Robert Robinson, who has hosted the show for so long that both Picasso and PG Wodehouse were still alive when he started, is back in the chair, as usual. He will be 80 next year, and is still sharp and dry, faintly acerbic, but never rude. It is he who rings the brass bell — ping! — and addresses people, without fail, by their titles. “What is the currency of Vietnam, Mrs Monk? No, Mr Perkins! Out of time, Mrs Finch! Yes, Mr Twitter? You’ve got it! The dong. Well done, sir.”
Apart from the fact that radio quizzes are largely untainted by greed — no strange coughing here — I like Brain of Britain for three reasons. First, and I declare an interest, in the late 1950s, Robinson was a radio columnist for The Sunday Times, a beacon for all who followed him, and honest (and perceptive) enough to say: “Listening to the wireless wasn’t high on my list of ways of passing the time, and I shouldn’t have turned it on if I hadn’t been paid to; but then I wouldn’t have read Beowulf if it hadn’t been a set text.”
Robinson founded Points of View, created Stop the Week and hosted Call My Bluff and Ask the Family. When Kenneth Tynan was the first person to say “f***” on air (in 1965), he was sitting beside him. He has chronicled his times brilliantly, and given innocent pleasure to millions, but where is his gong? Lesser people have MBEs and OBEs: where is his? Second, Brain of Britain is a riposte to all those who think we are an irredeemably dumbed-down nation. As it has done ever since it began within another show in 1953 (among broadcast quizzes, only Round Britain is older), it celebrates the value of knowledge for its own sake. Those who compete do so only for a silver-looking salver and the nerdy honour of being a “Brain”. There are those who sneer at “general knowledge”, but to me it reflects curiosity, which is as vital to life as a heartbeat.
Finally, I admire it for maintaining people’s titles. It is, I believe, one of only two shows still to do so (the other being Ned Sherrin’s musical game Counterpoint, also on Radio 4). Everything else, whether a quiz or any other type of show, calls people either by first name alone (“Over to you, Simon”) or by first and surnames together (“And now we have Edward Mortimer on the line from the United Nations. Edward Mortimer, what do you make of..?”).
Broadcasters, so keen to be progressive and democratic, evidently find titles difficult: the home secretary is sometimes “Dr Reid” and “Mr Reid” in the same programme (he has a PhD in economic history from Stirling University, so he should always be Dr); Melvyn Bragg is never referred to as Lord Bragg, even though he is a working Labour peer; Radio 4 always gives in to Sir Jonathan Miller’s coy refusal to acknowledge his knighthood, calling him “Dr Miller” or “Jonathan Miller”, but never, as it should, “Sir Jonathan”; and the Olympic boss is often called “Lord Sebastian Coe”, which would be correct only if he were the younger son of a duke.
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Good for Brain of Britain for getting it right. There is nothing wrong with a spot of old-fashioned courtesy.