Stephen Fry is back with Jeopardy!: Interview
Jeopardy! returns to ITV1 and ITVX on Monday 17 March.
Stephen Fry is back with a second series of ITV’s hit daytime quizshow, Jeopardy!
Congratulations on getting a second series of Jeopardy! Were you pleased to return to the lectern?
Very pleased. Does one use the word ‘cult’ to describe Jeopardy! or the even more clichéd, ‘iconic’ because this show has the status it has? It’s such an unusual format. Any Brits who haven’t seen it in America are a bit puzzled as it takes a bit of getting used to. But once you do - and I know from just the experience, which is why I was very happy to do it - that it really catches hold of you and becomes a kind of addictive thing. It's really good fun to do.
What’s the feedback been like from the public?
Really good. I’ve been asked why I’m being a quiz master, and I say it's a dream job for me. I'm aware that some people think I'm a sort of intellectual or posho and that being a quiz master is not a noble job. I think it's a perfectly noble job, and I'm very happy to do it. I love the variety of my life. I do radio programmes about language and literature, I write about these things, and I am the Visiting Professor of Creative Media at Oxford. You know, we have a mixture in life. Who doesn't think it's a great treat occasionally to go to a Michelin starred restaurant - but I will never give up beans on toast. I'm not saying Jeopardy! is beans on toast, of course, but it's silly to label people as being one sort of style or another. ITV is pleased with it, hence the faith they’ve exhibited in it for this second season.
Have any changes been made?
One of the exciting things about this second series is we've tweaked the format to give it more pace. It’s great that ITV have given us an hour, and we enjoyed that in the first series. But we felt that it wouldn’t lose anything by having an extra round in it. That would mean everything was quicker. And there is something about the rat-a-tat-tat of the game. The questions keep coming, and that adds to the tension and the excitement, and to the uniqueness of Jeopardy! My belief is that with the little tweaks we've made, it'll be even more exciting.
This second series also sees life-changing amounts of money won, putting the show up there with some of the biggest financial prizes ever given out on daytime television…
It’s one of the features of Jeopardy! and it's an unpredictable one as to how long someone stays on because they keep winning. And if they can, then the sums they can win are, to use the cliché that all quizmasters love... life-changing [laughs]. It was thrilling. We had two who were both remarkable quizzers. As a viewer, you have the vertical excitement, which is the game on the day, and there's the horizontal excitement, which is, wondering if they’ll still be there tomorrow. One of those who stayed on for a fair time, had an almost freakish ability to buzz before the others. We know people who haven't got the answer right or haven't won sometimes say, ‘Oh, I was buzzing, but they were just too quick for me,’ but that really was true for a few of them.
One of those stand-out contestants is a 23-year-old hotel receptionist. Can you tell us more about him?
He’s a wonderful Welsh guy. Some people think that all quiz contestants are academics and post-graduate students and that’s not true at all. This young fellow was not in a job that most people would consider likely to produce someone who's full of knowledge. I think I said to him at one point, ‘Well, I suppose when you're on night duty, you've got long evenings to go through books.’ I was so happy for him. I really was.
Is it just a question of knowing your general knowledge to do well on the show?
Just because you’re a good pub quizzer in a league, doesn’t mean you’re going to win. There are several skills you must have to play Jeopardy! Above and beyond, knowledge is obviously the most important. But on top of that is the speed of your reflexes. You need to be a bit Zen. And then comes a bit of tactical nous, because the way you bet is risky. You can make a terrible mistake with your betting at the end. You might not be relaxed enough to use the buzzer as well as the other two contestants. And that's why it's called Jeopardy! On so many occasions, that title justified itself again and again.
As the host – but also a fan – is it difficult to maintain your composure as contestants start building up big prize pots?
It’s exciting, and of course, you get to know them, because they stay on longer, so you're familiar with their quirks and their characteristics and their strengths. But it's extraordinary how, when you are the question master, there's a part of your brain that’s an audience member, so you're still kind of going, ‘Wow!’ Obviously, my main concern is to keep everything going.
The series always features a broad range of questions…
One of the things I really love about Jeopardy! is the categories are so interesting and unusual. I think that our clue writers are the best in the land. They come up with some fabulous categories that are so imaginative and witty and are full of variety. They allow the contestants and people at home to join in. There may be some categories where people go, ‘Opera? Excuse me, I don't think so.’ But they’ll be absolutely thrilled by another one, which might be railway stations. We have funny ones this time like Meaty Men and Words Teenagers Might Use. It’s not the same as naming flags or asking about the periodic table.
And your linguistic skills also get put to the test?
We do get quite a lot of things in foreign languages. Mostly, they’ve been languages that I'm at least familiar with and can pronounce. This season, we had a lot which were to do with Portugal or Brazil. I can read Portuguese OK because it’s like Spanish when it's written down. But amazingly, our sound guy is as Portuguese, so he was helpful,
Are we likely to see a celebrity version of Jeopardy!?
I would be very happy for there to be one. When it was announced that this the series was going to happen, I did get some emails from friends who are in the public eye saying, ‘Bagsy be in the celeb version.’ It’s one of those quiz formats where people don't only enjoy doing it, they dream of being on it. They imagine it would be really good fun to be on.
Can you name any names?
[Dame] Judi [Dench] loved it. She did write to me. She absolutely adores it.
Do you think she’d take part?
Wouldn't that be fun? She'd say, no, no [laughs]
Having been a contestant on the celebrity versions of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? twice and Mastermind (which you won), as well as appearing on University Challenge as a student, you know how nerve-racking being on a quiz can be. What advice do you offer to people appearing on Jeopardy!?
It’s just that simple thing: to stay calm. It's easy to say because a lot of people haven’t been on television before. Even though there's no audience, people are nervous because they're on television, or worried about how they look and what they’re wearing and they’re nervous because they want to win. They’re very excited, and that slight tension and strain is inimical. I think back to that Zen thing that I mentioned about getting the buzzer and just letting your brain do the work unconsciously, not consciously. It’s like in sport. You know how to hit a ball, but if you try and concentrate on it, you'll miss somehow. If you don't know, don't buzz. And what’s important is if you make a mistake, don’t let that stay in your mind, because there's another question coming very quickly. It’s one of the keys of all sport, isn't it? Put out of your head the failure of the last few seconds and just clear your mind and just get on with it.
What do you remember about your time on University Challenge?
We got to the final, and I still say that thing that losers say. We got more points in the three games, but they won. That's the pathetic thing to say. And it's like, if in tennis, you know, because of the set structure, you can win more games but lose a match. In those days, the final was the best of three, and we were up against Merton College, Oxford. Boo! And we won the first one by about 280 to 50. We absolutely slaughtered them. But they kind of reassembled for the second one and won by 10 points. It was really close. In the final, it was a draw on the gong. So, there was a tie-break question, and they buzzed early and won.
What was the question?
It was ... 'Derived from the Greek word for a wanderer'. And I knew what it was. It’s Planets. Planet comes from Planetos, which means wanderer in Greek, because the Greeks observed that the orbit they take seems irregular and so they call them wandering.
Your level of intellect seems to know no bounds…
I can't deny that I'm a fairly knowledgeable fellow. It's not a moral accomplishment. It's not even really an intellectual one. I just happen to have a sticky memory. I'm pretty sure I've inherited it from my parents. My father was a physicist. I see my mother as often as possible, like a dutiful son. And if I were to have a sort of laugh, I'll say to her, ‘Robert Browning,’ and off she'll go, reciting lines and lines and lines of poems in her head. When I ask her the last time she said that poem, she’d say it was likely when she was at school, claiming she can remember it because she liked it! And if you like something, you remember it. And that's a simple truth. She's a very modest person, but I do think I've inherited some of that stickiness of memory. That said, if I re-tell a story I’d heard, I won’t be able to recall where or when I heard it!
So, do you have an Achilles heel where knowledge is concerned?
Oh, goodness, yes. I'm hopeless at pop and popular culture. I don't know who Ariana is. Ariana, Rihanna, Lipo Duo thingy, and although I have met her, I couldn't tell you a single Taylor Swift song, I'm afraid. So hip hop and pop and video games, I'm really hopeless at. I know there are things called Mortal Kombat and Grand Theft Auto. They are a huge phenomenon of our culture, and it's absolutely right to have questions on them.
Why do we all love quizzes so much?
It's wonderful that Britain is a quiz-playing nation, and a quiz-watching nation. And the diversity of quiz that's now available, both daytime and evening on British television says something about the British character. We like the knowledge, we like quizzing, we like to see people who are brilliant at it, we like the drama and the disappointment when they fail and the excitement when they win, and the look on their face when they win a serious amount. It's got so many different elements. With quizzing, you get the same elements that you get in sport, which is to say that you don't know how it's going to end. Much like a football or cricket match, at any moment something can change. Quiz shows provide so much of that which isn't available in other ways. People are fond of it. And I'm one of them, so that’s why I'm doing it, because I'm a great lover of it myself.
And finally, a daily Game Show airing weekdays at 3pm on ITV1, presented by a convivial host who tests your general knowledge…
Whoa, is that me? Who is Stephen Fry? Who the hell, I would add, is Stephen Fry? No, wait! What is Jeopardy!?