Ask the Family is a British game show that was first broadcast on BBC1 from 12 July 1967 to 22 October 1984 hosted by Robert Robinson and then on UK Gold from 6 June to 10 October 1999 hosted by Alan Titchmarsh and from 4 April to 5 May 2005 hosted by Dick & Dom on BBC Two.
Format
The show took the form of a quiz contest between two teams, with each team consisting of four members of a single family – two parents and two teenage children. Over the course of the thirty-minute show the teams were asked a variety of general knowledge questions and mental puzzles, with the winner advancing to later rounds, culminating in a grand final between the two families that had been unbeaten in the series.
The teams were asked questions, with certain questions directed at only certain members of the family – such as "children only", or "father and elder child only".
Transmissions Series Start date End date Episodes Presenter 1 12 July 1967 23 August 1967 7 Robert Robinson 2 9 September 1968 23 December 1968 15 3 8 September 1969 29 December 1969 17 4 14 September 1970 28 December 1970 16 5 13 September 1971 27 December 1971 16 6 24 January 1973 9 May 1973 16 7 10 September 1974 7 January 1975 15 8 5 January 1976 19 April 1976 15 9 3 January 1977 8 April 1977 15 10 9 January 1978 24 April 1978 15 11 23 April 1979 20 August 1979 15 12 21 April 1980 18 August 1980 15 13 6 April 1981 10 August 1981 15 14 2 November 1982 14 December 1982 7 15 21 September 1983 16 November 1983 8 16 3 September 1984 22 October 1984 8 17 6 June 1999 10 October 1999 31 Alan Titchmarsh 18 4 April 2005 5 May 2005 23 Dick and Dom
Theme tune Early episodes – from 1967 to 1973 and perhaps beyond – used the track "Acka Raga" from the 1967 John Mayer and Joe Harriott album Indo Jazz Fusions as the theme tune.Ask the Family: Soundtracks, IMDbIndo Jazz Fusions, Lansdowne Series, Columbia SX/SCX 6112, released February 1967
In popular culture The show was parodied in contemporary comedy TV shows during the 1970s and 1980s, notably in Not the Nine O'Clock News in which both families were introduced as being almost identical save for surname, with all being quantity surveyors by profession (including the children). A spoof edition on The Kenny Everett Television Show featured Everett as Robert Robinson and as the (female) heads of the respective Windsor and Thatcher families. An episode of the radio sketch show I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again opened with a parody where "Robin Robertson", played by John Cleese, poured scorn on the families and abandoned them in disgust. One episode of The Burkiss Way likewise parodied it as Ask the Cleverdicks. In the late 1990s a sketch in The Fast Show featured three middle-aged men arguing about which of them had the most middle-class upbringing: one of the men boasts that his family appeared on "Ask the Family with Robert Robinson – and we won!".
At one point tabloid newspapers made much of an occasion where the father of one family correctly answered the question "What is the sum of all the numbers from 1 to 100?" in a few seconds. However, there is a quick formula for the answer, as demonstrated by Carl Friedrich Gauss, and the answer may have been known to the person in question.
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