All you need is a flypaper memory

IF you are the kind of person who knows just when the Tolpuddle Martyrs were deported, and who wrote the book “John Barleycorn,” and how pumice is formed, then you are probably just the kind of person that Pat Lagone is looking for.

Because Pat is producer of Criss Cross Quiz, which returns on Wednesday. And according to her, it is the person with just this kind of flypaper memory who stands the best chance of success in this ever-popular quiz game.

“Specialists, we’ve found, don’t usually get very far,” explained Pat. “The brilliant schoolteacher, for instance, who knows his particular subject backwards, may well get annihilated by a taxi driver without a letter to his name, but with the time and the appetite for newspapers and reference books.”

The variety of occupations of the people already booked to compete in the new session certainly seems to bear out this theory. “We have everything from bank clerks to booksellers, from airline officials to housewives, from students to Customs and Excise officers,” she said.

Likely applicants for the programme are invited along to the studio to face a really stiff general knowledge test.

“But success in this isn’t enough,” said Pat. “They still have to have personality. They still have to be able to think quickly. And they still have to satisfy us that their nerves are strong enough to play this kind of noughts and crosses with cameras staring down their throats and a large section of the British public watching them.”

Also having to keep his wits about him, in the cut-and-thrust of the competition for the top prize of £1,000 [£17,000 in today’s money, allowing for inflation – Ed], will be question master Bill Grundy.