A Question of Sport is a British sports quiz show created by Nick Hunter for the BBC. The show centres on a light-hearted contest involving two teams of three sports stars, each with a regular resident team captain, competing for points by answering questions on their own and other sports over several sports-themed quiz rounds. Captains have also been playing sports-themed games alongside the quizzes in later series.
The show premiered on BBC One in January 1970, 13 months after Stuart Hall hosted a pilot episode, and was originally hosted by David Vine with Cliff Morgan and Henry Cooper serving as team captains. It took an 18-month hiatus from June 1977 before relaunching in 1979 with David Coleman replacing Vine. It has been hosted since 1997 by former tennis star Sue Barker, with former England rugby player Matt Dawson and former England cricketer Phil Tufnell serving as captains since 2004 and 2008 respectively.
On 8 January 2010, the BBC broadcast a 40th anniversary special, where Barker, Dawson, and Tufnell were joined by Pat Cash, David Coulthard, Laura Davies, and Michael Johnson.
Series 42, episode 17 marked the 1,000th episode where each captain was joined by two former captains. Tufnell was joined by Bill Beaumont and Ally McCoist, while Dawson was joined by Willie Carson and John Parrott--with Tufnell's side winning.
With more than 45 series broadcast since its launch, A Question of Sport is one of the BBC's longest-running shows. In a Christmas special broadcast in 2014, the show was awarded a Guinness World Record for the world's longest-running sports quiz show.
Video A Question of Sport
Quiz format
The rounds played include:
- Picture Board - numbered squares reveal sports person for the contestant to identify
- Action Round - contestants are asked questions about a montage of sporting action
- What Happened Next? - sports footage is halted at optimum moment and teams are asked what occurred thereafter.
- Observation Round - sports action is shown and contestants are asked questions about details of what they have just seen, e.g. "What colour hat was a certain person wearing?" or "How many balls can you see in the following clip?" The footage for the latter question will be of many different events and all show balls, or whatever item has been asked
- Mystery Guest - teams have to identify a sports star in unfamiliar circumstances and with unconventional camera angles.
- Home or Away - contestants can answer a question on their own sport for one point ('home'), or a question on any sport for two points ("away"). Team captains always receive "away" questions. In recent times the "away" question has had 3 answers, one point for each.
- Captain's Challenge - the captains have a contest in different feats.
- One Minute Round - teams are asked nine questions in 60 seconds
- On the Buzzer - teams answer questions at quickfire pace (this was only introduced in later years - in the Vine and Coleman eras, the show would end with the remaining six Picture Board questions)
- Sprint Finish - team captains act out up to 10 sporting terms in 60 seconds without using the words given
Maps A Question of Sport
Presenters and team members
Presenters
The show was hosted regionally in the North of England by Stuart Hall from 1968, then nationally by David Vine from 1970 to 1977, and then from 1979 until 1997 was anchored by veteran BBC sports commentator David Coleman, although Vine returned for part of one series in 1989 when illness forced Coleman to temporarily stand down from hosting duties. Coleman was also unavailable for two shows in 1996, so one of the team captains, Bill Beaumont, sat in as host (the only team captain to host the programme), while the rugby star Will Carling took Beaumont's place as captain. In Coleman's final series as host, ex-tennis star Sue Barker stood-in for a couple of shows including one at Christmas, a role that she continued after Coleman's retirement.
Regular captains
Many team captains have enjoyed stints on the show down the years, including:
Guest captains
Over the years there have been several guest captains standing in for one of the regulars when they have other commitments. Following Ally McCoist's departure, several guests, including Phil Tufnell, sat in the captain's chair before Tuffnell was eventually selected as McCoist's permanent replacement:
Of these Barnes, Cooper, Charlton, Moore, Hughes, Beaumont, Carson, Botham, Parrott, McCoist, Dettori, Owen, Rutherford, Speed and Dawson were still active participants in their sport while appearing in the show. The others had retired.
Notable incidents
Sports stars often say they know they have 'made it' when they are invited to appear on A Question Of Sport. The sports personality with most guest appearances is Steve Davis, who has appeared 18 times.
In 1987, Princess Anne appeared as a guest on Emlyn Hughes' team, just weeks after Hughes thought a photo of her on a horse in the "Mystery Guest" round was jockey John Reid. The show achieved A Question of Sport's highest ever ratings of approximately 19 million viewers. It was the first time a member of the royal family had appeared on a television quiz show. Anne's daughter Zara Phillips also appeared on the show twice in 2006, the latter for a Sport Relief edition.
However, Hughes's embarrassment would not be as bad as Ally McCoist or Shane Warne in 2007. During the part of the show called Mystery Guest (see Quiz Format), it was McCoist's turn and he failed to realise it was his own boss at Rangers, Walter Smith, who was disguised. Also, in the 700th edition of the show, a compilation of Mystery Guests was shown as a special round. Here McCoist also failed to recognise himself as a showjumper from a clip some years previous. As for Warne, when the opposing team incorrectly guessed Venus Williams as the sports star shown, the answer was Serena Williams but Warne thought differently and thought it was Roger Federer, despite the two being different colours and gender. Another embarrassing moment for a team captain happened in 2003, when during the Home or Away round where the captains had to guess an anagram, and Frankie Dettori did not recognize his own name. When this question was passed over to Ally McCoist, McCoist did not answer verbally but climbed onto the desk in front of him and copied Dettori's famous flying dismount.
Transmissions
97 episodes (mainly ones from Series 1-25) were wiped from the BBC archives. The episodes that survived in the archives are:
Spin-offs
The A Question of Sport format has been applied to various other areas of knowledge. The following spin-off series were all made by the BBC:
- A Question of News, presented by Richard Baker, 1971, Katharine Whitehorn and Brian Redhead were the team captains
- A Question of Entertainment, presented by Tom O'Connor, 1988, Ken Dodd and Larry Grayson were the team captains
- A Question of Pop, presented by Jamie Theakston, 2000-01 which used the same graphics and set as the Sport version but different colours. Noddy Holder (Tony Hadley in episode 1) and Suggs were the team captains
- A Question of TV, presented by Gaby Roslin, 2001, Lorraine Kelly and Rowland Rivron were the team captains
- A Question of Sport: Super Saturday with Jason Manford in 2014 on BBC One
Roslin also hosted a one-off special, A Question of EastEnders, in 2000. Another one-off special, "A Question of Comedy" was to have been aired on 16 March 2007 as a part of Comic Relief 2007, but after a scandal involving contestant Jade Goody it was replaced with a special edition of Top Gear.
A Question of Spit was a short segment aired in 1988 as part of the inaugural Red Nose Day telethon, featuring Daley Thompson, Barry McGuigan and Mike Gatting forming a team, with their opponents being their own Spitting Image puppets, captained by an Emlyn Hughes puppet. The quiz was hosted by the Spitting Image puppet of David Coleman, with the real Coleman and the puppet Steve Davis also making an appearance.
On 21 March 2012, One Media Radio's Final Whistle produced a one off end of year special entitled, Final Quizzle: Final Whistle does A Question of Sport. Presented by Barry Landy, the show featured two teams consisting of Stuart Hodge, Rory Wilde, Phil Peacock, Steve Sanders, Ben Mouncer and Lewis Davies and included rounds such as 'Tiger's Eighteen Holes' and 'Whelan or Fortune'.
In November 2012, One Media Radio's Head of Sport Edmund Doc Crosthwaite confirmed that Final Quizzle would return for a one off Christmas special on 12 December 2012.
A Question of Sport Relief is a special version of the show usually presented by a guest presenter on Sport Relief night since 2002. The 2002, 2004 & 2006 versions were hosted by Stephen Fry. 2008's version was hosted by Jimmy Carr after Fry had to pull out having broken his arm.
BBC One Scotland aired a one-off A Question of Scotland as part of Children in Need 2008, with Jackie Bird as quizmaster.
The CBBC programme Dick and Dom In Da Bungalow made a parody called A Question of Muck as part of the creamy muck muck grand finale game.
The CBBC programme The Saturday Show did a segment called A Question of Busted featuring the pop band Busted answering questions about themselves it was presented by Fearne Cotton who in each segment was dressed as Sue Barker.
In popular culture
The What Happened Next? round was spoofed in an episode of A Bit of Fry & Laurie as David Coleman (Fry) asks Emlyn Hughes (Laurie) to guess what happened after the action stopped in the previous sketch. The host's refusal to confirm whether the given answer is correct then leads into another round of the game, with the question of what happened following the original What Happened Next? sketch.
The show was one of many British TV shows reinterpreted by Chanel 9, a recurring sketch on The Fast Show, where it was titled Questo Sporta and featured the mystery guest round.
References
External links
- A Question of Sport at BBC Programmes
- A Question of Sport on IMDb
- A Question of Sport at TV.com
- A Question of Sport at UKGameshows.com
Source of article : Wikipedia
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