Cheggers Plays Pop

Host

Co-hosts

Team leaders: Carmen Gordon and Gordon Astley. Various others over the years included Tony Blackburn, Gary Davies and Vivien McKone.

Broadcast

BBC Manchester for BBC 1, 10 April 1978 to 7 November 1986 (81 episodes in 9 series)

Synopsis

Seminal kids quiz show with musical bent hosted by young floppy haired Keith Chegwin. Each week two schools battled it out for seemingly no reason whatsoever.

First game each week seemed to be the Top Ten Hammer Game, whereby the kids from both teams would race to a test your strength machine and attempt to light up the top ten songs in the singles charts for points.

And here is the top ten for the week ending 20 May 1978, compiled by BMRB for Music Week and the BBC.

The other rounds in the show were the Hotbox quiz rounds, where the team would spin a wheel in front of their desks to select one of ten sets of questions to answer, the first time round the question was based on the band currently at that position in the charts, the second time round it was general music based questions.

And Mynydd-Isa are in the lead. Can nobody beat these eggheads?!

These were intermingled with Knockout-esque action games involving large props and inflatables. Later series involved comedians such as Stan Boardman trying to make the kids smile or laugh - if they could last 30 seconds without doing so, they would win points for their teams.

Musical acts of the day would also appear to sing their latest tune.

In 1997 it was bought back in spirit as 50/50, and no-one noticed.

Key moments

That infamous gaffe when Cheggers offered a choice of three answers, unfortunately none of them correct.

The answer to this question was 1976. Yes, really.

Catchphrases

"All you gotta do is....!"

"Waaaayyyyy - hold it there!"

"And now it's time for the Hotbox Quick Quiz!"

Cheggers always signed off with, "Ta-ra!" before leaping onto the inflatables with the kids.

Trivia

According to Lostshows.com, almost every single one of the 81 episodes exist from the BBC archives with 74 of them surviving, the only episodes that are missing are Episodes 2 & 5-6 of Series 6 and Episodes 2-3 & 5-6 of Series 7.

Web links

Wikipedia entry

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