YOUR DEPARTER FOR TEN
To succeed as a game show host, one must match the nature of the programme. More simplistic concepts call for a more easygoing host, whereas ones with an intellectual bent call for someone respectfully erudite with a touch of humour who can convincingly convey knowing all the answers. Someone that even has a good sense of what “close but no cigar” responses are. You don’t want a host that’s deer in the headlights when someone goes “Olivia de Havilland” to a question where “Vivien Leigh” is the answer. Not that the considerably weaker rotating host of my staple quiz show did exactly that or anything…
In his 25 years at the helm of University Challenge, Bamber Gascoigne exemplified how to host a quiz show of that nature. University Challenge features a tournament of two teams racing to correctly answer a “starter” question. Whichever team gets the starter is left to answer a string of subsequent bonus questions chain-linked by a connecting subject or word. Casual audiences could have been repelled by the difficulty of most clues, but they stayed drawn in by Gascoigne’s calm, likable personality and smooth sense of flow. Catchphrases like “your starter for ten” and “fingers on buzzers” became mainstream vernacular.
He complemented his personality with the feel of knowing everything. Born into an upper-crust family with many military men in his ancestry, his love of the fine arts and history gave him proper intellectual bona fides. As did his respect for the show itself, to the point where he researched the questions for each episode ahead of time and would adjust any he felt were sloppily written. This allowed for him to get a sense of why a contestant got an answer wrong, and to respond along the lines of a gentle “I’m sorry, he wrote the novel, not the screenplay”.
Gascoigne took no qualms with University Challenge defining his public image and the various parodies of him (most famously the “Bambi” episode of The Young Ones). Beyond the host’s chair, he also hosted documentaries about Christianity and the Victorian era, created online encyclopaedia HistoryWorld, and inherited a massive, tattered 16th-century house in 2014 which he went on to refashion as a community arts centre.
During the Gascoigne era of University Challenge, an incorrect answer on a starter gave points to the opposing team. Now, as a non-starter aged 87, he gives points to three theme teams.
Bamber Gascoigne
24 January 1935 – 8 February 2022, aged 87
3 TEAMS (💀💀💀💀💀💀 6 POINTS)