Weaver's Week 2026-08-09

Last week | Weaver's Week Index | Next week

Bill Oddie, who died last week, will be remembered as a comedy legend. He went in the space of a year from the Edinburgh Fringe to the hugely successful radio sketch series I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again, which is still repeated on 4Extra and very much worth a half-hour of your time. ISIRTA directly inspired the even more successful parody of panel games I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, which is still in production and also worth a half-hour of your time.

Oddie was one-third of The Goodies, with Tim Brooke-Taylor and Graeme Garden. Their show ran the length of the 1970s, a blend of slapstick, surrealism, and sharp observational comedy, based on the cliché of bumbling superheroes who would give help for "anything, at any time". The trio's comedy looked like a cartoon, a live action Bugs Bunny. Their scripts always punched up, satirising racial problems of the era in the "apart-height" episode. They also played to their regional differences, with the Lancashire-born Bill proving to be a master of the black pudding martial art Ecky Thump. A spin-off single, "Funky gibbon", gave them an unlikely top ten hit in 1975.

In this century, Bill Oddie was best known as a naturalist, presenting such shows as Birding With Bill Oddie, Wild in Your Garden, and eventually the Springwatch and Countryfile series. Utterly undirectable, Bill would wander off towards a bird rather than give a piece to camera, that only showed how much he enjoyed what he was doing.

This is a game show site, and though Bill Oddie didn't make very many contributions to game shows, he made a mark. And not just from lending his name to Bill Oddie's Great Bird Race Game, a late 1980s board game about ornithology – it's more an introduction to birds than a competition, and has a shorter rulebook than the subsequent Wingspan.

Bill co-hosted the one-off game show Fair Game. "It's It's a Knockout on the cheap", said the UKGS Editorial Board about twenty years ago. Bill's co-host was Nick Wilton, who we knew from sketch show Fast Forward, and who would go on to be absolutely pivotal for children's television over the next decades.

On the show, Bill's dressed as a circus ringmaster, and explains the games. For one incredibly simple task, all you've got to do in this one is to drink a yard of whelk juice, then go off to the dodgems, and try to complete some laps while other bad drivers get in the way. Then grab a teddy bear and go to the quoit stall, to win a fiver. To the rotating barrels, where the teams grab two ice creams; then the skittles side-show for coins. A punch-the ball machine reveals a final horrible thing to eat, and eat that to win the game. Easy!

Another challenge asked players to shoot darts at a target to determine the value of a question. Geoff Capes, the famous strongman, was on hand to help adjudicate this event, and there were three "trollopes" – played by Emma Bryant, Samantha Fox, and Wendy Holker – who appeared on screen and teased the contestants but wasn't allowed to speak. This sort of casual sexism was acceptable in 1985.

To fill time, and stretch a fairly thin format into 50 minutes of light entertainment, Fair Game also featured sideshows like a fire-breathing juggler. The whole show was filmed at Bob Wilson's Funfair in Morden Park, hence the name "Fair Game". Game at a fair, see? The grand final is a test your strength machine with weights removed for each correct answer, an idea we'd see later in the final of Big Break.

As a piece of light entertainment to fill a Sunday in mid-November, it'll do. It's okay, people being a bit silly in a sunny summery fun style, brightens up a cold and dark late autumn evening. But devisors Alf Waite and Nigel Hopkins found their show went no further, the "pilot" episode was aired in the traditional BBC death slot at 3.15 on Sunday afternoon, opposite a particularly enthralling tennis match between Ivan Lendl and Boris Becker.

Bill was a regular on panel shows. He appeared on Through the Keyhole, revealing a large collection of Disney memorabilia. He did physical comedy on Steve Jones' The Pyramid Game, took the Star Turn challenge, popped in on Blankety Blank, and helped Lionel Blair with some "Dirty Dancing" on Give Us a Clue.

He hosted factual entertainment programme Fax!, children's prog Tickle on the Tum, popped in on Time Team and Watercolour Challenge, and was a regular contributor to Comic Relief. Bill also went through the great television rites of passage: This is Your Life in 2002, and Who Do You Think You Are in 2010. More recently he was on 8 Out of 10 Cats, Never Mind the Buzzcocks, the short-lived For Facts Sake, Pointless Celebrities, and a second appearance on Through the Keyhole.

Bill lived life on his own terms: he was passionate about the things he cared about, and first resisted then came to accept his position as a major cultural treasure. Bill Oddie lived to be 85, and is survived by his second wife and children from both marriages.

Perhaps we can understand why this week's Mastermind was buried in the heat of summer. Josh Duckmanton won the match, scoring 8 points on his specialist subject "James Bond the Roger Moore Years", and 7 points and two passes for general knowledge. Josh beat Briony Richards (Sylvia Plath) on a pass count after both contenders ended on 15 marks. Ria Drabble (British birds of prey) was happy to be there, Gurdas Singh Sually (King Charles Stuart) was happy to be back.

Frenemies won on Only Connect, beating the Marvins by 30-22. There was a Five Point Klaxon in this edition, as the Marvins worked out rhyming slang for classes of university degree from just a picture of Geoff Hurst. But the Frenemies kept level through the first rounds: statues touched for luck, things described by cutlery, the Ship of Theseus changing from Greek to English. Marvins lost ground on the wall, and were soundly second on Missing Vowels.

A ding-dong battle on University Challenge, where Darwin Cambridge beat Guildhall School of Music and Drama by 165-155. Although the Guildhall team got the first starter, it was one-way traffic for a while, and Darwin opened a 60-point lead, and held it for quite a while before the starters began to fall for the London side. They re-took the lead at the second picture round, after which there was never more than a starter between the sides.

Darwin got 55% of the questions they faced, and 56% of their bonuses; both these values are slightly better than average. Darwin were strong on Geography, weak on Literature. Because we might just see them again, Guildhall were right on 45% of their questions, and 43% of their bonuses; the team's tactic to pass quickly and often left them below average. Guildhall were strong on Biology and Chemistry, counter-intuitively.

Thanks and hurrah for everyone we met at Strange Games Bristol last weekend. Highlights included a wonderfully theatrical host for Wherewolf; a game where it seems the objective is to balance a wooden board on a small target on an unstable table; when Our Town met the Die RPG; unforgettable Werewolf in the Dark; deep conversations at the witching hour; conspiring to lose Terraform; and the loveliest ginger cat. Some of us saw a shooting star just before the event ended, may our wish come true.

This week is a quiet week, as BBC1 spends most evenings showing a live event. Sewing Bee moves to BBC2 for the week, and lunchtime Bargain Hunt is also on the second channel. There's no Mastermind on BBC2, but we do get the first in an archive run from 1977 on BBC4.

To have Weaver's Week emailed to you on publication day, receive our exclusive TV roundup of the game shows in the week ahead, and chat to other ukgameshows.com readers, sign up to our Google Group.

Last week | Weaver's Week Index | Next week