The Brains Trust

Contents

Host

Donald McCullough

Bernard Braden (1957)

Michael Flanders

Hugh Ross (1955-6)

Mary Ann Sieghart (1996)

Broadcast

BBC Home Service, 1 January 1941-45

Cinema films, 1942-3 (4 films)

BBC-tv, 1955-61?

Radio 3, 1994-5

BBC2, 1996

Synopsis

A panel answered questions sent in by listeners, and were expected to talk intelligently on any subject, no matter what it was.

About half-a-dozen questions were dealt with in each live 45-minute broadcast, and the producers selected the questions to play to the panel's strengths. The questions tended to raise matters of morality rather than fact, and while party politics were eschewed, international politics and religion were open for general discussion.

Trivia

Long before the show transferred to television, there was a version which was filmed and shown in cinemas. It was claimed to be the first completely unscripted and unrehearsed feature film. As far as we can tell there were four films in all, with the first one (in 1942) being a film of a radio show, and the other three (in 1943) made specially for the big screen.

"Professor" C.E.M. Joad (not technically a professor, though he was head of the Philosophy department at Birkbeck College) was one of the first game show regulars to be dropped after a press scandal. The popular contributor to the radio version suddenly found himself persona non grata in 1948 after being convicted of dodging a 17s 1d train fare.

Inventor

Howard Thomas

Web links

IMDB entry

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