Guess What?: The BBC Radio 4 20 questions game show
About this audiobook
Barry Took presents this revised radio version of the popular parlour game 'Twenty Questions'
Hosted by veteran humorist Barry Took, presenter of Points of View and former chair of The News Quiz, this entertaining guessing game sees a panel of intellectually acute guests attempting to determine a mystery object in 20 tries. Their only clue is the category it falls into: animal, vegetable, mineral, abstract, or a combination of all four.
For most rounds, the studio audience know the answer and cheer on the contestants with promising guesses - but sometimes, both they and the listeners are kept in the dark, giving them an opportunity to play along too.
Pitting their wits against Barry Took are panellists Geoffrey Durham, Jeremy Hanley, Helen Atkinson Wood, Hattie Hayridge, Dick Vosburgh, Neil Innes, Jan Ravens, Nigel Dempster, Frances Edmonds, Chris Serle and Clare Francis, as they play their hunches and attempt to identify everything from a supermodel to a Page 3 girl, the Channel Tunnel to the shipping forecast, and a minicab driver to man's best friend. Using their best deductive reasoning, will they figure it out - or will they get stumped?
Production credits
Chaired by Barry Took
Written and compiled by Michael Dines
Voice provided by Peter Donaldson
Produced by Andy Aliffe
With: Geoffrey Durham, Jeremy Hanley, Helen Atkinson Wood, Hattie Hayridge, Dick Vosburgh, Neil Innes, Jan Ravens, Nigel Dempster, Frances Edmonds, Chris Serle, Clare Francis
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 8 April-10 June 1998
© 2022 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd. (P) 2022 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd.
Ratings and reviews
About the author
Barry Took was born in London in 1928. An early career as a stand-up comedian and sketch writer led to his first radio script credit, for Beyond Our Ken. From there he went on to create Round the Horne with Marty Feldman, whilst on television he wrote for series including Bootsie and Snudge and The Army Game. Amongst a variety of later jobs in front of and behind the camera, Took wrote and presented Points of View on BBC1 and also chaired BBC radio’s The News Quiz. He wrote a number of books, including The Complete and Utter History of Round the Horne and his autobiography A Point of View. He died in 2002.
