Genial polymath who hosted University Challenge
Bamber Gascoigne, who has died aged 87, was a writer, broadcaster, historian and arts connoisseur – but he will be remembered as the original host of the longrunning TV quiz show University Challenge, said The Times. Whereas his successor, Jeremy Paxman, has tended to adopt a somewhat acerbic, impatient tone with the student competitors (“Oh come on!”), Gascoigne – who was only 27 when the show launched in 1962 – was courteous, encouraging (a “softy”, by his own estimation). With his patrician voice and donnish appearance, he was an unlikely star of commercial television; yet he regularly attracted 11 million viewers, and his catchphrases – “Fingers on the buzzer”; “Your starter for 10”; “I’m sorry, I’ll have to hurry you” – lived on long after he left the show in 1987. He was parodied on The Young Ones; and in 2003 David Nicholls wrote a novel called Starter for Ten, which revolved around
University Challenge. It was later turned into a hit film, in which Gascoigne was played by Mark Gatiss.
Arthur Bamber Gascoigne was born in 1935, the son of Lt Col Derick Gascoigne and his wife, Midi O’Neill. The family had Norman roots and could trace its history back to the 14th century; Bamber was the name of an Irish ancestor. He won a scholarship to Eton, then spent a pleasant two years on National Service in the Grenadier Guards. His duties, he said, alternated between guarding Buckingham Palace and escorting debutantes to balls. In 1955, he went up to Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he read English literature and joined Footlights. He’d loved acting at school, but decided that being in the same play every night was boring, and turned to writing skits instead. Producer Michael Codron persuaded him to write a whole revue, and in 1957 Share My Lettuce opened in the West End, starring two unknowns: Kenneth Williams and Maggie Smith. Later, he worked as a theatre critic for The Spectator and The Observer. In the early 1960s, Gascoigne got a letter asking him if he would like to audition for a new quiz show for Granada, based on the American show College Bowl. “The letter virtually said, ‘If you want to be on TV, ring this number.’”
Although the first series was won by the University of Leicester, the show was dominated by Oxford and Cambridge, as they were each allowed to field five colleges. (In 1975, this triggered a protest by a team from Manchester University: in an effort to make the quiz unbroadcastable, they answered every question “Che Guevara”, “Marx”, “Trotsky” or “Lenin”. There were also complaints that polytechnics were excluded.) Gascoigne was himself erudite and naturally intellectual: in the early days, he set all the questions himself. But he wore his learning lightly and smilingly, said Mark Lawson in The Guardian. In fact, he was the perfect host to prove that viewer enjoyment didn’t necessarily depend on being able to answer the questions. His charm and “easygoing intellect” made it possible for “viewers to enjoy the cleverness of others”.
He described University Challenge as like a “rich godfather”: it didn’t pay a fortune, but it provided him with a regular income, which enabled him to pursue his many other interests. He presented TV documentaries, including The Christians and The
Great Moghuls; wrote bestselling books based on them; and established his own publishing house, which specialised in books of rare prints. In 2014, he was surprised to discover that his 99-year-old aunt had bequeathed him her crumbling medieval manor house in Surrey. “Every time there was a new drip, she thought: get a new bucket,” he observed. Rather than sell the house, and bank millions, he and his wife Christina, a photographer and ceramicist, put the estate into the hands of a charitable trust. West Horsley Place is now a community arts centre and the home of Grange Park Opera. Their own home was a book-lined house overlooking the Thames in Richmond.