It’s a quiz show I heard imported over here in the States on NPR. The questions are impossibly hard, yet the contestants seem to have little trouble answering them. The show is done before a live audience. If I’m not mistaken I believe most of the questions are about things British, or U.K.-ish. Does anyone know what show this is and if it’s archived on the internet? Thanks.
If you heard it on NPR, it’s probably “Brain of Britain,” which is archived weekly online:
www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/comedy/brain.shtml
Caution: the recording of this week’s show ain’t that good. They’re into the semifinals of this series right now.
There are a couple of other quiz shows on the Beeb. There’s a sidebar on the above linked page.
-Myron
“Round Britain Quiz” from Radio 4? It certainly used to be fiendishly difficult, with abstruse “general” knowledge answers parceled up as crossword-style questions, yet Irene Whats-Her-Face and Eric Nope-I’ve-Forgotten-the-Name-But-He-Used-To-Write-For-The-TLS used to breeze through them. At some point, they then did a dumbed-down version in which the questions were answerable, but I’ve no idea whether that’s still running. The format had regional teams comprising pairs from the likes of Scotland or Yorkshire failing abismally against the aforementioned London team. The other oddity was that it had two presenters asking questions in tandem, though I think they dropped that in the revamped affair.
You’re thinking of the superhuman Irene Thomas and Eric Korn. Other past luminaries on the show have included John Julius Norwich and Gilbert Harding. Very tough.
They have an online version of Round Britain Quiz with hard and intermediate versions of questions. They’re not as hard as they were in the pre-1996 version, but do require local knowledge. This link tells you about the radio programme (which is currently off air).