My dad, 82, is in a wheelchair. My brother, 47, lives in a comfy chair. Together last year, they clocked up a thousand hours watching their favourite TV programme, the quiz show Pointless. Being British, it s how they bond when they see each other. They like millions of their countrymen, and increasingly people in countries like France and Germany, have become addicted to a format that rewards obscure knowledge.
The premise is simple. Ask 100 people a question, like name a country beginning with A , and to give as many answers as possible. Your challenge is to give a correct answer that as few people as possible said. Your ultimate goal is an answer that nobody gave: the pointless answer. There will be heartbreak (no, Andalusia is not a country) and mirth one of the contestants will inevitably say something like Africa.
The real fun is had playing along at home. Pitted against my father, your money would be on my brother, the quiz fanatic. But then again, my father s at that age when he can t remember seeing the episode before, and the odd pointless answer will seep through the ectoplasm.
The first thought was what about reverse Family Fortunes? the show s co-creator David Flynn told The Guardian. It [became] a quiz which could be highbrow and populist simultaneously, which is quite a rare phenomenon.
The show s hosts, Alexander Armstrong and Richard Osman, knew each other at Cambridge University and are accordingly pretty knowledgeable. But they re not peerless presenters. Armstrong, who ironically turned down the chance to be the new Countdown presenter just a year before starting in 2009 because he was worried about being typecast, conceded to the Guardian that he is hopeless .
But this, contends Osman, is what gives it charm, and why an average of 3.6 million people tune in to watch it and its aptly-named spin-off Pointless Celebrities. I think it has a real Britishness to it, he said.
Ben Hamilton