British Quiz Shows Trivia
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110 free British Quiz Shows trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Britain has produced more famous quiz shows per head than anywhere on Earth, and this quiz is about the shows themselves: the hosts, the catchphrases, the formats and the scandals. Forty-five questions cover Mastermind's black chair and Gestapo-inspired origins, University Challenge's three quizmasters, Countdown as Channel 4's first ever programme, Pointless, The Chase and its Chasers, Only Connect's hieroglyphs, Eggheads, QI, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and the coughing major, The Weakest Link, Blockbusters, Fifteen to One, Bullseye, Family Fortunes, Catchphrase, The Krypton Factor, Tipping Point, Taskmaster, Have I Got News for You, Blankety Blank, The Generation Game and Going for Gold. Easy questions ask who hosts The Chase and what you shout on Blockbusters; the hard ones want the American show University Challenge was based on, the French original behind Countdown, the composer of the Going for Gold theme and which UK city was 'the quiz of the week' punchline. Ideal for pub quizzes, TV nostalgia nights and anyone who has ever said 'I've started so I'll finish'. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the individual programmes, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 110 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What was Fred Housego's job when he won Mastermind in 1980?
Taxi driver
Taxi driver: Housego's win turned the London cabbie into a television presenter, yet he kept his licence and was still driving a black cab more than twenty years later.
Q 02Who was the original presenter of Mastermind?
Magnus Magnusson
Magnus Magnusson asked the questions for 25 years and signed off in a cathedral that shares his name, St Magnus in Orkney, where he was given the famous black chair to keep.
Q 03Which word completes the Mastermind catchphrase 'I've started so I'll …'?
finish
Finish: the questioner says it when the buzzer cuts across a question, and the show's first host made the line so famous that he used it as the title of his history of the programme.
Q 04Mastermind's creator drew inspiration for the format from being interrogated by whom?
The Gestapo
The Gestapo questioned Bill Wright as a prisoner of war, when all he had to give was name, rank and number; on television that became name, occupation and specialised subject.
Q 05Who was the original quizmaster of University Challenge?
Bamber Gascoigne
Bamber Gascoigne chaired the quiz for 25 years; in 2014 he unexpectedly inherited an old Surrey manor house, which later played Button House in the BBC comedy Ghosts.
Q 06Who succeeded Jeremy Paxman as host of University Challenge in 2023?
Amol Rajan
Amol Rajan had already faced the questions himself, playing for his old Cambridge college in the Christmas celebrity series, before taking over when Paxman stepped down after 28 years.
Q 07University Challenge was based on which American quiz show?
College Bowl
College Bowl began as a game Canadian Don Reid devised to entertain American troops in the Second World War; it moved to radio and television before Granada adapted it for British students.
Q 08David Nicholls' novel and film about a University Challenge contestant is called what?
Starter for Ten
Starter for Ten is the quizmaster's cue for the ten-point question that opens each round; American publishers dropped the reference and sold the novel as A Question of Attraction.
Q 09Who was Countdown's original presenter, hosting for 23 years from 1982?
Richard Whiteley
Richard Whiteley was nicknamed 'Twice Nightly Whiteley' because for years he fronted both Yorkshire's evening news programme Calendar and the quiz on the same day.
Q 10Countdown is based on which long-running French show?
Des chiffres et des lettres
Des chiffres et des lettres, 'numbers and letters', reached Britain through Marcel Stellman, who wrote the English words to Tulips from Amsterdam; he bought the overseas rights and is credited on every episode.
Q 11What is the name of Countdown's final buzzer round, a nine-letter anagram?
The conundrum
The conundrum is worth ten points to whoever buzzes in first, so when the scores are within ten points the host declares a 'crucial Countdown conundrum' that can decide the game.
Q 12Who became a permanent fixture in Countdown's Dictionary Corner in 2003, ruling on contestants' words?
Susie Dent
Susie Dent first appeared in 1992 as one of several dictionary experts from Oxford University Press who took turns in the corner; the rota was later dropped and the seat became hers.
Q 13What does every contestant who wins a game of Countdown take home?
A teapot shaped like the clock
Q 21Only Connect takes its title from a line in which novel?
Howards End
Howards End carries 'Only connect…' as its epigraph: in the novel it is a plea to join 'the prose and the passion' of life, which the quiz borrowed for a game of hidden links.
Q 22Which Egghead was the first Briton to win £1,000,000 on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
Judith Keppel
Judith Keppel's win went out against the final episode of One Foot in the Grave on BBC One; viewers complained that ITV had fixed the timing to steal the ratings, but the regulator cleared the show.
Q 23Who chaired Eggheads when it began in 2003?
Dermot Murnaghan
A teapot shaped like the clock has gone to each game's winner since 1998; it is not sold anywhere, so appearing on the show and winning is the only way to own one.
Q 14Who hosted Pointless from its launch in 2009?
Alexander Armstrong
Alexander Armstrong had turned down the job of hosting Countdown the year before, saying he feared being pigeonholed as a daytime presenter, then said yes to this BBC quiz.
Q 15Who hosted A Question of Sport for 24 years until the BBC replaced her in a 2021 revamp?
Sue Barker
Sue Barker, a former French Open tennis champion, took over in 1997; after the revamp, audiences that had regularly topped four million fell below one million and the BBC shelved the quiz in 2023.
Q 16On Pointless, what happens after a wrong answer?
They score 100 points
They score 100 points, the maximum: the aim is the lowest total, so a wrong answer is punished as if every one of the 100 people surveyed had given it.
Q 17Who hosted The Chase when it launched on ITV in 2009?
Bradley Walsh
Bradley Walsh was once on Brentford's books as a professional footballer, though he never made the first team; comedy, acting and game shows came later.
Q 18Which Chaser is known as 'The Beast'?
Mark Labbett
Mark Labbett knows the other side of the desk: three years before the show began he sat in the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? hot seat as a contestant and left with £32,000.
Q 19Who presented Only Connect from its launch in 2008?
Victoria Coren Mitchell
Victoria Coren Mitchell launched the quiz on BBC Four as plain Victoria Coren; she added the Mitchell to her billing after marrying the comedian David Mitchell in 2012.
Q 20Only Connect's questions are chosen using symbols from which ancient writing system?
Egyptian hieroglyphs
Egyptian hieroglyphs replaced the Greek letters of the first three series; teams now pick each question by calling for Two Reeds, Lion, Twisted Flax, Horned Viper, Water or Eye of Horus.
Dermot Murnaghan was the face of BBC Breakfast when the quiz began, and he went on presenting it for seven years after defecting to the rival Sky News in 2007.
Q 24Who presented QI from its start in 2003 until 2016?
Stephen Fry
Stephen Fry was first cast as a team captain: Michael Palin was to host, turned the job down, and Fry took the chair for series A to M, one for each letter of the alphabet.
Q 25Who was QI's only regular panellist from its 2003 launch?
Alan Davies
Alan Davies was originally meant to captain a team of dunces against a team of clever-clogs; the teams idea was dropped before broadcast, but he kept his seat and has appeared in every series.
Q 26What are QI's researchers known as?
The QI Elves
The QI Elves research the show's questions and answers, and went on to make programmes of their own: the podcast No Such Thing as a Fish and a satirical television spin-off.
Q 27Who hosted the original run of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? from 1998 to 2014?
Chris Tarrant
Chris Tarrant made a ritual of showing contestants a cheque for the money they had already won, then snatching it away with 'But we don't want to give you that!'
Q 28How did Charles Ingram cheat his way to £1 million on Millionaire in 2001?
Coughing from an accomplice
Coughing from an accomplice: Tecwen Whittock, a contestant waiting his turn, coughed as Ingram read out the right answers; the prize was never paid, and both men and Ingram's wife were convicted in 2003.
Q 29Which new lifeline was added when Jeremy Clarkson revived Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? in 2018?
Ask the Host
Ask the Host lets a contestant turn to Clarkson for his opinion; he gets no outside help and is not shown the answer first, so his 'Here's what I think' is only as good as his own knowledge.
Q 30Who presented the original British Weakest Link, dismissing each loser with a curt 'Goodbye'?
Anne Robinson
Anne Robinson's withering put-downs travelled well: the format was sold around the world, and she crossed the Atlantic to be the first host of the American version too.