GREAT ANNUAL COMEDY QUIZ

Time for another festive set of comedy mind-bogglers. This year, they come in fi ve loosely themed rounds. Please disregard the fact that the ‘Places’ round is disproportionately about licensed premises. The following questions have been declared perfect for starting any number of arguments. So, eyes down…

THEMES 

1. Who wrote and performed the theme tune to Girls On Top? 
2. Who wrote the themes for Spitting Image, The Young Ones, Carrott’s Lib and Filthy Rich & Catflap? 
3. Who arranged the music for The Goon Show and conducted the orchestra? 
4. Who wrote the theme music for Shelley, It Takes A Worried Man, Steptoe And Son and Doctor Who? 
5. What was the signature characteristic of most of the themes composed by Ronnie Hazlehurst? 
6. What was the lead instrument in the Hancock’s Half Hour theme? 
7. What is the proper title of the Monty Python’s Flying Circus theme and who composed it? 
8. Taking A Chance On Love was the theme tune to which 1980s Channel 4 sitcom? 
9. Who sang the Only Fools And Horses theme tunes? 
10. Who wrote the words and sang the theme tune to The Happy Apple?

NAMES 

1. In Are You Being Served?, what was Miss Brahms’s first name? 
2. In Hancock’s Half Hour, what was Sid James’s middle name? 
3. In Dad’s Army, what was Sergeant Wilson’s first name? 
4. In Fresh Fields, what was the name of Hester and William’s nosey neighbour? 
5. In Terry And June, what was Terry and June’s surname? 
6. In Happy Ever After, what was Terry and June’s surname? 
7. Which sitcom character’s middle name was Iolanthe? 
8. In Monty Python’s Flying Circus, whose name was pronounced Throatwobbler Mangrove? 
9. In Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads?, what were Bob Ferris’s middle names?
10. In Fawlty Towers, what was the major’s surname?

TURNS 

1. Which comedian’s best-known routine contains the line ‘I’ll stop you going to those youth clubs’? 
2. On the day war broke out, who defended the nation from a hut behind the Dog And Pullet? 
3. Which risqué comedian offered audiences a choice between the ‘white book’, containing his clean jokes, and the ‘blue book’, with his fruitier material? 
4. Which comedian was best known for his depiction of a Chelsea pensioner who happened to be an inept ventriloquist? 
5. Individually, they were Bud Flanagan, Chesney Allen, Jimmy Nervo, Teddy Knox, Charlie Naughton, Jimmy Gold and ‘Monsewer’ Eddie Gray. Together, what was their name?
6. Which double act was greeted at the Glasgow Empire with a shout of ‘Och s**te, there’s two of them’? 
7. Which northern comedian’s catchphrase was ‘I won’t take me coat off , I’m not stopping’? 
8. Which music-hall legend, who gave Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel their first showbiz breaks, commissioned the Astoria, the lavish h ouseboat on the Thames now owned by David Gilmour of Pink Floyd? 
9. In a 1968 BBC show about his life, Roy Hudd played which pioneering music hall comedian? 
10. Which gap-toothed Wigan-born banjolele virtuoso died in 1961?

ACTORS 

1. Who played Peter Barnes in A Sharp Intake Of Breath? 
2. Who played Captain Mainwaring’s wife in Dad’s Army? 
3. Who played Charlie Endell in Budgie? 
4. Who played Redvers Potter in Potter? 
5. Which sitcom star was featured on the cover of the single Ask, by The Smiths? 
6. Who played Betty the tea lady in Emu’s Broadcasting Company? 
7. Who played Big Al in The Beiderbecke Affair? 
8. Who took over Tony Hancock’s role when various Galton and Simpson scripts were remade for television in the 1990s? 
9. Leonard Rossiter played the lead in Tripper’s Day. Who took over after his death when the series returned as Slinger’s Day? 
10. Who ‘picked a pop’ at the music industry in a legendary 1960 BBC TV special?

PLACES 

1. Who drank in The Black Horse and The Fat Ox? 
2. Who lived at 46 Peacock Crescent, Hampton Wick? 
3. In Only Fools And Horses, Nelson Mandela House was in Peckham, but in which city was the block of flats used for the majority of exterior shots? 
4. Who, when bored, went for a drink in the Kebab And Calculator? 
5. Who lived at Oil Drum Lane, Shepherd’s Bush? 
6. Who frequented the Winchester Club, run by barman Dave Harris? 
7. Which East London district was home to Alf Garnett and family? 
8. Where is Brian Potter’s Phoenix Club located? 
9. In Porridge, where was HMP Slade located? 
10. Who could be found at ‘No Fixed Abode, Cricklewood’? 

Louis Barfe is the author of The Trials And Triumphs Of Les Dawson, £8.99, and the compiler of Britain’s Greatest TV Comedy Moments, £14.99. Both books are published by Atlantic Books.