Alan Connor is a journalist, TV presenter and author of several books on quizzes. He has also found some insights in the BBC Genome listings into the origins of the game.

While doing the peculiar job of "question editor", in between deciding on the questions that contestants and viewers will answer, I have come up with some questions for myself. Inevitably, I suppose. Questions about questions.

And the answers aren't obvious at first. Why on earth do we quiz? When did we start doing so? What makes a good – and, indeed, a rotten – quiz question? And why don't quiz shows give sandwich toasters as prizes any more?

I'd imagined that to find how and why Britain began to make a game out of asking and answering questions, I'd be going back to Victorian parlours... or perhaps deeper into history: to Enlightenment thinkers outsmarting each other over a cup of new-fangled coffee after a hard day's enlightening.

As Jeremy Paxman would curtly respond to any of these guesses: nope. The answers were, in fact, to be found in the BBC's searchable archive of Radio Times listings, Genome. It was the BBC that got Britain addicted to the quiz. Genome was, as I expected, an absolute treasure trove: but you can't find the earliest quizzes by using "quiz" as a search term. The first quizzes were not even called "quizzes". They were bees.

That word comes from the US; so too did the BBC's first "Bee": on 30 January 1938, the Regional Programme London broadcast Transatlantic Spelling Bee, a "spelling match between members of Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges, and Oxford University". Radio Times took pains to explain to listeners what we now take for granted as part of a contest of knowledge, reassuring them that the programme was "an extension of an idea that has been very popular with American listeners". In other words: don't panic, this idea of people competing to answer questions might just prove entertaining.

After a few more Spelling Bees, an unnamed, unsung pioneer at Regional Programme Northern twigged that the same set-up – microphones, buzzers, questions – could be used in a competition based on something other than spelling. And so it was that Britain got its first proper quiz: April 1938's General Knowledge Bee, a "contest across the Pennines between schoolchildren of both counties".

Quizzes were, I believe, radio's first genuine innovation. Other programmes took something that already existed – the newspaper, the concert, the lecture – and made it into programming. But the quiz was a beast of broadcasting.

It already existed in US radio, but right from that first trans-Pennine event, British quiz programmes were a very different activity to their cocky US cousin. Cash prizes? Certainly not! Oily hosts? The thought never crossed the Corporation's minds.

The atmosphere was wholesome, improving and very much borrowed from the classroom – a tradition which continued through Top of the Form (from 1948, "A Battle of Wits between teams representing boys' schools in London"), University Challenge, Blockbusters and the rest. (And then there was The Brains Trust, where a panel answered questions such as "What is happiness?" and "Are thoughts things or about things?" Answers not provided below.)

Before all that, though, the quiz had to establish itself as part of broadcasting furniture. It took a war.

During World War Two, the "bee" was put to work as part of the national effort. No question-setter of that era was ever stuck thinking "what shall I ask them about this time?"; the answer was: whatever will be more likely to bring us victory. And the rewards came in the form of being better informed: the Home Service offered its Air Raid Wardens' Training Bee, where teams gathered at a Warden's Post to be tested on the finer points of firefighting. You found out whether you were digging correctly for victory on the Agricultural Bee (subtitled "What Land Girls ought to know") and the Forces Programme kept the troops on their toes with its regular Naval Intelligence ("a quiz bee with teams from all ranks").

There was also a one-off called A Competition: Sons in France against Parents in England brought soldiers back into contact with their nearest and dearest. But it was a one-off for good reason: The poignancy of this on-air family reunion was slightly undermined by the audible vomiting of one of the inebriated Sons and the BBC’s concern that his equally jolly brothers-in-arms seemed constantly on the verge of giving away their location to the Germans.

Those programmes are long gone, but two of the biggest of the quiz programmes of today have their origins in World War Two. University Challenge was once a form of on-base entertainment for US soldiers. The starters and bonuses had different names, because University Challenge is actually based on a basketball metaphor: answer a "jump ball" (starter-for-ten) and you got a chance at three "free throws" (bonuses). Intriguing enough for GIs, and the quiz, as Jeremy Paxman slyly notes in his book on the programme, was really "a way to keep servicemen from their more conventional styles of recreation".

The success of University Challenge (originally broadcast by ITV) spurred the BBC to come up with something to match. The producer tasked with this, Bill Wright, had been a flight-sergeant during the war, but was shot down and kept in solitary confinement for three weeks and prisoner-of-war camps for three years.

He was plagued with nightmares in which an interrogator insisted, in the dark, for his name, rank and serial number while he sat in a black chair under a bright light.

One morning, though, he announced to his wife that he was going to keep the chair and make it the central point of a new quiz, with a spin on "name, rank, serial number" before the first question. No prizes for guessing the name of that one, whose Genome listing announces: "This new and exciting brain game invites contenders to take the stand and defend their claim to the title".

Yes, the BBC might eventually have succumbed to the occasional excitement of modest money prizes and shiny floors, but British quiz's wartime edifying roots can still be seen, and we remain the only country to broadcast, in prime-time, quizzes with little to no reward, where the viewer feels gratified if they've answered as many as one or two of the questions. Good. We don't care about prizes. 

Over at iPlayer, there's collection of vintage quizzes curated by Richard Osman, which include the programme that Bill Wright came up with before Mastermind, the extraordinary Quiz Ball.

1.) This actor - pictured here as Estella in a 1983 adaption of Charles Dicken’s Great Expectations - went on to have a varied career, including a regular role in Holby City.

Click here to find out the answer

2.) The actor on the right was a familiar face in the children's BBC drama Byker Grove before becoming one half of a well-known TV presenting duo. 

Click here to find out the answer

3.) This actor worked in a post office, restaurant and a shop in EastEnders, making it handy that she had already played so many characters in Goodness Gracious Me.

Click here to find out the answer

4.) Another Byker Grove star, this time with her bags packed for the move to Walford. While appearing in EastEnders she found time to dance her way to Strictly Come Dancing success in 2004.

Click here to find out the answer

5.) Batman normally keeps his identity hidden, but can you tell which future Hollywood star is pictured here on Going Live in 1988? 

Click here to find out the answer

6.) This young actor was uncredited for his 1982 appearance in Doctor Who. Fourteen years later (we don’t know if he travelled there in the Tardis) he had a starring tole in 1996 film Trainspotting.

Click here to find out the answer

Don't forget to tell us your answers in the space below. If you want some more teasers to test your knowledge try our quizzes from November and December 2015. 

For the benefit of anyone bamboozled by last Sunday's Genome quiz, here are the answers you're been waiting for:

JANUARY - Dennis Waterman played the lead in schools drama Terry, and had earlier played William (aka Just William) in the children's series.

FEBRUARY - Peter Cook and Dudley Moore rose to fame after the success of Beyond the Fringe, which also starred Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller.

MARCH - The last composer to work at the Radiophonic Workshop was Elizabeth Parker.  The Workshop was located at the BBC sound studios in Maida Vale.

APRIL - The star of A for Andromeda was Julie Christie, and Susan Hampshire replaced her in The Andromeda Breakthrough a year later.

MAY - Angela Rippon and Tom Coyne presented the original, Midlands-only version of Top Gear.

JUNE - Jessie Matthews took over the lead role in The Dales (formerly Mrs Dale's Diary), which was replaced in 1969 by Waggoners Walk NW.

JULY - ITMA stood for It's That Man Again, originally a newspaper reference to Hitler, but in this context referring to Tommy Handley.  Band Waggon starred Arthur Askey and Richard Murdoch.

AUGUST - Jeremy Lloyd was co-writer of Are You Being Served? with David Croft.  The sequel was Grace and Favour, unless you're American in which case it was Are You Being Served? Again!

SEPTEMBER - The emperors in I, Claudius were Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula and Claudius (of course). There was also a cameo appearance by Nero in the last episode, played by Christopher Biggins.  The actors (but not Biggins!) have all appeared in Doctor Who at one time or another.

OCTOBER - Sir John Reith left the BBC in 1938.  The questioner in the original version of Face to Face was John Freeman.

NOVEMBER - Ray Alan's alien character was Mikki the Martian, while the host of Pops and Lenny and other shows featuring Lenny the Lion was Terry Hall.

DECEMBER - Professor Quatermass was called Bernard, in tribute to astronomer Bernard Lovell.  The link between Quatermass and Muffin the Mule, as seen above, is that the last television Quatermass, John Mills, was the brother of Muffin's friend Annette Mills.

More Genome blog larks in the Sunday Post on The Forsyte Saga - coming soon to a computer near you.

And what a year it was…  Anyway, as Millicent Martin would sing, it’s over, let it go!

To celebrate the New Year, we’re taking a quick look back at the year just gone, in the form of a quiz – because I know you were all paying attention – based on some of the things I’ve talked about in the Genome Sunday Post through 2016.  The relevant blog appeared in the month named above each question.

Pens at the ready – no cheating now…

JANUARY

Which future star of New Tricks had an early role as the title character, Terry, in a schools broadcast in 1969?  Even earlier in his career, he played the lead in which BBC children’s series?

FEBRUARY

1960s comedy giants Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, stars of Not Only… But Also, first came to fame in which revue, originally presented at the 1960 Edinburgh Festival and televised in 1964?  Who were their famous co-stars in that revue?

MARCH

The BBC Radiophonic Workshop provided electronic music and special sound for BBC programmes from 1958 to 1998. Which female composer was the last person to be employed at the Workshop?  And where in London was the Workshop based?

APRIL

Our guest blogger Greg Bakun talked about his love for British television – one series he has been able to enjoy on DVD (albeit in truncated form as it is not complete in the archives) is A for Andromeda.  Which famous film star’s career was launched by the series, and who replaced her in the follow up, The Andromeda Breakthrough?

MAY

Top Gear was one of the motoring programmes discussed in our blog on all things automotive.  But who was the original lead presenter, and in what English region was the programme first shown, before it was networked?

JUNE

Jessie Matthews took over the lead of which radio soap in 1963 – and what was the name of the new soap, set in North London, that replaced it six years later?

JULY

Tommy Handley starred from 1939 to 1949 in ITMA, the great wartime comedy – but what did the initials stand for?  And who were the two comic stars of rival show Band Waggon?

AUGUST

Are You Being Served? was one of the most popular comedy series of the 1970s, but who co-wrote it with producer David Croft?  What was the 1990s sequel that reunited many of the cast?

SEPTEMBER

I, Claudius featured Brian Blessed, George Baker, John Hurt and Derek Jacobi as successive Roman emperors – what were their names, and in which other drama series have all four actors appeared at different times?

OCTOBER

Sir John Reith was the first Director General of the BBC.  In which year did he leave the Corporation?  He was interviewed on BBC television’s Face to Face in 1960 but who was the unseen questioner in that series?

NOVEMBER

Ventriloquist Ray Alan's best-known character was the aristocratic Lord Charles.  But who was his earlier extra-terrestrial dummy who often appeared in children’s television?  And which other ventriloquist’s show, Pops and Lenny, once featured the Beatles?

DECEMBER

Writer Nigel Kneale was celebrated as a pioneer of television writing, and of the genre of science fiction.  What is the first name of his recurring hero, Professor Quatermass?  And a final, trickier question – what is the connection between Quatermass and Muffin the Mule – apart from their both appearing on BBC television in the 1950s?

No prize for the first set of correct answers I’m afraid – BBC Genome has an even lower budget than Blankety Blank!  Back to the usual style of blog next week, when we celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Forsyte Saga.

1) The arrival of a new EastEnder was marked with this cover shoot by Lord Lichfield. Can you name both mother and baby?

2) This extract of a Radio Times cover from 1999 marks the return of a much-loved duo. But which one?

3) This cover star from the latter part of 1991 went to great lengths to publicise a new strand of a popular BBC1 show. Can you name the person behind the brightly-coloured pixellations?

4) This is a small segment of a sporting comeback which took place in 1994. Can you name this courageous pair?

5) Finally this week, a star on a 1990 Radio Times cover who is still very much at the top of his game more than 25 years later. At the time he was the host of a film-based quiz for younger viewers.

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Can't quite join the dots? Here are the answers:

1) Ben and Kathy Mitchell

2) French and Saunders

3) Esther Rantzen

4) Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean

5) Phillip Schofield

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1) This 2007 drama was rewarded with a wraparound Radio Times cover to mark its conclusion in April. Name the series.

2) This pouting temptress was photographed by David Bailey to mark a momentous event for her screen persona. Name both actress and character.

3) This popular import made the front cover of the Radio Times in April 1983. Name that show.

4) These cute doggies are the stars of this 1978 cover for a popular drama of its day, but who is their human companion here? And name the show too.

5) And we finish back in 1964 for the forerunner of today's phenomenally popular Strictly. It was a slightly different beast then and with a different host. Can you put a name to the face?

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Still need a helping hand? Here are the answers:

1) Life on Mars

2) Patsy Palmer (Bianca from EastEnders)

3) Fame

4) Christopher Timothy, All Creatures Great and Small

5) Peter West

1) This pair were featured on the cover of an October 1970 edition of the Radio Times to promote their new series. You can find several clues to their identities in this previous blog post. You just need to name the show.

2) This young actress made the cover for her role in Emma's Time, part of The Wednesday Play strand. You may recognise her more readily from subsequent sitcom that has gone down as a classic. Can you put a name to the face?

3) Talking of sitcoms, this is arguably the daddy of them all. But this impressive chestful of decorations belongs to which actor's chest?

4) They don't get much more famous than this. But the Radio Times had to settle for an illustration to promote the Night of Nights, a showbusiness spectacular which he performed with alongside another great. Who is the cover star?

5) It's all about the hands in this cover photograph of an actor taking on the mantle of an iconic television role. Who is he?

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So here are the answers if you want to be transported into a place of knowledge:

1) Steptoe and Son

2) Michele Dotrice (Betty from Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em)

3) Clive Dunn (Dad's Army)

4) Frank Sinatra

5) Jon Pertwee (Doctor Who)

1) Two for the price of one to kick off this quiz. Here's a literary creation brought to life by which actor in a 2001 comedy drama? It also involved a popular hot frothy drink.

2) This cover star was willing to get a glistening paint job to publicise their big hosting gig back in 2001. Who is it?

3) This broadcaster donned a bunny costume to grace a July 2001 edition of the listings magazine, with a series that involved a scrape with Playgirl magnate Hugh Hefner. Any guesses?

4) This multi-faceted broadcaster made a bid for enlightenment on this Radio Times cover to promote an overseas edition of a popular programme. Put a name to the lotus flower bearer.

5) In November 2001 this actress swapped grimness for the deep blue ocean and some close encounters with dolphins. Can you put a name to the face?

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Is Flipper not giving you any clues? Here are the answers:

1) Adrian Mole and Stephen Mangan

2) Angus Deayton

3) Ruby Wax

4) Alan Titchmarsh

5) Tamzin Outhwaite

1) Three for the price of one: these giants of their day were captured in art for a December 1976 Radio Times cover promoting the year's review of Britain's achievements in sport. Name them from left to right.

2) This star was also captured by a Radio Times cover artist in November 1976 to promote "the first series of her outstanding career".

3) This distinguished and debonair thespian graced the front page of an August 1976 edition of Radio Times, marking a season of his work.

4) The shoes have it? This act made one of numerous appearances on the front cover of the Radio Times at the beginning of 1976 to herald their latest series.

5) The beautifully shaggy dog appears to be the cover star here, but in actual fact the owner was the focus of all the attention. A self-titled show featuring a host of other stars in February 1976 was the reason behind this special treatment.

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Stumped? You can find out the answers here:

1) David Wilkie, James Hunt, John Curry

2) Shirley Bassey

3) Dirk Bogarde

4) Morecambe and Wise

5) Cilla Black

1) This TV personality from the 1980s and 90s was more readily associated with a host of ITV programmes. But he came to the BBC to star in a Saturday night variety show.

2) This personality took a starring role on a January 1988 Radio Times cover to promote a new series on a subject very dear to his heart. Ironically this man always preferred to talk about the stars.

3) Actors and actresses are often Radio Times cover stars, and this person graced the front page in May 1988. This was for a role in a Moliere adaptation on BBC2.

4) This broadcaster needs little introduction. A glamorous portrait was on a 1988 Radio Times cover to mark the return of a long-running show which she will always be associated with.

5) It's June 1988 and the advent of the Wimbledon Championships are featured on the Radio Times front cover. But which tennis star do this pair of pins belong to?

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Do you give in? Here are the answers to this week's teasers:

1) Michael Barrymore

2) Barry Norman

3) Nigel Hawthorne

4) Esther Rantzen

5) Pat Cash

1) Who is this russet-haired gentleman from Scottish historical series The Borderers, which screened in 1968? He has since gone on to become a Knight of the realm and starred in countless memorable roles. You might see him at the moment in a senior role at the movies.

Click here to find out his identity with Genome's help

2) This studio shot from 1974 is from a production of Greek tragedy Electra. Can you identify the actor being locked in an embrace? He has gone on to take on a host of lead TV roles, including pillars of the establishment.

Click here to find out his identity with Genome's help

3) This actor, regularly a romantic lead and dashing hero on the big screen, goofed it up for 1993 one-off comedy Mama's Back, which starred Joan Collins. 

Click here to find out his identity with Genome's help

4) You'll find this actor fully in character as Sigmund Freud in an 1984 television drama about his life. His most famous character is suitably hirsute in the facial department - and also European.

Click here to find out his identity with Genome's help

5) A little behind-the-scenes moment from a popular 2005 costume drama. Our heavily draped star has appeared in a number of period pieces, including a recent epic.

Click here to find out her identity with Genome's help

Feel free to leave your guesses in the space below or share your thoughts about any of the programmes mentioned in our quiz!

1) This rather hirsute gentleman was among the stars of 1972 comedy series His Lordship Entertains. One of his famed non-BBC roles involved facial hair - although a lot less than this...

Click here to find out his identity with Genome's help

2) Concentrate on the historical female on the right who's in a tussle in this 1983 BBC production of Shakespeare history Henry VI (Part I). This famed actress is less of a blonde these days and most recently known for her shabby overcoat.

Click here to find out her identity with Genome's help

3) This young actress was the titular star of Eleanor, a Play for Today outing from 1974. In the intervening years, she's become known for many roles, perhaps most renowned for sticking to her own sort.

Click here to find out her identity with Genome's help

4) Who's this hairy Bottom? Thats right, the character from A Midsummer Night's Dream. This famous man was noted for his many comic roles, including from this 1971 production.

Click here to find out his identity with Genome's help

5) This handsome bunch made a bid for Eurovision glory in the 1980 Song For Europe competition, but didn't make the cut. We're interested in the man second on the left, slightly obscured at the back. He wasn't mentioned in the TV listing, but these days he's regularly in the spotlight and fond of raising his paddle.

Tell us your answer in the space below!

Gilbert Harding, notorious as “the rudest man in Britain”, was one of the most colourful of television personalities in the second age of television, when it started to become the favourite medium of most Britons. 

In his 1950s heyday he was a regular panellist on What’s My Line?, but made many appearances on many other programmes as host, presenter and contributor, starting as a radio commentator in the early 1940s.

Harding was born in 1907 in Hereford.  After school in Wolverhampton he studied French and German at Queen’s College, Cambridge, before beginning studies to become an Anglican priest, converting to Catholicism soon afterwards.  He spent most of the late 20s and 30s as a schoolteacher, although he also served as a policeman in Bradford, and latterly began to study for a career in law.  

Having briefly been the Times corresponden in Cyprus, he had failed to break into journalism in England, until the outbreak of the Second World War, when he was offered a job in the Monitoring Department of the BBC Overseas Service.  He was promoted to Information Bureau Supervisor, collating salient points from foreign radio bulletins at Broadcasting House.

Rudeness and intolerance 

He later worked at the Monitoring station at Wood Norton as one of a team compiling weekly summaries for the Cabinet. His reports were complimented by Churchill for the “succinct mind” behind them.  His first broadcast was during this time, for an Overseas Service series called Voice of the Nazi, standing in for the usual speaker.  On the back of this, he was offered a job by Michael Standing of Outside Broadcasts in 1942.

Harding worked as an interviewer on programmes for overseas consumption such as Meet John Londoner and the Home Service’s The Microphone Wants to Know.  His first domestic credit was for A London School in the Country, showing how an evacuated school coped with its new location. After a stint in Canada, Harding found difficulty in obtaining a role, although still on the BBC staff, but decided to go freelance when offered a presenting job on a new show.  Round Britain Quiz succeeded Transatlantic Quiz, which had had to be abandoned due to government restrictions on spending British dollar reserves.  Harding became a roving quizmaster on the series, travelling around the country while Lionel Hale presented from London. Known for its fiendish difficult cryptic questions, the programme continues to this day.

His profile greatly increased, Harding was now approached to be the chairman of The Brains Trust in 1948 and later became a panellist on We Beg to Differ, in which a team of two men faced four women in a light-hearted discussion of various topics.  

It was on this programme that Harding first acquired his reputation for irascibility and ‘calling a spade a spade’ – which many interpreted as rudeness and intolerance.  He was also accused of hating women, which impression the format of the show may have encouraged.  In 1950 he added the chairmanship of another radio quiz, Twenty Questions, to his C.V., but on one occasion various technical difficulties resulted in him losing his temper live on-air and was suspended from the programme for some months.  However, on the BBC’s other medium, television, he was about to enter his period of greatest fame.

Harding had made occasional television appearances since his debut in Crossword in September 1948, but had never made any great impact – even in a short-lived television version of We Beg to Differ.  In May 1951 he was invited to Lime Grove studios to view a recording of a US programme, a parlour game in which four celebrities had to try to guess the job of a challenger – What’s My Line?. 

Though not overly impressed, Harding saw potential if it was adapted to British sensibilities. But he wrongly assumed he was being sounded out as chairman rather than as a panellist.  A colleague attending the screening with him, along with other potential panellists, was a young Irish journalist called Eamonn Andrews – and he was the intended chair.  However the producer agreed to give Harding a shot at chairing the game, and he was assigned to the second programme. 

Again technical problems – a mix-up between the details of two guests – got in the way of Harding’s success, although he kept his temper sufficiently to come back as a panellist after a few weeks, and Andrews became the regular host of the show.

After its shaky start What’s My Line? soon became a phenomenon of early 50s television, and Harding’s regular appearances and brusque manner, was an almost essential part of the mix.  Other regulars in the first few years included the comic actor Jerry Desmonde, Barbara Kelly, Elizabeth Allen, Ghislaine Alexander, Lady (Isobel) Barnett, magician David Nixon and Marghanita Laski. 

Kelly and Lady Barnett were perhaps the best remembered, but they were outshone by Harding, who made more appearances than either.  The show’s success made it one of the highlights of the era, and made household names of its stars.  The members of the public who came on gave a mime of their job, and then could only answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to questions about it by the panel.  If they succeeded in getting 10 ‘nos’ before the panel worked out what they did, they had won – and got a scroll commemorating the fact (no cash prizes on the BBC in those days).

Man of the people

There was also a guest celebrity round, for which the panel were blindfolded – the celebrity put on a funny voice (on one occasion the impressionist Peter Cavanagh mimicked Harding himself), and the panel had to guess who they were rather than what they did.  Harding’s interaction with the challengers was the main cause of his temper fraying if he felt he was being misled in any way.  Another well-remembered aspect of the show was occasional oddly-named or obscure jobs.  The most celebrated of these was a job associated with pottery-making, a ‘sagger-maker’s bottom-knocker’.

The show’s success resulted in Harding making guest appearances in other programmes, and even in feature films.  He was a frequent host of radio series such as Gilbert Harding’s Book Club and The Harding Interview, which solicited the audience’s opinion on who should next be interviewed.  The 50s were a great time for the panel game, and Harding was a panellist on Who Said That?  a member of the TV Brains Trust, chairman for the pilot of Ask Your Dad (but replaced for the series by Humphrey Lestocq, then Peter West),  and ‘judge’ in a short-lived series called False Evidence on the Light Programme. 

He was a guest on a Frankie Howerd vehicle Nuts in May and fronted his own show about his personal tastes, A Little of What You Fancy.  His own view that women should be banned from universities was challenged in an edition of  Leisure and Pleasure in the For Women strand.  In 1955 he presented his own television show, Harding Finds Out in which he answered viewers’ questions, and in 1956 in a show just called Gilbert Harding where he was able to give his thoughts on any subject he chose, in the role of a ‘television columnist’.

Harding’s unlikely reputation as a ‘man of the people’ was exploited by radio series On the Spot, in which Harding acted as studio anchor interrogating BBC reporters who brought back stories from around the country.  In the same week Harding was still appearing on Twenty Questions and Round Britain Quiz, as usual.  The former also acquired a television version, and again Harding was the compere. He could also be avuncular, and was picked to preview the BBC’s Christmas offerings for 1958 in Gilbert Harding says ‘I Hope You’ll Like…’ 

As the 50s continued, Harding’s popularity did too, and his regular appearances both on What’s My Line? and numerous other programmes went on unabated – he was ubiquitous, the very epitome of the television (and radio) personality, and the workload must have been intense.  Harding was not a well man – he was an asthmatic, and kept a supply of oxygen with him in case of emergencies.  He drank, took little exercise, and was, not unusually for the time, a heavy smoker.  His stress levels, given his occasional apoplectic eruptions, cannot have been good.

As the sixties dawned, Harding even appeared twice on the new record review programme Juke Box Jury, and his reaction to the popular music of the era can be imagined.  On 18th September 1960 , he was the latest of John Freeman’s interviewees in the series Face to Face.  This series saw each subject constantly on camera, with Freeman barely seen, and they were questioned in depth about their beliefs and influences, and how they saw themselves and their place in the world. 

While potentially insightful and revealing, this could on occasion prove uncomfortable for the ‘victim’, and such was the case with Harding.  He was asked whether he had ever been with someone who was dying, in Harding’s case this was his mother, who had passed away not long before (his father died when he was a child).  Pressed on the matter, Harding could not hide his tears.

Prhaps this programme unlocked many self-doubts in Harding’s mind.  He had written books including 1953 autobiography Along My Line (serialised on the Light Programme in 1956), in which he already showed how uncomfortable he felt being a celebrity, how worthless he thought his career was, and which ends with the chilling line “But I do wish the future were over”. 

The part of Harding’s life that he could not admit to, as its practice was illegal, and which some felt that Freeman was getting at with the probing about his mother, was that Harding was gay, and society’s attitude at that time cannot have helped his evident feelings of self-hatred.  One of the quotes from his Face to Face was “I should be very glad to be dead, but I don’t look forward to the actual process of dying.” 

On 16th November 1960, Harding collapsed and died while getting into a taxi outside BBC Broadcasting House in London, after recording two editions of Round Britain Quiz.  To the panellists on the shows (which were never broadcast) he appeared ill, his breathing laboured and alleviated by oxygen and whisky, but he seemed his old self during the actual recordings. The following Sunday, BBC television showed a tribute called Profile: Gilbert Harding, in place of the usual edition of What’s My Line?.  

Harding, though seemingly a symbol of a bygone age, has never quite been forgotten, and his name occasionally surfaces when broadcasting in the 50s is discussed.  His life was considered in Late Night Line-Up’s Plunder feature in 1966, and he was profiled in In Search of Gilbert Harding in 1973 and Radio Lives in 1990, and was also the subject of a 2005 radio play Dr Brighton and Mr. Harding. 

For an age written off as deferential, he is a reminder, as more of an Angry Old Man than an ‘Angry Young Man’, that not everything is as they seem. In spite of his public image, those who knew him well remembered him as a loyal and steadfast friend.

Classical music quiz Face the Music premiered on BBC Two on August 3, 1967.

Producer Walter Todds introduced the quiz on a Radio Times magazine article as "the first television series about (non-pop) music and a "not too serious test of your musical wits."

Chairman and pianist Joseph Cooper would put questions to three music lovers - and although they promised that "no question to the panel is so difficult that the average concert or LP addict shouldn't at least have a shot at answering", the first programme included competitions such as "spotting an opera scene that is done to the wrong music" and "untangling one of Cooper's hidden melodies."

The programme ran until 1979 with some revivals in the 1980s, and regular panellists included Robin Ray, Joyce Grenfell and David Attenborough (pictured in 1976).