Your starter for 10
Are you a Pointless or a Mastermind fan? Or does The Chase send you over the Tipping Point? We take a look at our obsession with quizzes…
Why we’ve become a nation of quiz lovers
Settle down, please, here’s your first question: In which year did Britain become obsessed by quizzes? 2020? Correct answer! Of course, our hunger for general knowledge contests goes way back, but it was certainly tickled in 1979 with the release of the board game Trivial Pursuit, and later TV shows such as Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? and The Weakest Link. But it was lockdown that saw the need to pit our wits against others grow even stronger. In uncertain times and missing human contact, there was comfort to be had in the straightforward right or wrong of the questions asked. We took up Zoom quizzes with work colleagues and loved ones, and when one Lancashire pub set up a virtual quiz for 30 locals, more than 200,000 people tuned in from all over the globe!
When questions available online ran out, many spent their free evenings creating Mastermind-style rounds of ‘specialist subjects’, such as ‘The Life
And Lyrics Of Dolly Parton’ or ‘Big Brother From 2000 To 2010’. Others joined celebs on online quiz streams, marvelling that they were being put on the spot by Sir Lenny Henry and playing alongside Dame Helen Mirren.
Our fascination for quizzes is something Shaun Williamson can understand. Many will remember him as Barry from Eastenders, but he’s also a quiz show super-contestant, winning Pointless twice! He says his ‘fate was sealed’ when his parents gave him Trivial Pursuit.
‘I take pride in knowing that Frank Sinatra’s mum, Dolly, and Dean Martin’s son, Dean Paul, both died in separate plane crashes on the same mountain, Mount San Gorgonio in California,’ he says. He’s tried to figure out our national love for quizzes in his new book, in which he shares some of his learnings… • A Matter Of Facts (Cassell, £16.99) by Shaun
Williamson is out now
‘Actor Shaun Williamson has won Pointless twice!’