Television quiz masters have the great advantage of the answers being written on cards. Some like to give the impression that they would know more than the contestants regardless of those prompts. Bamber Gascoigne, who has died aged 87, almost certainly did.
There were many sweet moments on University Challenge, which he fronted for its first 25 years from 1962, when Gascoigne would, for example, absent-mindedly sing a line of a Bach cantata to confirm a response, or quote the whole couplet or paragraph from which an answering phrase came.
Gascoigne was naturally literate and intellectual, as he showed in his other major TV work – the historical documentary series The Christians (1977), Victorian Values (1987) and The Great Moghuls (1990). His genuine erudition drove a business sideline in high-end publishing and bookselling. This allowed him to choose TV work carefully but also led to a second quiz show, in which, improbably as it might seem in a contemporary medium cautious about high culture, he went somewhat upmarket from University Challenge, fronting Connoisseur (BBC Two, 1988-89), a panel game in which the subject matter was exclusively the fine arts.
His learning, though, was worn lightly and smilingly. Whereas his successor as University Challenge question master (from its revival in 1994), Jeremy Paxman, has the air of a vice-chancellor dropping in to quiz some of the brighter students over dinner, Gascoigne, who was only 27 when appointed, began with, and kept into middle age, the manner of a PhD student or junior lecturer. Although he always wore a jacket (often tweedy) and tie, it would not have been startling if he had turned up with a varsity scarf coiled round his neck.
Gascoigne’s ability to speak with great clarity at high speed helped to build tension as the clock ticked. And catchphrases are as important on quiz shows as in comedy: his “Your starter for 10” (announcing the points coming into play) became as famous as “I’ve started, so I’ll finish” on the rival Mastermind, while Gascoigne’s other go-to quote, “I’m sorry I’ll have to hurry you,” charmingly applied his natural good manners to a timed format.
The son of a lieutenant colonel and grandson of a brigadier general, Gascoigne was born in London and educated at Eton and Cambridge (“Magdalene, English Literature” would have been his tag if competing on University Challenge). Through student theatre at Cambridge he met Michael Frayn, a lifelong friend, who went on to become a comic playwright and novelist, although it was Gascoigne who had the earliest success as a writer. He scripted Share My Lettuce, a revue for young actors including Maggie Smith and Kenneth Williams, which ran in London from 1957-58, giving Gascoigne a West End success in his early 20s. Switching from vegetable to fruit-related titles, Gascoigne script-edited Dig This Rhubarb, a TV sketch show, but, by then, had already moved from postgraduate comedy to interrogating students.
Gascoigne’s accent – and the Oxbridge colleges who dominated University Challenge’s early decades – gave the show a very English feel, despite its American roots in a show called College Bowl, which the Bernstein family, who ran Granada TV, wanted to emulate for UK television. The subject matter – and title – might have been thought potentially intimidating to audiences, but the Bernsteins specifically intended Granada to be a BBC within the ITV commercial structure, and there was no panic over hard questions on the kind of tough subjects that Gascoigne knew so well.
He was the perfect host to prove ITV’s instinct that viewer enjoyment does not necessarily depend on the ability to play along at home. Instead, his easy intellect and unpreposessing grasp of trivia allowed viewers to enjoy the cleverness of others. As a smug arty teenager, I was at first bemused that my working-class north-eastern grandparents (who left school in their early teens) dutifully watched a programme on which they got even fewer of the answers than I did. Now, I ashamedly realise they were appreciating the spectacle of Gascoigne and his contestants’ intelligence (in whom they also saw their children, the first in the family to go to college) and further educating themselves. Whatever your knowledge bank, it was greater by the end of an episode.
Gascoigne was also intensely telegenic, if in a slightly eccentric way. His repertoire of encouraging or consolatory smiles or grimaces, nods and head anglings were relished by Griff Rhys Jones – who played ‘Bambi’ Gascoigne in a 1984 episode of The Young Ones – and Mark Gatiss, whose portrayal in the 2006 college comedy movie Starter For Ten introduced Bamber to generations for whom the surname was most associated with the footballer, Paul. The presenter’s unassuming charisma was a good fit for a quiz show that was visual in multiple ways, with its trompe-l’œil (a word which was more than once a starter round answer) effect of the teams sitting on top of each other (in reality, they were side by side on the studio floor). The appearances of the competitors allowed younger viewers (at least white and middle-class ones) to see people on TV who unusually looked like them – while parents and grandparents could jeer about the need to visit a barber or clothes shop.
A consequence of Gascoigne’s grand lineage was that, in 2014, he inherited, on the death of a distant aunt, a 15th-century medieval manor in Surrey. He and his wife, Christina, set up the West Horsley Place Trust to restore and maintain the property. Gascoigne’s contribution to television was extended indirectly when his residence was used to film TV shows, including Ghosts and Enola Holmes.
