Dad's Army
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50 free Dad's Army trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Dad's Army ran on the BBC from 1968 to 1977 and has barely been off British screens since. Its premise is simple: a seaside platoon of the Home Guard, part-time volunteers who drill after work, prepares to repel an invasion that never comes. The comedy lies in the people, from a self-important captain and his unflappable sergeant to the old soldier who cannot stop reminiscing and the boy whose mother worries about the night air. This quiz covers the series from every side: the characters and their day jobs, the actors who played them, the best-known episodes, the theme tune and titles, the feature films, the radio spin-off and the real wartime force behind the fiction. Some questions are gentle openers that any casual viewer will get; others are aimed at fans who know their way around the church hall. It suits pub quiz setters, family quiz nights and anyone who grew up with the repeats. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so even a wrong guess leaves you with a story worth retelling.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which south-coast seaside town is home to Captain Mainwaring's Home Guard platoon in Dad's Army?
Walmington-on-Sea
Walmington-on-Sea was nearly Brightsea-on-Sea: the BBC's head of comedy disliked the first name in the script and had it changed before filming began.
Q 02What is Captain Mainwaring's day job in Dad's Army, the post that makes Sergeant Wilson his deputy twice over?
Bank manager
Bank manager Mainwaring outranks his chief clerk Wilson behind the counter and on parade, and young Pike works at the same branch as a junior clerk.
Q 03Which trade does Lance Corporal Jones ply in Dad's Army, supplying the delivery van his platoon uses as transport?
Butcher
Butcher Jones was a handy friend to have under rationing, and he is so proud of his delivery van that he resents every modification the platoon makes to it.
Q 04Which actor, earlier known as Coronation Street's Leonard Swindley, played Captain Mainwaring in Dad's Army?
Arthur Lowe
Arthur Lowe had an odd clause in his contract: he would never have to remove his trousers. He also refused to take his scripts home.
Q 05Which Dad's Army actor, who played gentle Private Godfrey, also wrote the hit 1920s stage thriller The Ghost Train?
Arnold Ridley
Arnold Ridley had the idea after being stranded for an evening at a railway station near Bristol, and his play was filmed several times.
Q 06Which wartime entertainer, half of a famous double act, sang the Dad's Army theme tune shortly before his death?
Bud Flanagan
Bud Flanagan was paid 100 guineas for the recording, and the pastiche was so convincing that many viewers believed it was a real wartime song.
Q 07How is Captain Mainwaring's surname correctly pronounced in Dad's Army, though a rival officer says it as spelt?
Mannering
Mannering is right, yet Captain Square of the neighbouring platoon keeps saying the name exactly as it is spelt, one of many slights its owner endures.
Q 08Which item does Private Pike's mother make him wear over his Dad's Army uniform to ward off illness?
A scarf
A scarf in claret and blue became the character's trademark, and the young actor was invited to choose it himself from the BBC costume department.
Q 09What is Sergeant Wilson to Private Pike, as Dad's Army writer David Croft confirmed on the last day of filming?
His father
His father, Croft told the actor who played Pike, settling a question the scripts had only hinted at through Wilson's closeness to the boy's widowed mother.
Q 10Which symbols top the arrows advancing on Britain in the animated opening titles of Dad's Army?
Swastikas
Swastikas on moving arrows replaced the first plan, real footage of refugees and Nazi troops, which the controller of BBC1 ordered out as offensive.
Q 11Which Norfolk town, where Dad's Army filmed most exterior scenes, has a statue of Captain Mainwaring on a bench?
Thetford
Thetford stood in for the streets of the fictional resort, and the town's old fire station now houses a museum devoted to the series.
Q 12Which trade does the dour Scot Private Frazer follow in Dad's Army, having kept a stamp shop in the first episode?
Undertaker
Undertaker suited the gloomiest man in the platoon, who was already making coffins as a hobby while the first episode had him keeping a philately shop.
Q 13Which historical nickname does air raid warden Hodges throw at Captain Mainwaring throughout Dad's Army?
Napoleon
Napoleon mocks Mainwaring's short stature and bossy manner, and in one episode the captain dreams he really is the emperor, beaten at Waterloo.
Q 21In Dad's Army, Lance Corporal Jones endlessly recalls serving under General Kitchener in which country?
Sudan
Sudan saw Jones twice: first as a boy soldier with the Gordon Relief Expedition, then as a grown man on the campaign of the 1890s he loves to relive.
Q 22Private Frazer, the gloomy Scot of Dad's Army, says he grew up on which Hebridean island?
Barra
Barra, in the Outer Hebrides, is where Frazer says he grew up before a career in the Royal Navy took him south to settle on the English coast.
Q 23Private Godfrey of Dad's Army, a conscientious objector in the First World War, won the Military Medal serving as what?
A stretcher bearer
A stretcher bearer at the Somme, Godfrey carried wounded men to safety under fire, a past the platoon learns of only after treating him as a coward.
Q 14Which actor, once married to Carry On star Hattie Jacques, played the languid Sergeant Wilson in Dad's Army?
John Le Mesurier
John Le Mesurier called himself a jobbing actor and appeared in more than 120 films, yet his only award was a BAFTA for a 1971 Dennis Potter play.
Q 15Which actor was only 48 when he began playing the elderly Lance Corporal Jones in Dad's Army?
Clive Dunn
Clive Dunn was one of the youngest in the cast, so he took on the slapstick his older colleagues could not manage, and in 1971 he had a number one single.
Q 16Which Dad's Army episode has the platoon guarding a captured U-boat crew overnight in the church hall?
The Deadly Attachment
The Deadly Attachment is arguably the best-known episode: the German captain starts a list of men he will hunt down after the war, and Pike's name ends up on it.
Q 17Which wartime leader insisted the Local Defence Volunteers, the force seen in Dad's Army, be renamed the Home Guard?
Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill found the first title uninspiring and overruled officials who objected that a million armbands with the old initials had already been printed.
Q 18What is the first name of Captain Mainwaring's domineering wife, who is never seen on screen in Dad's Army?
Elizabeth
Elizabeth is known only through her husband's sheepish telephone calls; the nearest viewers come is her outline in a bunk in the couple's Anderson shelter.
Q 19Which widow, a regular customer at his shop, does Lance Corporal Jones marry in the final episode of Dad's Army?
Mrs Fox
Mrs Fox is given away by Captain Mainwaring with Sergeant Wilson as best man, and the series closes on the platoon's toast to the Home Guard.
Q 20Which co-writer based Dad's Army on his own teenage service in a Hertfordshire Home Guard battalion?
Jimmy Perry
Jimmy Perry joined up at 16, and his mother's fretting that he would catch cold on night duty went straight into the character of young Pike.
Q 24In a lost Dad's Army episode, the army discharges conscripted spiv Private Walker because he is allergic to what?
Corned beef
Corned beef fritters were the only rations left for the recruits, so the army sent Walker straight back to the platoon and his black-market sidelines.
Q 25Why is Private Pike turned down for military service when his call-up papers finally arrive in Dad's Army?
A rare blood type
A rare blood type came to light when he gave blood, yet Pike kept the news to himself until the platoon had thrown him a going-away party.
Q 26Which Dad's Army actor had played the crofter in Alfred Hitchcock's 1935 thriller The 39 Steps?
John Laurie
John Laurie, the platoon's Frazer, was a Shakespearean actor and a noted speaker of Burns's verse, and the Hitchcock part came in only his third film.
Q 27Which Dad's Army actor, who played spiv Private Walker, died suddenly in 1973 during the sixth series?
James Beck
James Beck was 44, and the writers wrote Walker out of the television series, though other actors took over the part on radio and on stage.
Q 28Which actor took over the role of Captain Mainwaring for the 2016 Dad's Army feature film?
Toby Jones
Toby Jones led an all-new platoon, with Catherine Zeta-Jones as a German spy who poses as a journalist writing about the Home Guard.
Q 29Which Carry On actress replaced Janet Davies as Mrs Pike in the 1971 Dad's Army feature film?
Liz Fraser
Liz Fraser was imposed by the backers, Columbia Pictures, one of several studio changes, such as filming in Buckinghamshire, that left the regular cast unhappy.
Q 30Which title did Dad's Army carry in its first script, before the BBC's head of comedy renamed the series?
The Fighting Tigers
The Fighting Tigers was dropped by Michael Mills, who also changed the town's name and several characters' surnames and suggested adding a Scot.