Top of the Form (quiz show)

Top of the Form

Running time	30 mins
Country of origin	UK
Language(s)	English
Home station	BBC Radio 4
TV adaptations	BBC 1 (1962-75)
Original release	1 May 1948 – 2 December 1986
Opening theme	Marching Strings
Other themes	Fanfare for the Common Man (ELP prog rock version)

Top of the Form was a BBC radio and television quiz show for teams from secondary schools in the United Kingdom which ran for 38 years, from 1948 to 1986.

The programme began on Saturday 1 May 1948, as a radio series, at 7.30pm on the Light Programme. It progressed to become a TV series from 1962 to 1975, also the heyday of University Challenge. A decision to stop the programme was announced on 28 September 1986 and the last broadcast was on Tuesday 2 December. The producer, Graham Frost, was reported to have said it had been cancelled because the competitive nature of the show jarred with modern educational philosophy.

Hosts

• Wynford Vaughan-Thomas
• Lionel Gamlin
• Richard Dimbleby
• David Dimbleby
• John Ellison
• Robert MacDermot
• Kenneth Horne
• John Edmunds
• John Dunn
• Tim Gudgin (1965–86)
• Bob Holness (1974–76)
• Paddy Feeny (1965–86)
• Geoffrey Wheeler (1962–75)

Format

Each school fielded a team of four pupils ranging in age from under 13 to under 18.

Transmission

Radio

• BBC Light Programme from 1948–67
• BBC Radio 2 (sometimes simulcast on BBC Radio 1) 1967-70
• BBC Radio 4 from 1970-86.

Television

The programme migrated to TV, where it ran from 1962 to 1975, and was called Television Top of the Form.

Theme

The tune Marching Strings (composition credited to "Marshall Ross", a pseudonym of Ray Martin) was the theme for many years, though for the last few series, Emerson, Lake & Palmer's recording of Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man was used. Earlier, Debussy's Golliwog's Cakewalk, from his Children's Corner suite, had introduced the radio series.

Contestants

The series tended to feature grammar schools; in later years, as these schools became less numerous, comprehensive schools sometimes featured, but less often, and there was an increasing dominance by independent schools.

However, as comprehensive schools were becoming more commonplace under the Harold Wilson government, the autumn 1967 TV series of Top of the Form featured only comprehensive schools.

Notable contestants

• Film star Hugh Grant, who represented Latymer Upper School;
• Darien Angadi, whose story was told during a BBC Four documentary about the quiz programme
• Vivien Stuart (1969), later a weather presenter and television announcer.
• Hilary Benn, represented Holland Park School in 1969 who were contentiously eliminated in a second round match.
• Robbie Fields, also a member of the 1969 Holland Park School team, whose identical twin, Randolph went on to found Virgin Atlantic Airways. Fields was asked the three-point question: "I was born in Valencia in 1867, who am I?" and answered "Blasco Ibáñez", prompting presenter Geoffrey Wheeler to take a deep breath and pronounce the answer correct and leaving viewers baffled.

Popular culture

Top of The Form was satirised in the 1960s pre-Python television series At Last the 1948 Show.

"Natural Born Quizzers", an episode of Steve Coogan’s comedy series Coogan's Run, involved a thinly-disguised version of the show.

In 2008, Dave Gorman traced the history of the show on BBC Four.

See also

• Round Britain Quiz, BBC Radio 4's general knowledge quiz from the same era, but mainly for adults, and still broadcast regularly
• University Challenge, a similar Granada Television series for British universities, which moved to BBC 2 and was taken off the air in the mid-80s, although was brought back for a new audience in 1994
• Schools' Challenge - continuing UK inter-schools quiz, non-televised, based on the rules of University Challenge.
• Blockbusters - television school-age game show, with its heyday in the 1980s

External links

• The Top of the Form Story at BBC Online
• Top of the Form at UKGameshows.com
• Television Top of the Form at UKGameshows.com
• Top of the Form at IMDb
• The Top of the Form Story at IMDb
• TV Cream

Video clips

• Monty Python

Audio clips

• Top of the Form theme