The former University Challenge quizmaster, playwright and publisher was a genuinely erudite man, with an intensely telegenic way of showcasing his natural intelligence
Television quiz masters have the great advantage of the answers being written on cards. Some like to give the impression that they would know more than the contestants regardless of those prompts. Bamber Gascoigne, who has died aged 87, almost certainly did.
There were many sweet moments on University Challenge, which he fronted for its first 25 years from 1962, when Gascoigne would, for example, absent-mindedly sing a line of a Bach cantata to confirm a response, or quote the whole couplet or paragraph from which an answering phrase came.
