First watched : 1974
I remember that in the mid-seventies , after the excitement of the new singles chart at lunchtime, it was a pretty lousy night for TV and this was one of the component parts. You could not get a better representation of seventies middle class values than an episode of Ask The Family where two smug middle-aged professional couples paraded their swotty offspring and competed against each other on a series of general knowledge questions and mental puzzles to get through to the next round.
As if that wasn't bad enough the show was hosted by the awesomely obnoxious Robert Robinson. Coming on like the evil bastard brother of University Challenge's saintly and genuinely erudite Bamber Gascoine he couldn't have been more supercilious and patronising towards the contestants and audience with an Evan Davis -like propensity for telling you what you'd just seen for yourself. He also sported a ridiculous comb-over. You might have supposed he was sending the whole shebang up except he was just the same on Radio 4's Brain of Britain which he continued to present into his eighties , only giving up a year before his death in 2011.
He wasn't quite so lucky on TV as Ask The Family was ostentatiously axed in 1984 by a BBC anxious to appear more inclusive. It was briefly revived in 1999 in a relatively straight fashion with Alan Titchmarsh as host then disastrously in 2005 as a vehicle for juvenile comedians Dick and Dom, the dumbing-down only highlighted by the decision to trail the new series with a few repeats of the old.
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