Quiz Ball Controversy

 

 

 

Dad was not a man to bear grudges, but he had a thing about David Vine. Throughout the 1970s, the sight of those trademark glasses or the sound of that west country burr would be enough to provoke him into what became a familiar rant, the gist of which had to do with his fitness to appear on the nation’s TV screens. Now the late Mr Vine was a versatile and professional host and commentator on a wide range of sports and light entertainment shows, but it wasn’t his considered opinions of Forest’s on-field performances that irked Dad, nor yet his descriptions of the antics of It’s A Knockout or his banter with the contenders for the Miss World title. No, Dad took against him – and I never heard him say a good word about him as long as he lived – because, as Dad saw it, he had cheated Forest in his role as host of the BBC’s sport and general knowledge game, Quiz Ball.

I was reminded of this when I accidentally came across an episode of Quiz Ball while looking in the BBC’s i-Player for a different programme. There, in all its black-and-white glory, selected from the archives by Richard Osman as one of a number of notable quiz shows from the 1950s onwards, was the very first edition, dated December 22 1966.

The game was presented as a football match, with the players selecting one of four possible routes to goal and answering one supposedly very difficult question (Route 1) or more, progressively easier ones, so that Route 4 required them to answer four relatively easy questions. Behind the players an electronic pitch showed small lights linking the appropriate number of player figures for each route and the route a player chose lit up. At the point at which the last question in a given route was about to be asked, an opponent could buzz in to tackle and be asked one very difficult question instead. If he got it right he won his team possession and the chance to select a route to goal for themselves; if he got it wrong, it was an own-goal.

I have a very faint memory of watching later series of Quiz Ball as a smalll boy, but I recall the fact of watching it – and, of course, Dad’s apoplexy at the very sight of David Vine - rather than much of the actual content. So the next half-hour was three parts fact-finding mission and one part nostalgia trip as I settled down to see what the nation’s football fans had watched almost half a century ago.

The show comes, improbably, from Hornsey Town Hall and begins with an aerial shot of Wembley Stadium, accompanied by precisely the kind of jaunty Tony Hatch theme tune you would expect. A voiceover announces the teams as Arsenal and, rather formally, Nottingham Forest Football Club, then “our referee and question-master” Vine introduces the teams, which comprise the manager, two players and a celebrity supporter for each side. Nottingham-born Bertie Mee, Ian Ure, Terry Neill and Jimmy Young represent Arsenal, while Johnny Carey, Bobby McKinlay, John Barnwell and Ted Moult turn out for Forest.

I couldn’t tell you how often Derbyshire farmer and minor TV personality Moult was seen on Trentside and he is enigmatically introduced as “supporting Nottingham Forest on this occasion”, so perhaps celebrity supporters were thinner on the ground in those days. Referee and players alike are dressed in a suit and tie, while the Forest contingent (John Barnwell excepted) take the chance to stake their claim in public for the Pipe-Smoker of the Year award. The audience, too, are soberly attired in suits, ties and coats, as if they have popped in for a quick cuppa but won’t trouble us for long.

In what could almost be a Monty Python parody, Vine spends so long going through the rules that you almost expect him to conclude with, “That’s all we’ve got time for this week”. Even then, he is unsure enough to suggest it might all sound rather complicated before reassuring us that the rules will be explained as the game progresses. Perhaps fearing that by now some viewers have begun the long pre-remote-control trek from the sofa to the television to see what might be on the nation’s two other channels, Vine reassures us that this is not a “big egghead quiz” and will be “a lot of fun”.

The egghead remark is justified by some astonishingly easy questions - it would be a rare First Division footballer who didn’t know that Everton play at Goodison Park or that it is the away team that changes if there is a clash of colours. Ian Ure turns out to have half-decent general knowledge, Terry Neill and Bobby McKinlay struggle somewhat with the concept of the shorter routes being more difficult, while Jimmy Young and Johnny Carey barely say a word. When he does speak, Carey nominates the players to answer questions like a considerate father taking care to ensure his offspring get equal treatment. Bertie Mee, meanwhile, grins throughout as though this is the most fun he’s had for a long time.

He proves to be a keen tackler, entering into the spirit of things more whole-heartedly (or perhaps simply understanding the tactics better) than his team-mates. Ted Moult, when not brushing pipe ash from the desk in front of him, is equally keen to prevent attempts on goal. So keen, in fact, that at one point he even commits a ‘foul’ by tackling before Mee has even chosen his route to goal. Amid the hilarity that ensues, Vine informs us that a player is only allowed two fouls, but we are left to ponder for ourselves what punishment might be meted out to a player who transgresses for a third time. That the ‘tackle’ questions are the hardest (or, possibly, least easy) is confirmed by the fact that all the goals are own goals - two each from Mee and Moult, with Forest coming from behind to lead, before being pegged back at the death. TV quiz shows, of course, require a winner, so we go into ‘extra time’ – a single, sudden-death question about types of cloud, which Ure answers correctly to win the game for the Gunners. Finally, Tony Hatch plays us out over the credits, which are accompanied by similarly jaunty cartoon stereotypes of harrassed match officials, cuddling players and rattle-wielding fans.

But long before then I have seen why Dad got so worked up about the partiality or otherwise of referee Vine. Arsenal are asked how many men are usually on a cricket field. After some thought, Mee offers 13 as the answer just before Ure, who has remembered the umpires as well as the fielders and batsmen, suggests it might be 15. “15 is the answer I heard and 15 is the answer I’m taking”, pronounces Vine – and a decades-long grudge is born. He goes on to compound his error when Neill incorrectly replies that what happened to the first FA Cup was that it ended in a riot and was abandoned. For no obvious reason Vine gives him another go, helping him further by saying he meant the Cup itself. If this were not enough to have Dad reaching for some pins and a bespectacled voodoo doll, Vine has already let slip an isolated, ignorant reference to “Notts Forest”.

I’m watching all this almost 50 years later and many of the protagonists are, like Dad, no longer around to care. Yet I still find myself getting indignant on Forest’s and Dad’s behalf. This hardly ranks alongside Newcastle 74, Anderlecht 84 or Milford/Gascoigne 91 in the “We wuz robbed” file in Forest’s long and fascinating history, but clearly the instinctive reaction to feel hard done by when we lose in controversial circumstances is more deeply ingrained than I might have thought.