So You Want to be Top?
Revision as of 11:00, 27 April 2006
Contents |
Host
Co-hosts
Bill Homewood (series 1)
The Gemini Twins (scorers, series 1)
Leni Harper (series 2 and 3)
Broadcast
BBC 1, 7 November 1983 to 17 December 1985 (18 episodes in 3 series)
Synopsis
Kids' quiz show, with plenty of slapstick and bad puns, and a loose "schoolday" theme to rounds. Bizarrely, for the final series they abandoned the idea of having actual real children as contestants and changed it into a scripted comedy show with adult actors (mostly former 'Grange Hill' actors) in school uniform "playing" the games instead. The original format was no classic, but really, what were they thinking?
Some the sketches were actually rather funny and inventive, particularly those spoof advertisements for wheezes and fake products that could get you off going to school, such as a thermometer that made your temperature look higher than it really was ("Why be a bore at 98.4?")
Catchphrases
Gary Wilmot (in latter series): "Miss Harper - to the scoreboard, please!"
"So that means that the Creeps are top of being bottom and the Crawlers are bottom of being top!"
Leni Harper (when asking the audience to score the contestants via a Clapometer-style scoreboard): "Mark 'em, top kids!"
Theme music
Lyrics (sung by Gary) went along the lines of "So you want to be top? So you want to be top? So you..." (you can guess the rest). There was also a bit (well, at least for one of the series) which went "So you want to be T.O.P.? You gotta make it B.I.G! Don't wanna be an F.L.O.P! So you want to be top!". That's not even a proper rhyme!
