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INTRODUCTION

Welcome to So You Think You Know It All?, a lovingly crafted compilation of more than 100 of the quirkiest, strangest, most mind-boggling, and fascinating stories pulled from the brains of the One Show research desk at independent producers Icon Films. Here you’ll find tales of everyday British foibles, eccentricity, unsolved murders, very hard maths, A-list stars turning up in unexpected places, cricket-playing Nazis, epic fails, government cover-ups, mini triumphs, scientific breakthroughs and, er, even one about how a nudist film-maker came up with the object that no self-respecting hipster home could do without…

You may already be a fan of The One Show, but did you know that launching this now much-loved early evening weekday magazine show was a gamble for the BBC? You see, The One Show sits in a tricky scheduling hinterland – 7 p.m., that awkward, sticky-out bit of time and space after the news, falling between the snoozy un-demands of daytime programmes, and before ‘primetime’. This is the time of day when TV’s magnetism is at its weakest for viewers; often just home from work, distracted by making, or eating, their tea, putting the bins out, wrangling toddlers toward their pyjamas, ignoring a spate of PPI compensation calls on the landline and whatever else it is people do at 7 p.m. on a weekday.

But the gamble paid off. Today The One Show is a colourful and quirky, serious and topical – and often a little eccentric – TV institution. Transmitting five nights a week, 46 weeks of the year, it averages five million viewers per edition; no mean feat when you consider the competition from a multi-channel TV environment and the equally distracting ‘second screens’ of smart phones, tablets and laptops that now accompany households when they congregate on the sofa.

Think of this book as the Director’s Cut of The One Show – full of facts, extended interviews and trivia nuggets. And like the TV show that inspired it, So You Think You Know It All? is a distinctly British celebration of historic and contemporary eccentricity, innovation, bravery and sheer chutzpah.

Enjoy!