When Miriam Margolyes appeared on the show representing Newnham College (Cambridge) in 1963, she uttered the F-word in frustration after incorrectly answering a question. She personally claims to be the first person to say "fuck" on British television but it was bleeped.
Newspaper reports in 1994 suggested that other people considered for the role of question-master included Stephen Fry, Clive Anderson, David Baddiel, Peter Snow, Jonathan Dimbleby and Emma Freud.
Contrary to the impression you might get from watching Jeremy Paxman's reaction to unexpected responses, it's actually the producer who adjudicates on borderline answers. When Paxman appears to be umming and ahhing over whether to award points or not, he's really just waiting for a signal in his earpiece.
Many of the 1962-1971 episodes are missing from the archives.
Two series from the Bamber era (1986/87) featured eight individual weeks of tournaments. Teams played two-day matches, Monday/Tuesday or Wednesday/Thursday. The first day was a standard game, with the scores carried forward to a second match to play a curious confection called Pass the Baton. The Baton - a vertical cylindrical stick with six lights that slid along the desk - began the programme with the leftmost player of each team, and the player from the trailing team picked from a list of about 60 categories. Bamber would ask questions from that category on the buzzers, for five points each, open only to the people with The Baton. First person to give two correct answers gained a traditional set of bonuses for their team, and The Baton moved down the line.