Eggheads

As a personal 'must see' in the early evenings here in the UK, I catch Eggheads when I can. The show at the time of posting has now been going ten years. The format is easy-going. A team of 'challengers' take on what is commonly described as 'Possibly the best team of quizzers in Britain' as the Eggheads team consists of those who have become champions in former TV quiz shows in the UK. The two 'strongest' members it has to be said are Kevin Ashman and Daphne Fowler. The show has lost CJ De Mooi who was a regular on the team.

The team(s) consist of five members, but the Eggheads team has its standard five, but others who alternate leaving two others off the team when on in the 'five'. This 'alternating' team also consists of Barry Simmons, Pat Gibson, Judith Keppel, Chris Hughes and Dave Rainford. There is talk of CJ De Mooi returning after pursuing an acting career.

The challengers' team will be asked which of their number wants to take on which Egghead as long as that one hasn't already been on (after first being asked if your team wants to go 'first or second'). If you lose the multiple choice answers (3) to the question, well you lose! If at the end of three it's a draw, then a 'sudden death' shootout takes place without the 'multiple choice' help, so the winning answers in that case have to come from the depths of your knowledge. Series have been hosted by Dermot Murnaghan and Jeremy Vine (Brother of comedian Tim vine).

The show offers a prize, per show of £1,000 but this rolls over if the challengers fail to win, by another £1,000. As mostly is the case, when the Eggheads win, this will then mean tens of thousands of pounds further down the line to a team that does beat them.

As can be seen on the message boards about Eggheads, many have their pet-hates of the Eggheads team or particular members and some are asking if it's fair, that, some of the challenging teams aren't really from a broad perspective of knowledge and thrown in to the arena without a real cat-in-hell's-chance of winning - but some have won in spectacular fashion. A team of students were once all knocked out leaving just one challenger to continue in the final against ALL the Egghead team. This challenger won through and a total of £75,000! My favourite persons are probably Judith and Pat. Others have described Chris, Daphne, Kevin, Barry and CJ as unbelievably smug and a few of that number do indeed seem to sulk at losing or show extreme annoyance! Dave seems morose but I think that's just his manner, he's not really! Chris and Barry do remind you somewhat of the dodgy uncle tucking you into bed at night Daphne can be sickening in pretending, I believe, in not knowing the answer when she does and CJ often lost his round, only to be flailing his arms around when the rest of the Eggheads don't get a question right (even though, as I say, he's often already been knocked out). A good show, just to see them lose - hee-hee-hee!

Dermot Murnaghan the host has I think helped to spoil what could have been a better quiz format than it sadly turned out to be. I find him irritating, too cosy and avuncular with his patronising air and repetitious phrases you've heard in every programme ad nauseam and his chuckle and the implied siding with the underdogs efforts against the "dream team" although he knows full well they have little if any chance. He generally talks too much twittering on to fill the gaps because there are not enough questions per programme to keep interest levels up IMO. Other problems inducing exasperation if one watches it a lot is the "dream team" wins too often and their opponents rarely compete on anything like a level playing field.

I am quite a fan of TV quiz shows, they allow you to test your knowledge and shout abuse at contestants for getting easy questions wrong. Nowadays it seems the shows presenters are more interested in either getting to know the contestants or verbally abusing them (see "the weakest link" hosted by the most irritating Ginger since Cilla Black) This particular show could have and SHOULD have been much better. I agree completely with the comments above and would like to add that if that baldy smartar*e Chris forces us to listen to the complete history and every bit of his knowledge about an answer again i will get in my car, drive down to the BBC studios and beat him until his eyes bleed. I cannot emphasise enough how much he irritates me with his arrogance and bookworm like sadness. We know u know the answer Chris, just give the correct response and stfu.

/end rant

The questions are of a decent enough difficulty not to exclude people like university challenge does, but there are two problems with this show One is the fact that it takes too long to do anything (they need to get on with it sometimes). Everything takes place so slowly.

The largest problem is the fact that I can't help but want to punch the TV screen when I see the Eggheads' smug little faces - especially CJ, who is aim assiv tw@, not only in my opinion, it seems.

That's the problem with this premise. Sure, it's interesting and challenging to take on some of the smartest people in the country, but in watching this, you know you're massaging their egos all the way, huffing under your breath that you hate them.

I love quizzes, and I presume anyone reading this does too. The premise of the show is that a pub team of 5 people goes up against the quiz show's Dream Team of 5 quiz boffins. There are 5 rounds. The first 4 are a one-on-one between a contestant and an egghead. The winner goes thru to the final round, the loser goes out. The more eggheads you can knock out in the first 4 rounds, the fewer you face in the final general knowledge round and thus have a better chance of winning.

I think the combined knowledge of the Eggheads is fascinating. I love how they not only know the answer but know every scrap of info around the answer. The pub team very rarely win but it is worth watching regardless a) for the rare occasions when they do and b) just to see how ridiculously easy the questions are to Kevin & Daphne. To those who think "just challenge Daphne on sport" - you do know that Sport is her strongest category. Judith is undoubtedly the weakest of the 5, so facing her can get you thru easily, but you wont win if you don't knock out Kevin & Daphne ! It's one of the few programmes I really enjoy watching, although I admit it could have been better if there were more questions involved.