Still miss Going for Gold?  Well, move to France where its spinoff show, Questions pour un champion, still airs – as it has done since November 1988.

I’m currently in France (on holiday – thankfully not as an attendee at this match) and I happened upon an episode of it last night on French TV.  I was struck by the format, which is identical to Going for Gold, and the all-action host – who is nothing like Henry Kelly!

I intended just putting up any old clip for you to check out but I found something even better.  It’s an episode form last March and features an Irish man – Sean Dingle from Dublin.  Have a watch and see how he got on.

Obviously, how well (or otherwise) you did in these will give away your age!

In our case, I’m pleased to report that we didn’t let the good name of MacGyver down. We scored 19/20, which was good enough for us to be declared joint-winners with the law-abiding citizens of the Hill Street Blues table. Both tables received a free bottle of Prosecco to celebrate their tremendous knowledge.

Answers:

1. On the A-Team, what does Hannibal say during every episode? A> “I love it when a plan comes together”
2. What was Kevin’s girlfriend’s name in The Wonder Years? A> Winnie Cooper
3. What do the letters stand for in M*A*S*H? A> Mobile Army Surgical Hospital
4. What was the theme tune from The Greatest American Hero called? A> ‘Believe it or not’*
5. The actor who played Koyak was godfather to which famous actress? A> Jennifer Aniston
6. What was the full name of Magnum’s estate manager in Magnum P.I.? A> Jonathan Higgins
7. Which actor played Doogie Howser, MD? A> Neil Patrick Harris
8. What planet did ALF hail from? A> Melmac
9. The actor from question 7 above has recently appeared in which TV series? A> Glee or How I met your mother
10. In Fraggle Rock, what was the name of the dog who knew about the Fraggles? A> Sprocket
11. Who played Wonder Woman? A> Lynda Carter
12. What was the surname of the family in The Cosby Show? A> Huxtable
13. What business featured in Falcon Crest? A> Wine/Vinyard
14. Which Foundation did MacGyver work for? A> Phoenix
15. Which actor played Michael Knight on Knight Rider? A> David Hasselhof
16. What were Cagney and Lacey’s first names?A> Christine and Mary-Beth

Man, I’m getting old.  This sort of thing will soon sound, to my daughter, as my father’s stories about the ’60s did to me. Oh well.

* Correctly, this is called ‘Theme from Greatest American Hero’ but it would have been a tough sell to get a point for that!

A really nice touch, well if you’re me anyway, was the holding of a quiz for the first hour or so of the wedding banquet.

As we took our seats in the dining room, we noticed the Lewis Carroll-esque box you see here. Upon opening this we discovered 20 cards, each containing a trivia question. As the theme of the banquet was 1980s TV (I was sitting at the MacGyver table, for instance) most of the questions related to this.

However, the quiz also featured four questions about the bride and groom. These were a clever addition, in my opinion, as they were obviously google-proof.  That said, our table actually did well on these questions, even managing to correctly guess how many stitches Catherine had to receive after a nasty fall, aged 5.

It was seven, just in case anyone ever asks…

If you’d like to pretend that you too were one of Niall and Catherine’s wedding guests, then here are the questions for you to try yourself:

1. On the A-Team, what does Hannibal say during every episode?
2. What was Kevin’s girlfriend’s name in The Wonder Years?
3. What do the letters stand for in M*A*S*H?
4. What was the theme tune from The Greatest American Hero called?
5. The actor who played Koyak was godfather to which famous actress?
6. What was the full name of Magnum’s estate manager in Magnum P.I.?
7. Which actor played Doogie Howser, MD?
8. What planet did ALF hail from?
9. The actor from question 7 above has recently appeared in which TV series?
10. In Fraggle Rock, what was the name of the dog who knew about the Fraggles?
11. Who played Wonder Woman?
12. What was the surname of the family in The Cosby Show?
13. What business featured in Falcon Crest?
14. Which Foundation did MacGyver work for?
15. Which actor played Michael Knight on Knight Rider?
16. What were Cagney and Lacey’s first names?

Tables had until the start of the soup course to fill in their answer sheet and hand it up. The wedding planner then handed the sheets back out in an orderly fashion to different tables, so they could be corrected.

Tune in tomorrow when I’ll post the answers to the questions AND tell you how we got on.

Update: here are the answers.

Only Connect is a particularly hard quiz in which teams of three are presented with clues/facts and have to work out the connection between them. You can find some examples of these on its Wikipedia page.

If you’d like to take part, and you’ve got two willing mates, you have until midnight on November 10th to email contestants@presentable.co.uk

The only thing is – you have to be a UK resident to take part. This makes me sad but I’m posting this anyway as a test of the blog’s international reach.

Click more… to check them out.

Answers:

1. In what year did ABBA first enter the Eurovision? A> 1973. Their first song ‘Ring Ring‘ finished third at the Swedish national selection contest.
2. Which country has won the title on the most occasions? A> Ireland, with seven wins.
3. Where did the first Eurovision take place? A> Lugano, Switzerland.
4. Teach-In won the 1975 contest for The Netherlands, with which song? A> Ding-a-Dong.
5. In what year did four countries share the title? A> 1969.
6. Celine Dion won the 1988 contest, for which country? A> Switzerland.
7. In what year did the UK last win the Eurovision? A> 1997.
8. Who was Ireland’s representative at Congratulations, the Eurovision’s 50 year retrospective event? A> Johnny Logan.
9. As of 2008, which country has competed in the contest the most times without a win? A> Portugal.
10. Which nation has withdrawn from the 2009 contest after the EBU requested they change the lyrics of their chosen song? A> Georgia.

Stay tuned to the blog as on Thursday I’ll be doing a Eurovision-themed pics and vids round. Sorry folks, the week turned out to be busy.

The first Eurovision took place in 1956 and, in the 53 years since, it’s become something of a cult. Nothing else combines culture, popularity and negative street cred as the ESC does. In its time, it’s managed to spawn a Grammy ‘Record of the year‘, a revolution and, perhaps most famously of all, ABBA.

Unsurprisingly, it’s also something of a quizzing gold mine, with venues, hosts, interval acts and gaffs all being viable themes for quiz rounds before one even gets to the acts and their songs.

Anyway, here’s my attempt at digging into that Eurovision trivia seam for a few quizzing nuggets.

I’ll post some regular questions today and some flashy, multimedia questions later in the week.

Questions:

1. In what year did ABBA first enter the Eurovision?
2. Which country has won the title on the most occasions?
3. Where did the first Eurovision take place?
4. Teach-In won the 1975 contest for The Netherlands, with which song?
5. In what year did four countries share the title?
6. Celine Dion won the 1988 contest, for which country?
7. In what year did the UK last win the Eurovision?
8. Who was Ireland’s representative at Congratulations, the Eurovision’s 50 year retrospective event?
9. As of 2008, which country has competed in the contest the most times without a win?
10. Which nation has withdrawn from the 2009 contest after the EBU requested they change the lyrics of their chosen song?

Update: answers here.

1. What everyday concept did Iris Murdoch describe as “… the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real”? A> Love [in the essay: 'The Sublime and the Good', 1959]
2. An unattested language from which a group of attested languages, in this case those of the Germanic, Slavic, Romance and other families, are thought to be historically derived, for what do the letters P-I-E stand? A> Proto-Indo-European
3. If a tap leaks a millilitre of water every second, how many 10-litre buckets will it fill completely in a day? A> Eight [actually 8.64]
4. Giving its name to an early form of capacitor, which city to the south-west of Amsterdam is home to The Netherlands’ oldest university, founded in 1575? A> Leiden (the leyden jar)
5. Which of Shakespeare’s plays is the only one to be set in Vienna and concerns the city’s Duke adopting a disguise in order to observe the actions of his subjects, including his deputy Angelo? A> Measure for Measure
6. A taco terrier is a cross between a toy fox terrier and which other breed of dog, originating in a country of Latin America? A> Chihuahua [from Mexico]
7. Which French obstetrician, who died in 1957, gave his name to a method of childbirth involving exercises and breathing control designed to give pain relief without drugs? A> Fernand Lamaze [developer of the Lamaze Technique]

Some off-the-top-of-my-head examples of this phenomenon would include: Tiger Woods in Golf, Torvill and Dean in Ice Skating and either/both Stephen Roche and Seán Kelly, who turned Cycling into one of Ireland’s most popular sports in the 1980s.

The effect was seen in action again this week as the build-up to the final of this year’s University Challenge seemed to focus entirely on Gail Trimble, captain of the Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

“Is she the cleverest contestant ever?” wondered Paul Gallagher in The Guardian as, en-route to the final, she had scored 825 of the team’s 1,235 points.  The writer also informed us that one of her opponents likened her style to “intellectual blitzkrieg”.  In the quarter-final, Corpus Christi were so dominant that they only allowed the University of Exeter 15 points – a new low-score record for the current series under Jeremy Paxman.

The final, which aired this week, produced no surprises for the hype machine. Even though Corpus Christi were taking on Manchester (champions in 2006 and 345-30 winners over Lincoln College, Oxford, in the semi-final) they prevailed on a scoreline of 275-190.  It wasn’t plain sailing as they had trailed 70-0 after 10 mins and, even in victory, this was their closest result of the year.

Being the subject of all this focus has been double-edged for Ms Trimble. As part of its report on the final, The Times quotes some Red Top opinions on her manner. “A hateful know-all”, “horse-toothed snob” and other examples of erudition. The flip-side of this is that she is already being lionized in the broadsheets.

Fancy a challenge? Want to see how you’d compare to Gail? Here are a few starters-for-10 from the final:

1. What everyday concept did Iris Murdoch describe as “… the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real”?
2. An unattested language from which a group of attested languages, in this case those of the Germanic, Slavic, Romance and other families, are thought to be historically derived, for what do the letters P-I-E stand?
3. If a tap leaks a millilitre of water every second, how many 10-litre buckets will it fill completely in a day?
4. Giving its name to an early form of capacitor, which city to the south-west of Amsterdam is home to The Netherlands’ oldest university, founded in 1575?
5. Which of Shakespeare’s plays is the only one to be set in Vienna and concerns the city’s Duke adopting a disguise in order to observe the actions of his subjects, including his deputy Angelo?
6. A taco terrier is a cross between a toy fox terrier and which other breed of dog, originating in a country of Latin America?
7. Which French obstetrician, who died in 1957, gave his name to a method of childbirth involving exercises and breathing control designed to give pain relief without drugs?

Click here for answers.

WitW? may be the show that got me into quizzing.  To paraphrase JFK this was not because it was hard, but because it was easy.  In fact, the ease with which I could answer 90% of the questions asked each week led to a love/hate relationship with the show.

Unlike Countdown in the UK, WitW? had a minimum age requirement of 18 for entrants. This seemed horribly unfair at the time. I quite fancied the idea of winning a holiday to Rio de Janeiro! Also I knew someone who had appeared on it. One of my former primary school teachers took part, along with the rest of his table quiz team. I’ve forgotten how they got on now, all I can remember is that they all had to adopt the one surname (to preserve the illusion that they were members of a family). His appearance showed that, if you were good enough (i.e. did the odd quiz), you could get on – it wasn’t a closed shop. Except if you were under 18.

What happened the year I did reach the magical age of qualification? RTÉ cancelled the show.

And with regard to the question that forms the title of the post…

After WitW? Teresa Lowe left RTÉ and is now a practising barrister in the Dublin circuit. I kid you not. As Pat Short said one time “Good girl Teresa!”

PS. I’d love to have included some pics or a vid clip of Where in the World? with this post but, as far as my searching skills can tell, the internet is a black hole when it comes to this show.