Going for Gold

At the very moment that I learned about Margaret Thatcher’s death, I was watching a 1988 episode of “Going for Gold” on telly. 

This show was the pull factor that prevented me attending early afternoon lectures for most of my 2^nd year at university.  Digesting a lunch of Supernoodles or pig’s liver required a sedentary half-hour, post-Neighbours, in the company of Henry Kelly and a range of socially retarded misfits competing for the prize of “European Quiz Champion.”  The pure fact that contestants hailed from all over Europe (well, this side of the crumbling Iron Curtain anyway) appeared enough of a significant fact to warrant such a lofty assertion.  The stark reality confronting us viewers when these hapless morons opened their mouths was altogether contradictory.  Surely they weren’t quiz champions of their own countries, were they?  I mean, they sort of knew absolutely fuck all about fuck all.

One particular moment of neurotransmitter non-functioning was when Henry Kelly asked “What common liquid is technically known as H20” and 3 contestants guessed wrongly.  You could have guessed this level of highbrow intellectual challenge was coming during the show’s opening titles as the contestants were encouraged to give a quirky wave to camera as it focussed on them one by one.  If I’m being kind, I could say that the mix of nationalities resulted in a diverse array of idiosyncratic gestures which reflected what might have been the norm or perhaps even quite cool in each of their respective cultures.  However, I wasn’t kind, so I’d sit there with my housemate Phil and together we’d piss ourselves stupid pouring ridicule on every grinning contestant as he or she did a Fonzie thumbs-up, a window-cleaner wipe, a dead fish flapping in a net, a near-as-dammit Nazi salute or a jolly-sailor-bugger-you-later fisting of the air.

Henry Kelly was perfect for the role of quizmaster.  He was truly excited by it all, and was forever bobbing up and down on his toes as if someone was regularly tickling his balls, giving literal meaning to that anachronistic nugget of our homophobic past, “light on his loafers”.  With gentlemanly grace he’d ask the contestants about themselves and appear genuinely interested to hear that each one had a hobby that was so mind-numbingly dull that within half a sentence of hearing about it, anyone less generous would have driven burning kebab skewers into their ears so as not to have to endure the rest of the response.

There was an elimination round before the “first round proper” and we could never fathom why that wasn’t just called the first round.  The style of many questions required Henry Kelly to describe something or somebody in the first person, like so:

“Who am I?  I am a German born composer, famous for writing symphonies including the most famous one, Beethoven’s fifth…”

BUZZZZZZ!!!!!

“Hans from Denmark?”

“Is it Mozart?”

“No, Hans from Denmark, it isn’t Mozart.  I’ll continue.  Including the most famous one, Beethoven’s fifth.  My first name is Ludwig and my surname begins with B and rhymes with Hatehoven, but I am not Tchaikovsky…”

BUZZZZZ!!!!

“Lucia from Italy?”

“Tchaikovsky?”

You were kind of waiting for someone to buzz in early, after “Who am I?” and answer “Henry Kelly.”  And if he asked, “What am I?” then me and Phil would barrack the telly with a string of insulting terms, many of which would be considered hate-crimes now that it is no longer 1989.

For the “Grand final of finals” of the European Quizmongs, Henry Kelly would don his dinner jacket and bow-tie, itself worth twice the cost of the studio set behind him (and I’m sure it was a rented suit) and a tangible titter of gormless excitement would emanate from the audience.  The winner of the first series (a certain Daphne Fowler , famed Egghead, Brain of Britain, Fifteen to One double-winner and general “awful bore”) won a trip to the 1988 Seoul Olympics.  I like to think that the losing contestants were sent to North Korea.  For good.  In subsequent years, the grand prize was a gold-mining expedition to Australia, which probably meant deportation.

Sadly, Going for Gold was eliminated from our screens in 1996, but its legacy has been the culture of moronic TV text challenges that you now get on so many prime-time family shows:

What liquid is technically known as H2O?  Is it (a) Water, (b) Gibraltar or (c) Bring your daughter to the slaughter?  Text your answer to 08700 700 700.  Texts cost £2.50 each and those of you who text the correct answer will go into a draw to win the grand prize of Henry Kelly’s dinner suit complete with testicle-access flap and the scent of ineptitude.