Welcome to the front page for QU12, the very best quiz ever filmed. This page is the dormat for a quiz which combines speed, knowledge, strategy and luck in a heady cocktail of nail biting suspense, amazing brains, tragic risk, magnificent success and bound by a camerarderie rarely found in modern top class competition. At the top of the pages you should see a header bar like this:
which is kind of a 'go to most places on the site' thing. For watching the shows, click shows, for emailing me click email etc etc. The numbers are newsletters, starting with the first and.... (I hope you get the picture).
The 2007 series is now complete, so below you will find information about the twelve rounds and the final. Please bear with me whilst I explain where the programmes are. The first eight rounds are on the internet at YouTube. (Click here for the YouTube front page). The last five rounds and the final are on a host called Blip TV.(Click Here for the Blip pages). Please bear in mind that the YouTube films are split into segments of less than ten minutes, and because of bandwith restrictions are very much reduced in quality from the originals (hence the change to Blip). Ongoing work is "re-rendering" the first seven rounds to put on Blip. Right at the bottom of this page you should see a screen with controls along the bottom. You can skip what you are watching to go to another part but unfortunately you have to shuffle around a bit to get the films in the right order. Sorry, but I will try to fix that ASAP
The game format is generallyGo to the QU12 latest page for news about the most fabulous made for TV quiz ever, which puts competitors and content before presenters and production (you can enter NOW!) or click on the image below to go site
Click here for QU12: Quizzers for quizzers
Why are Quizzers not household names? If people are prepared to watch an assortment of hoodlums standing in pairs round a green table potting balls with a stick for two weeks, surely they would enjoy some of the jaw droppings skill and speed which I have seen displayed by quiz players over the last few years. I remember the days when the telly was straight on to watch Fifteen to One;- no 'personalities' no gimmicks, just loads of questions and reasonable competitors. Three million viewers and cheap as chips to produce, Stannah Stairlifts and Shackleton high seats never had it so good! Fifteen to One was good, but from a competetive perspective it had it's failings. For a long time players were not allowed repeat appearences (Thanks to Trevor that was fixed), and the very best players could get knocked out on two easy questions - the golf equivalent would be anybody who didn't make par on the first hole was cut.
What do we have now? University Challenge and Mastermind are terrific shows, but we still have an audition process, different questions for different competitors, no repeat appearences for the very players who prove themselves most adept at the format, the team nature of UC and the relatively short nature of General knowledge on Mastermind (i.e get one question wrong and you are near 10% off the pace - a disaster if one set of questions is more difficult).
The money shows are really games shows. 12 questions on Millionaire is hardly a comprehensive assement of a person's quiz skill and the Weakest Link is the the equivalent of asking Phil Mickelson and VJ Singh if they would like to kick Tiger Woods out of the competition.
I watched "The People's Quiz" which ostensibly was a noble idea. I could only stand 20 minutes of it when it was first screened - it was a bit like watching auditions for the World Darts championships, when 95% of the entrants couldn't hit the board and then presciently observed "Oim only twenty One , and I've never played darts before". Having gone down to The People's Quiz I witnessed competitors being treated in such a fashion that tempers were understandably frayed, to the extent that they wished they had not bothered. It was this show however which inspired QU12 in that when competitors were allowed to just answer questions they were absolutely captivating. Stephanie Bruce, Mark Labbett and Olav Bjortomt were both impressive and entertaining doing what they do best - answering questions. What a shame Mark Kerr and Diane Hallagan, along with hundreds of other great quizzers in the country were not allowed to let loose.
So that is why we have QU12, because I, Steve Kidd, want to produce a great TV quiz, that combines copious quiz content with great competitors on a level playing field that they can play again and again, thereby building a core of competitors who inspire interest, respect and admiration through their skills, not their unusual jobs or whatever it is that researchers seem to be employed to discover nowadays, and that I am lucky enough to have the means to do so, and am blessed with friends and family who believe in what I do and back me up on it.
QU12 Is open to anybody, and will be recorded for TV. It will be the nearest a TV quiz has come to being a real championship. It will be the nearest a real quiz has come to be entertaining!
Here are some wee screensavers and backgrounds for your telephone. They are 320 by 240 pixels. A QU12 piccy on your moby may earn you a discount,so put one on your phone now! (PS right click over the image and then select view image to see true clarity)
There are some great quizzes that people can participate in around the country, all the quiz leagues (see the links page), the CIU quiz, The Brain of London etc., and I thoroughly recommend you try any of those. These are the reasons why I love QU12 and why anybody who enjoys quizzes might love QU12:
You'll probably want to download Quicktime and Windows Media Player to watch videos on blip.tv. If you can't get a video to play it's probably because you're missing one of these two pieces of software. Blip.tv is best experienced with a modern Web browser like Firefox, Safari or Internet Explorer 6. Opera and OmniWeb should work, too, but we make no guarantees. You're best off with Windows XP or Mac OS X 10.3 or better, too.
If you do want to see the DVDs in High Definition Wide Screen format, please mail steve_jm_kidd@yahoo.co.uk
The intention has always to be to deliver a quiz with loads of questions and great competitors, and I hope you will agree that we have mission accomplished.
All original ideas and all content are Mine Mine Mine, so please don't steal them. Ask first, I'm a generous bloke.
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