Excerpt:

Chapter Nine: Trains, Planes and Fifteen to One

There is a deep rooted tradition within British culture which has championed the quiz show format so that now it has become one of the staple diets of popular entertainment. To try and explain why this is so is not only an arduous task but perhaps an impossible one as well. However it is perhaps worth a brief examination if we are to understand the problem with William G Stewart.

On one level, our fascination with answering questions may stem back to our Victorian ancestry, a period typified by an obsessive need to calculate, categorise and order life. This took its most obvious shape in the theory of evolution which prioritised scientific rationalism above that of a mysterious force, therefore freeing man from his sado masochistic relationship with God. Such self deification is perhaps found in the answering of the ultimate question, the discovery, manipulation, and creation of life itself - DNA. Following this line of enquiry the problem is not so much William. G. Stewart but that of Erasmus Darwin.

Perhaps a less grandiose explanation can be explained along sociological lines. The quiz show format took off in the 1950s with the advent of television. A population sick to death of blowing up one another after two world wars found a more subtle and less energetic means of empowerment - in the quiz show - by using intellectual rather than physical aggression. Instead of having to flee a battlefield and march ten thousand miles home on defeat, the loser in this exchange had the more relaxing option of storming out the lounge and retreating to the bedroom. In this sense popular culture is quite rightly guilty of inducing laziness and apathy in the population, which all in all is better than having ones limbs removed by shrapnel.

And of course beyond this is an even simpler explanation. For years families have resentfully put up with one another because of a biological constraint which has dictated that one must endure the banality of siblings and parents because they share the same blood group rather than the same mental outlook. The genius of mass consumption is it has encouraged a gradual atomisation and loosening of social and familial ties, the end result being a television in each room whereby individuals are allowed to engage in a form of communication with a programme suited to their individual needs. Due to this it is rather hard to justify let alone explain how Fifteen to One is an evil and subversive art form as to most it is a harmless quiz show which has freed the population from the monotony of social obligations. However despite being the carefully crafted product of years of human evolution and despite the obvious utopian possibilities such programmes offer, it had the opposite effect upon Wuss.

Wuss was a hard worker, which was primarily because he made every task difficult for himself. His boss once suggested he should work in construction as he could make a mountain out of a molehill. Irrespective, this hard work left him spent at the end of the day and to unwind he partook in some hobbies. The problem with these hobbies was they caused anxiety rather than relaxation, which shouldn’t really have been of any great surprise to he who subscribed to the philosophy of The Opposite Theory. Take a simple game of snooker.

It became a complicated game of snooker because he tried to introduce the complicated concept of gambling, which in turn meant that the amount he smoked, drank, bet and inevitably lost would double. This excess spending meant he would have to do more overtime which seemed typical, given he was playing snooker to forget about work. Abo on the other hand would never have to worry about working again as long as Wuss insisted on gambling and losing all his money to him.

Computer games followed a similar pattern for Wuss. There was nothing relaxing about being unable to defeat Bowser in Mario Land or finding your child had erased the game just as you were teetering on the edge of beating Bowser in Mario Land. There was no benefit to playing computer games that merely highlighted your complete lack of skill, the awareness of which often resulted in a joystick being launched at the wall where more often than not it would break. To replace it meant more overtime.

Recently Wuss had decided life would be easier, and cheaper, if he simply came home and slouched on the sofa and allowed the television to do his thinking for him. He usually got in at 4.20pm where he would reflect upon the day’s events, such as where a missing folder at work had got to (usually it was filed away by his organised secretary so he wouldn’t lose it). Finding such reflections frustrating he would switch the TV to Channel 4, which his children found frustrating because they were trying to watch the cartoons on ITV. Angry that her children only started crying when their dad got home, Chelsea would slam the kitchen door shut in frustration, which would split the plaster or knock down a picture, which resulted in Wuss having to do more overtime to pay for the damage.

It was probably the realisation that all roads led to overtime that attracted Wuss to the quiz show Fifteen to One. It was a world he could escape into, a world without overtime and screaming kids and slamming doors, a world without Bowser and snooker. As William Gladstone Stewart graced the screen Wuss momentarily forgot all of these worries, and soon replaced them with new ones.

The programme followed a simple format. In the first round, William would ask each of the fifteen contestant’s two questions, failure to answer one of these correctly results in elimination. In round two the contestants tactically nominate each other for questions until their intellectual failings are exposed and only three remain. To be eliminated you need to lose all your ‘lives’ which happens when you get three questions wrong. The remaining three contestants then go forward to the grand final. Once one of them has got three questions right a question or nominate formula develops until all the questions are answered and the highest scorer wins, or when two of the contestants lose their remaining lives, leaving one remaining winner. At the end of the series the top fifteen scorers go through to the grand final and battle it out until only one remains.

The reason that Wuss found this format ‘relaxing’ was not so much for the sociological and philosophical reasons outlined earlier but for pure escapism. Just as with his gambling and drinking it allowed him temporary leave from reality. He revelled in the pointless escapism offered in answering a series of pointless questions before the contestant. The only problem was his answers were usually wrong.

Fifteen to One was, and remains, the Don Corleone of quiz shows. It wasn’t like Play Your Cards Right where answers often boiled down to a logical analysis of odds, as in guessing whether a higher or lower card will be turned over. And it was certainly well removed from the Richard and Judy phone-in, the kind where any member of the public could join in. Fifteen to One was the most hardcore. There were no personal anecdotes or witticisms required for participation, no consolation prize or cash reward for failure, instead it was straight in to the action. Due to this serious ‘no-thrills’ attitude the softly furnished television studio could quite easily be mistaken for a gladiatorial ring.

The questions asked were solid and perhaps more suited to the autistic than your average human. Perhaps testament to this was the recent declaration by the BBC that at the end of next year, 1996, they would be dropping Mastermind. Quite obviously television wasn’t a big enough town for these two heavyweights to share together. However where as Mastermind depended upon specific research in to a set topic, Fifteen to One demanded a specific knowledge on everything which often verged on the factually insane. Typical examples included ‘how many pigeons were on top of the Reichstag when it was burnt down in 1933?’ or ‘how many people were inside at the time and what were they eating?’ Wuss couldn’t get any questions right and so felt more depressed than he had been before he watched the programme. His only consolation was that the show was becoming a global phenomenon as Poland has Ten to One, and in Germany (SAT 1) they watched Jeden Gegen Jeden (all against all), which meant there was probably at least one Pole and German somewhere feeling as stupid as he.

What was most frustrating was the contestants represented a fair stratification of social groups with doctors, dustman, professors, unemployed, vicars, saleswomen, mothers, granddads, white, and black. In mathematical terms this meant that at least one of those contestants represented him. If he couldn’t get any questions right then this meant he was almost subhuman, an inferior version of the society he so desperately wanted to be part of.

It was that desperate need for self affirmation, to just once feel as if he belonged to something, which led to his obsession with the programme. He set himself the target of getting four correct answers in one show believing that if he achieved this it would signify that his life had changed. This would result in a firmer grip on reality and consequentially everything else would start to fall in to place. He would be able to catch buses because he had become a normal person. He would be able to find his rizlas, and maybe, even, start winning at snooker. Unfortunately he wasn’t having much luck. His memory was so bad he could barely remember his address let alone how many cannons were on the starboard side of the Mary Rose before it sank.

As Wuss became more obsessed by his dream he became more irrational and conceited. When the kids tried to switch the channels back to Fireman Sam he took it as a personal insult, like they didn’t want him to achieve self-realisation, and this after he had wiped the luminous green shits from their backsides. Although Chelsea was sometimes able to convince him that his children weren’t to blame for his complete inability to recall irrelevant and useless facts, he sometimes suspected a conspiracy. But this was inevitable as the obsession slowly dominated his every thought. He didn’t want to finish off in a retirement home, surrounded by old grannies reminiscing about the good old days and how many questions they used to get right on Fifteen To One. All was not lost though; he had devised a cunning plan.

So far since the programme had started the social groups which seemed to do the best were not the professors or the lawyers but the unemployed and retired. This was because they got to sit in front of the TV all day and through the watching of various documentaries, sit-coms, and news bulletins acquired an array of useless facts. These facts transform into cultural capital when they are exchanged for correct answers on Fifteen to One. All Wuss needed to do was get the sack, although this suggestion was instantly rebuffed by his ever pragmatic partner who just couldn’t see how this would improve their life.

All Wuss wanted was a fair crack at the whip, and this was impossible as long as his children continued to cry whilst he was trying to listen to the questions. It angered him so much he had written a letter to the show suggesting it was time it was modernised and renamed the more realistic ‘Fifteen To One, Two Children and a Wife.’ In this updated version the buzzers would not work every time you pressed them, so the contestants felt the same frustration he did when he couldn’t find the remote control. Similarly, kids would be employed to pull at contestant’s legs and hair whilst they tried to answer, giving it that lovely post-modern flair. Although these were legitimate solutions, William G. Stewart was never to take him up on the suggestions because he never read the letter. Wuss lost it the minute he remembered he needed to buy some stamps. God, was never going to give him a fair chance.

The simplest option was to record the programme and watch it in peace when everyone had gone to bed. This would even give him the added advantage of pausing the video between questions so that he had longer to consider his answers. Unfortunately he was denied the temptation as the video no longer worked. One of the kids had put a cheese sandwich inside it, so now when you pressed record all you got was a cheese toastie…

Genre: Black comedy

Style: Douglas Adams

Word Count: 83,915 (includes chapter headings etc)

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