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In yesterday's The Chase, one contestant was asked "In the 90s, politician Kate Howey was a world champion in which martial art?" The contestant didn't know and ran out of time and Bradley Walsh gave the answer as judo. Britain had a judo world champion called Kate Howey in the 90s, but she was not the MP whose name is Kate Hoey.

A few months ago on Eggheads (though it may have been a repeat from an earlier year) a contestant was asked "The Aghia Sophia is a prominent landmark of which capital city - Belgrade, Istanbul or Tbilisi?" The contestant said he thought not Istanbul but wasn't sure why, so plumped for one of the others. Istanbul (the correct answer) isn't a capital city - which may or may not be why he ruled it out.

Forumites have a lot of TV quiz show appearances between them. Has any of you witnessed or suffered (or benefited) from an error by the question setters?

Peter McNamara wrote:In yesterday's The Chase, one contestant was asked "In the 90s, politician Kate Howey was a world champion in which martial art?" The contestant didn't know and ran out of time and Bradley Walsh gave the answer as judo. Britain had a judo world champion called Kate Howey in the 90s, but she was not the MP whose name is Kate Hoey.

I don't have anything to add, but that made me laugh - what a shocking error!

Kate Hoey was Northern Ireland high jump champion.

I guess the question-setter remembered that she'd done well at some sport or other and then misspelled her name when looking it up! Poor quality control though.

Jon Corby wrote:

Peter McNamara wrote:In yesterday's The Chase, one contestant was asked "In the 90s, politician Kate Howey was a world champion in which martial art?" The contestant didn't know and ran out of time and Bradley Walsh gave the answer as judo. Britain had a judo world champion called Kate Howey in the 90s, but she was not the MP whose name is Kate Hoey.

I don't have anything to add, but that made me laugh - what a shocking error!

I always assume you are being sarcastic whenever you say anything Corby. Were you?

Matt Morrison wrote:

Jon Corby wrote:

Peter McNamara wrote:In yesterday's The Chase, one contestant was asked "In the 90s, politician Kate Howey was a world champion in which martial art?" The contestant didn't know and ran out of time and Bradley Walsh gave the answer as judo. Britain had a judo world champion called Kate Howey in the 90s, but she was not the MP whose name is Kate Hoey.

I don't have anything to add, but that made me laugh - what a shocking error!

I always assume you are being sarcastic whenever you say anything Corby. Were you?

No!

But now you'll assume that was sarcastic too. What am I to do?

I think one of the best (and funniest) wrong question/answer on a quiz show has to be Take It or Leave It (a truly awful, awful show). The way Richard Arnold pretends to know what he is talking about is even more hilarious than the balls up by the question writer. This video should tell the story.

Other notable examples are two from WWTBAM, one which I think everyone will remember was something like "What's the minimum amount of times you can hit a tennis ball to win a set?" The answer being 12 (4 aces on your 3 service games and 4 double faults from you opponent). WWTBAM gave the answer as 24 and I think it was for like £64,000 at the time. Also Lawrence Llewellyn-Bowen and whoever he was on with on Celebrity WWTBAM got a question about the middle name of Richard Sheridan. I think the answer is Brinsley but they went for Bramley. Or something or other. Anyway, turned out that two of the answers were right and they also got to come back. EDIT: The Richard Sheridan question was a different case altogether and the Bramley was actually Butler. The guy answered Butler (given as wrong by WWTBAM but actually also right) and the guy came back. The Laurence Llewellyn Bowen one was about the US motto.

And one last example I can think of is from Eggheads (going back a few years now). A team were invited back because I think they were asked who was the first musician to play in Soviet Russia and either the answer was Elton John and they went for something like Cliff Richard. Or the answer was Cliff Richard and they went for Elton John. The precise details escape me.

It's not an error in the question, but still.

On yesterday's MPDL, just after an ad break the presenter says "Welcome back. Zack and Jon have..."
Their name badges said Zeph and Jon.

When that muppet Andi Peters was given charge of producing Top Of The Pops in 2003, he re-vamped it as a live show including a phone-in question for viewers. The first re-vamped show was an absolute disaster on so many levels, but the most glaring balls-up was that none of the three proposed multi-choice answers to the phone-in question were correct. The question asked for "Robbie WIlliams' first number one solo single in the UK", and I think the options were something like Freedom, South Of The Border, and Angels. Music buffs will know straight away that none of these got to number one, and that he had to wait until Millennium in 1998 before he had a UK number one solo single. It didn't help that this question was re-aired and repeated several times throughout the broadcast. Presumably the question should have read "first solo single", not "first solo number one single", in which case the answer would have been Freedom.

Bafflingly, at the end of the show, a winner was announced, as if there had been no mistake in the question.

Unsurprisingly, TOTP only lasted another few years before finally being cancelled. As a tv format, it was dying when Andi Peters took over... but his re-vamp was the final nail, etc...

Vaguely similarly, a few years ago, I happened upon some kids' presenter on a music programme, having just played Ricky Martin - Livin' La Vida Loca. He claimed in standard format enthusiasm (I paraphrase), there's Ricky Martin, with a song that means "life is crazy".

It's always bugged me, and I've never been quite sure whether he was just thoughtless and lazy, or stupid as well, depending on whether he or his scriptwriter wrote the line.