Things No One Says After Being Introduced On British Quiz Shows
There’s nothing particularly funny or original about noting the fact that British people often begin conversations, particularly when they’re appearing on television, with a self-deprecating remark. It’s a known quantity, it’s whatever, I’m not trying to take anyone’s politeness conventions away from them, or attempting to whip them up into Americanized overstatements. But as we’re working our way through all the back seasons of Only Connect, I can’t help but long for a few simple affirmations, like, “This show is nice,” or “We can admit we came here on purpose, not by humiliating and irreversible accident.”
“Yeah, I’m really pleased to be here.”
“Yeah, I’m really looking forward to this.”
“We’ve, well we’ve been working hard, and we hope to do well today, we’d like that.”
“Thanks, it’s really nice to be on.”
“I like quizzing. To me, it’s not an extravagant sort of punishment.”
“Yeah, we all chose to be here, deliberately, so this is a good thing, and a direct result of choices we’ve made.”
“We’re not embarrassed to be here.”
“Our goals for today’s episode go beyond the mere avoidance of pain.”
“We do this sort of thing in our spare time, for fun, and we’re pretty good at it, so by the transitive property we think we’re going to have fun today, and that we’ll probably be pretty good at it again.”
“We haven’t been dragged here against our wills to be hunted for sport.”
“Yes, we would like to answer these questions.”
“Pleasure is a good thing, for its own sake.”
“I enjoy my hobbies.”
“I’m not ashamed to have a body.”
“I don’t fear you.”
“I don’t fear myself.”
“I don’t fear the good. I come here to seek it.”
This made my day for several reasons. One, I am a Canadian living in the UK, and yes they are all like this. Two, my best friend is the showrunner of Only Connect. And three, I am dating (slash living with during the pandemic) a former contestant (who was introduced to me by the aforementioned best friend at an OC reunion party I crashed). I forwarded this newsletter to my friend, and we immediately embarked on a ridiculous argument over the merits of our different approaches to ironing clothes.
This has now been shared on a UK quizzers' facebook group full of past contestants and future hopefuls - so maybe people will take notes ...
(Series 14 contestant here - our team are simultaneously hugely excited and utterly mortified at the possibility you have watched us mess up. Also yes can confirm the showrunners are absolutely lovely.)