ version of that front page and put it on Twitpic, which quite a few likeminded Tweeps passed around Twitter. We’ve since had a spare twenty minutes and a higher-resolution scan of the original to work from, so here’s a slightly updated version of our corrected front page. Again, not tremendously crafted, but hey, it’s late.

Click the image for a much higher quality version (not that the message it contains becomes any wittier, you understand. It’s a bigger jpeg).

Feel free to print it out and wave it in the faces of anyone gullible enough to fall for The Sun’s special brand of horsecrap. Oh, and then go out and vote for whoever you damn well please.

 

(Want to do your own, probably much funnier versions of that page? Here’s a blank template of that front page, just aching to be messed with.)

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BrokenTV’s Boardgame Bacchanal: Part Three

With the election looming ever closer (LIVE ELECTION NIGHT BLOG HERE FROM 9.30PM THURSDAY), what better time to prepare for a night of recounts, swings and ITV getting everything slightly wrong than by playing a quick game of THE PARTY GAME (Crown & Andrews), Paul “Timing, I Think” Eddington’s “hilarious political sendup”? Put on your best Robin Day box tie and join us in our photo epic tour…

First, the packaging. Caricatures of the main party leaders – CHECK.

Jim Hacker MP peering cheekily over the top of his spectacles – CHECK. Looking good so far. +5 POINTS

Even a nice bit of blurb on the bottom of the box, which you don’t see on many board games. One interesting part there where the box says “Whether you are Democrat or Labour, Green or True Blue”, which for a second made us wonder if it had been hurriedly adapted from a game based on US politics, and the makers had forgot to change one of the party names over. But, clearly, it means Liberal Democrat, and we’re being a bit thick. But who on earth calls them “Democrats”, as opposed to “Lib Dem” or just “Liberals”. So, one point off for using the wrong word, and another making us feel stupid. –2 POINTS
 

As we established in our previous update, it’s only really correct that board games have the rules printed on the inner lid of the box. No reason why, it just is. Sadly, The Party Game rules are issued on a leaflet, incurring a penalty, though this is reduced on appeal, because they are in full colour. 
–1 POINT

 

And what a nicely formatted rule sheet it is. 
 

Even including a splendid breakdown of the colours by party: +5 POINTS

So, what do we get in the box? We’re not expecting much, what with it costing us just 50p from a car boot sale, but we may well be surprised.
 

WE ARE SURPRISED AND IMPRESSED. Absolutely loads to tinker with there. A map of Britain, divided into squares (+6 POINTS). Four different types of game card (+4 POINTS). Monopoly-type money, only substituting the currency with numbers of votes (+6 POINTS). And three whole sheets of pop-out rosettes, which can be placed on the constituency squares in order to reflect your popularity (+6 POINTS). And hang on, what’s that?

An egg timer! A blimmin’ egg timer! (+12 POINTS)

Probably best we go through the rules, just to see what all this stuff is for, eh?

That’s all fair enough. So, how can you earn votes? Well, for the most part, this is a regular board game, where players move around the board by throwing dice. Most of the squares you can land on offer the player a chance to earn votes, in a number of entertaining ways:

MAKING SPEECHES – This is our favourite. As the rules have it, “When landing on a speech square, the speech must be 1 minute long and it should reflect the point of view of the political party the player represents. Political waffle is allowed.” So, that’s where the egg timer comes in. Keep talking for a whole minute without “any undue hesitation”, and you win 10,000 votes.

We like this already. The party you represent throughout the game is chosen by rolling a dice, as on the list of parties a few pictures back. So, if you happen to have chosen, say, SLD, you’re expected to talk for a minute about their policy on a chosen topic. Don’t know what the SLD’s political outlook actually is? Tough, there are no clues in the rules. This is good, as it’ll annoy people who vote for whichever party leader seems nicest in real life because they don’t actually bother finding anything out about politics, but still vote, meaning most election campaigns are spent primarily pandering to such people. +5 POINTS.

What kind of topics are you expected to talk on?

Corporal punishment, nuclear waste disposal, unemployment, trade unions. All fairly 1980s stuff. Hang on, what’s this?

A policy on “Married women at work”? “If elected, my party’s policy is for married women to leave the workplace, as their pretty little heads should be concentrating more fully on producing babies and scrummy cakes, and darning my socks. Is that sixty seconds yet?” Truly a different age. Antiquated political hot potatoes aside, this is a brilliant thing to have in a board game. A political version of Just A Minute, all because you happened to land on that square? Absolutely love it. +15 POINTS

Back to the rules, and the next way to shore up your vote count.

ANSWERING QUESTIONS – “When landing on a question square the next p[layer picks up the appropriate card and reads it out. If the player answers the question correctly, he/she gains the number of votes written on that card.” So, what kind of light fluff can we expect to have on these cards? “What number in Downing Street does the PM live at?” “Complete the name of Britain’s first female Prime Minister, _____ Thatcher?” Eh?

Oh. Crikey. According to the box, this game is for people “aged 12 and up”. Any 12 year old child who was any good at this game must have been a really precautious brat. Like that famous clip of a teenage William Hague at a 1970s Tory Party Conference, in fact. Here are the answers to those questions:

 

So, sorting the men from the boys, there. And ladies from the girls, obv. +4 POINTS

The next way of getting votes: LADDER OF SUCCESS - “The player gains the number of votes written on that card.”

So, a slightly easier way to pick up votes. What sort of things can you expect to see on those cards?

 

All quite worthy, but nothing really befitting the whimsical expression of Paul Eddington’s face on the box. Come on, do something Sir Humphrey would suppress a smirk at.

   That’s more like it. +5 POINTS.

There are also ways you can lose votes, of course, Such as landing on a “Greasy Pole Card” (the opposite to the Ladder of Success card), or landing on the ‘Disaster Corner’ on the board, which loses you all your current votes. Or, you could land on the “Call An Old Woman A Bigot” square! Eh? Eh? Ah, please yourselves.  +4 POINTS

All this carries on until the map is completely filled with rosettes. at which point the person with the most constituencies is declared Prime Minister. No vote tampering, mind.

It does all sound a bit long-winded, but an extra-nice ‘Connect 4’ factor is added to proceedings. As the rules state, “if a player is able to place four electorate rosettes on the map adjoining each other in either horizontal, vertical, or diagonal lines, this is considered a swing in their favour and the player is given a free electorate as a reward”. So, it’s taking in aspects of Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit, Just A Minute, Connect 4, AND Yes, Minister? Holy exit polls, that’s quite extraordinary. +20 POINTS

So, all that considered, might we have a new leader in Board Game Division One? Yes!

BOARD GAME DIVISION ONE

1. THE PARTY GAME: 94 POINTS

2. TVTimes Television Quiz Game: 48pts

3. Bread: -11pts

 

Don’t forget to tune in tomorrow at 9.30pm for our LIVE ELECTION NIGHT BLOG, by the way.

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TV Times Television Quiz Game: The Answers

We hadn’t forgotten. How many did you get right?

What’s that?

You didn’t both answering any of them, because it was all rather pointless, and you can’t imagine why we’d bothered typing in all those questions in the first place?

Oh.

Well, here are the answers anyway. If nothing else, look them over. They might come in handy next time you’re in a pub quiz.

SOAPS

1. Which song, recorded by Stephanie de Sykes, was a hit after being featured on Crossroad?
- Born with a smile on my face.

2. Name the two families featured in Soap.
- The Tates and the Campbells.

3. Jack Carr has appeared as Tom Merrick in one soap and policeman Tony Cunliffe in another. Name one.
- Emmerdale Farm (Merrick), Coronations Street (Cunliffe).

4. Which of the EastEnders runs the fruit and veg stall in Bridge Street?
- Kathy and Pete Beale.

COMEDY

5. What was the name of the dog in Patrick Cargill’s comedy series Father, Dear Father?
- H G Wells.

6. What do the letters M*A*S*H stand for in the title of the American comedy series?
- Mobile Army Surgical Hospital

7. BBC’s Roots, was based on Alex Haley’s best-selling novel. What was the ITV series about?
- A comedy about a dentist.

8. Who played a title role in the 1971 situation comedy Lollipop Loves Mr. Mole?
- Peggy Mount was Lollipop, Hugh Lloyd was Mr. Mole.

DRAMA

9. What was the name of the spaceship in Lost in Space?
- Jupiter 2.

10. Who, in Upstairs, Downstairs shot himself after being ruined by the Wall Street Crash?
- James Bellamy

11. What character did Jack Webb play in Dragnet?
- Det. Sgt. Joe Friday.

12. The theme from which mid-Fifties adventure series was the first ITV signature tune to make the pop charts?
- Robin Hood.

VARIETY

13. Name the dance group Arlene Phillips is best known for choreographing?
- Hot Gossip

14. Name the television astrologer who released a record with the title No Matter What Sign You Are?
- Breakfast Time’s Russell Grant in 1983.

15. What was the name of the Sunday Night at the London Palladium theme tune?
- Startime.

16. The host of which game show also starred in Much and Brass?
- Jim Bowen of Bullseye, who played Charles Sprowl.

NEWS

17. The disappearance of what book started a police investigation in 1984?
- The log-book from HMS Conqueror.

18. Name two of the SDP’s ‘The Gang of Four’.
- David Owen, Shirley Williams, William Rogers, Roy Jenkins.

19. Which British politician is father-in-law to A Week in Politics presenter Peter Jay?
- Former prime minister James Callaghan.

20. In which year and month did was the first live transmission of a House of Lords debate?
- January, 1985.

SPORT

21. Which football expert ‘transferred’ from ITV to BBC in 1973?
- Jimmy Hill

22. Who crashed out of the Olympics when she collided with Britain’s Zola Budd?
- Mary Decker in the 3000 metres in Los Angeles.

23. Who was the first black winner of the BBC Sports Personality of the Year?
- Daley Thompson in 1982.

24. Which sport was specially created for television in 1966?
- Rallycross.

FILMS

25. Which British actor-composer-writer-director had a cameo role in The Italian Job?
- Noel Coward [it wasn’t a cameo! Is was a major role!- Ed]

26. Which American actress was the butt of Groucho Marx’s jokes in the Marx Brothers movies?
- Margaret Dumont.

27. Which British film actress is the mother of former Magpie presenter Jenny Hanley?
- Dinah Sheridan, who starred in Genevieve with Kenneth More.

28. What do the films The Odessa File and The Dogs of War have in common?
- Frederick Forsyth wrote the original novels.

CHANNEL HOPPER ROUND

29. Name the young character in Bird’s Eye commercials who had a girlfriend called Mary.
- Ben.

30. His voice announced the line-up and prizes on Celebrity Squares. Who is he?
- Kenny Everett.

31. Name one of the losing semi-finalists in the 1974 World Cup finals, played in West Germany.
- Poland or Brazil.

32. Who is the actor behind the ‘sch… you know who’ ads for Schweppes drinks?
- William Franklyn.

33. For which teabags does Roy Hudd extol the virtues of ‘Me little perforations’?
- Lyons Quick Brew.

34. What was the subject of the film series The Boat, first shown on British TV in 1984?
- A World War Two submarine mission.

35. Which comedian performed for 30 years under the name Billy Breen?
- Larry Grayson.

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Forthcoming Live Election Night Blog Announcement That Looks Like Some Football Stickers

Be there or thereabouts. Expect graphs. At at least three jokes.

EXCITING FACT: Gordon Brown, in his battle bus, actually drove past the BrokenTV offices about one hour ago. If, as he drove past us, we’d stood by the window and flicked some Vs, that would have been about twice as sophisticated as the weak satirical swipes we’ll probably be taking on Thursday night.

It’ll still be better than Facejacker’s “Election Special”, though.

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BrokenTV’s Boardgame Bacchanal: Part Two

Our rampage through the contents of pages 731 to 739 from the Autumn/Winter 1985 Argos catalogue continues after a slight delay.

If you’re anything like us, then you’re probably still trying to pull off a fashionable haircut even though you’re at least half a decade too old for it. And more pertinently, you always relish a chance to show off your grasp of pre-1986 TV trivia. Well, today’s update in our four-part-unless-we-notice-any-more-at-a-car-boot-sale-in-which-case-it-could-go-on-a-bit-longer series could be just the thing for you.

 That’s right, it’s a Quiz Game based on the 1980s’ second most popular TV listings magazine. With double Christmas issue-sized thanks (again) to Derek Williams of the Erant Splendens blog, Iconochromatic podcast and ResonanceFM’s One Life Left for sending in this Milton Bradley/Independent Television Publications triv-fest from 1985. INCLUDING:

What piece of history did this woman make in 1979?

Name Arfur and Terry’s favourite drinking club!

Who does Wogan call ‘the poison dwarf’? And many more sample questions all contained on the front of the nice shiny silvery box. Nice grade of cardboard, too. +5 POINTS 

But, there MUST be rules. It’s not a proper board game unless there are lots of rules for people to adapt as they see fit. So, how do you win the game? We’ll come to that in more detail later, but here’s a quick preview, from the rules printed inside the lid of the box, as is only proper. Yes, leaflets with the instructions printed on them are more practical, as you can pass it between the players more easily, but scrabbling around the room to clumsily read from the inside of the box is somehow more fun. It just is. +6 POINTS

Master score card? Your own score card? Spinners? All very interesting, but WHAT could possibly be in the box?

Lots and lots of question cards. (+5 POINTS) A complicated red plastic thing (+5 POINTS). A cloth.(+0 POINTS, it’s only a cloth) And… hang on… what are they?

That’s right, FOUR (count ‘em!) TVTimes Quiz Game branded crayons. (+7 POINTS) Marvellous stuff. This looks like we’re in for a more professional offering than the Bread boardgame from Part One. See how the Q&A cards look positively baroque compared to the mostly plain cards from the Boswell-themed game. (+2 POINTS) No sign of a ‘spinner’ yet, though.

Ah, there we go, all tucked away beneath the plastic section of the box like when you get a box of chocolates and get a bit sad when you’ve eaten all the nice ones, only to discover a second tray of chocolates beneath the first. (+5 POINTS) Plus, a felt-tip pen (sadly not TVT-branded, –3 POINTS), four wipe-clear single player scorecards, and a ‘final round’ scoreboard. Impressive. (+4 POINTS)

There’s even room to write in your name on the card for each game, lest anyone try to swap the cards around while you pop to the toilet. They’ve certainly thought this through. “No, I was green, look, my name is right there in the top corner. Nice try Nan, but come on, at least have a go at getting one sport question right.” +3 POINTS

So, how does it work? Well, each player takes it in turn to spin both of the spinners…

With Spinner One landing on one of the seven categories – Soaps, Films, Variety, Drama, News, Sport or Comedy (with a ‘free choice’ option there too) – and the question number of the next card to be played, from one to four. If you get your question right, you can tick a space in your score card, and spin again with an aim to answering correctly once more, up to a maximum of three questions per turn. If you get it wrong, your turn is over.

Once all three boxes in a subject are ticked, your Channel Hopper board comes into play. “The what now?”

This. Your Channel Hopper questions only come into play once you spin a category you’ve completed, at which point you’ll be given a question on TV and film-based general knowledge. Get seven of these correct, and you become the Big Winner.

This makes things a little more interesting. If you know absolutely toss-all about Soaps, Drama and Sport, you can still win, but if you have enough televisual wherewithal to complete all of your category sections, you’ll be much more likely to gallop to victory. +4 POINTS

And, that’s pretty much it for the mechanics of the game. All nicely set up, even if there isn’t really one big central Trivial Pursuit-style board that every can huddle around.  But what of the questions?

Ah, the question cards. The most important part of any trivia game. While Triv famously has two big boxes of question cards each the size of an average Vienetta, here you’ve got eight smaller piles of cards, split between genres, with an extra-big pack of cards dedicated to the Channel Hopper round. This is A Good Thing. (+3 POINTS) And excitingly, you also get what the instructions refer to as a ‘decoder’.

The MB-branded Decoder, there. Wow. (+4 POINTS) This allows just one question per card to be read out, meaning fewer opportunities for the sneaky reading of likely future questions, just before you pop into the dining room to look up the answers in the Encyclopaedia Britannica  Hey, it’s 1985 remember, Wikipedia didn’t exist then. But, of course, that’s not all The Decoder does – note the complicated patterns on the backs of the cards? They ensure that there can be no sneaky peeking at the answers. Not unless you are The Holder Of The Decoder.

The two questions answered here are:

“Who starred in Upstairs, Downstairs and in American comedy series 9 to 5?”

“The star of Surprise, Surprise often goes On Safari. Who is he?”

Can you tell the answers from the back of the card?

Admittedly, you sort of can if you squint a lot, but it’s much easier if you have The Decoder.

In certain lighting conditions, anyway. It took ages to get that photo right. All quite fun, unless you’re colour blind, in which case we’d imagine it’d be a nightmare. –2 POINTS

So, with all this in mind, a pretty decent showing from The TVTimes Television Quiz Game. But, where does it stand in Board Game Division One? Here we go:

BOARD GAME DIVISION ONE

1. TVTIMES TELEVISION QUIZ GAME: 48 POINTS

2. Bread: –11 Points

 

Wow, quite a gap there. It’ll certainly take a lot to overturn that lead, but can the next EXCITINGLY GENERAL ELECTION THEMED entrant to our rundown hope to challenge for the top honour? Tomorrow, as a tasty little precursor to Thursday’s LIVE ELECTION NIGHT BLOG, we will see.

But, for today, we’ll round things off with some choice questions from the game. See how well you can do. Remember, these are all from 1985.

SOAPS

1. Which song, recorded by Stephanie de Sykes, was a hit after being featured on Crossroad?

2. Name the two families featured in Soap.

3. Jack Carr has appeared as Tom Merrick in one soap and policeman Tony Cunliffe in another. Name one.

4. Which of the EastEnders runs the fruit and veg stall in Bridge Street?

COMEDY

5. What was the name of the dog in Patrick Cargill’s comedy series Father, Dear Father?

6. What do the letters M*A*S*H stand for in the title of the American comedy series?

7. BBC’s Roots, was based on Alex Haley’s best-selling novel. What was the ITV series about?

8. Who played a title role in the 1971 situation comedy Lollipop Loves Mr. Mole?

DRAMA

9. What was the name of the spaceship in Lost in Space?

10. Who, in Upstairs, Downstairs shot himself after being ruined by the Wall Street Crash?

11. What character did Jack Webb play in Dragnet?

12. The theme from which mid-Fifties adventure series was the first ITV signature tune to make the pop charts?

VARIETY

13. Name the dance group Arlene Phillips is best known for choreographing?

14. Name the television astrologer who released a record with the title No Matter What Sign You Are?

15. What was the name of the Sunday Night at the London Palladium theme tune?

16. The host of which game show also starred in Much and Brass?

NEWS

17. The disappearance of what book started a police investigation in 1984?

18. Name two of the SDP’s ‘The Gang of Four’.

19. Which British politician is father-in-law to A Week in Politics presenter Peter Jay?

20. In which year and month did was the first live transmission of a House of Lords debate?

SPORT

21. Which football expert ‘transferred’ from ITV to BBC in 1973?

22. Who crashed out of the Olympics when she collided with Britain’s Zola Budd?

23. Who was the first black winner of the BBC Sports Personality of the Year?

24. Which sport was specially created for television in 1966?

FILMS

25. Which British actor-composer-writer-director had a cameo role in The Italian Job?

26. Which American actress was the butt of Groucho Marx’s jokes in the Marx Brothers movies?

27. Which British film actress is the mother of former Magpie presenter Jenny Hanley?

28. What do the films The Odessa File and The Dogs of War have in common?

CHANNEL HOPPER ROUND

29. Name the young character in Bird’s Eye commercials who had a girlfriend called Mary.

30. His voice announced the line-up and prizes on Celebrity Squares. Who is he?

31. Name one of the losing semi-finalists in the 1974 World Cup finals, played in West Germany.

32. Who is the actor behind the ‘sch… you know who’ ads for Schweppes drinks?

33. For which teabags does Roy Hudd extol the virtues of ‘Me little perforations’?

34. What was the subject of the film series The Boat, first shown on British TV in 1984?

35. Which comedian performed for 30 years under the name Billy Breen?

 

ANSWERS TOMORROW.

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