Popmaster Quiz Book

The official companion to the highly popular Radio 2 Popmaster Quiz from the Ken Bruce show. Featuring more than 1700 questions it is the perfect way to test your music knowledge. There are more than 170 separate ten-question quizes each with a different category.

Phil Swern Best regarded perhaps for building one of the biggest private record collections in the world, Phil in his own right in the seventies, achieved over a dozen entries into The Guinness Book Of Hit Singles as a record producer with acts such as The Pearls, R & J Stone, Blue Haze, Horace Faith and The Seashells. He wrote and produced Polly Brown s American top twenty hit, up In A Puff Of Smoke and has had his songs recorded by The Edwin Hawkins Singers, Duane Eddy and Manhattan Transfer. In the mid eighties he collaborated as writer and performer on the highly successful quiz show for Capital Radio, You Ain t Heard Nothing Yet , which ran for several years in the Sunday lunchtime slot. In the nineties, Capital took up another of Phil s ideas, The Vinyl Vaults , which was broadcast live from his home where listeners were invited to call up and request any chart record from the last forty years. The challenge to Phil was to find the disc and have it playing live on air within sixty seconds. He was beaten by the public only twice in twenty-six weeks. Later, after Richard Park joined Capital as programme controller, Phil worked along side him to help set up the Capital Gold Network using his own record collection to get the station off the ground. By the early nineties he was producing programmes for BBC s Radio One, working with the late Roger Scott, as well as Alan Freeman s Pick Of The Pops , Mike Read s Round Table , and Bob Harris s late night show four evenings a week. For Classic FM, he wrote and devised a weekly quiz, A Question Of Classics , presented by Mike Read with team captains Barry Took and Tony Slattery. With Jeremy Beadle, he also devised and co-wrote Channel 4 s first music quiz show, Pop The Question with Chris Tarrant and David Hamilton as team captains, the long running BBC-1 s successful quiz, That s Showbusiness , which was hosted by Mike Smith where he also worked alongside Kenny Everett and Gloria Hunniford. Phil has also had his share of success with media books including The Sony Rock Review , Box Office Number Ones , for Guinness, The Ultimate Book Of Movie Facts , for Virgin and more recently, The Ultimate Book Of Pop Trivia for Robson-Chrysalis. He has set questions for Mastermind , and Name That Tune, devised Cannon and Ball s Casino , for Yorkshire Television, written and devised A Question Of Classics , for Classic FM and produced BBC Radio documentaries about Elton John, The Eagles and Queen. He is still producing Pick Of The Pops , now a regular Saturday lunchtime show on Radio 2 originally with Tony Blackburn as presenter, For many years he worked alongside Bob Harris who presents regular shows on the same network and Phil now co-writes Ken Bruce s daily pop quiz, Pop Master , again for the network, and in November 2002, co produced a four and a half hour marathon, Radio 2 s All Time Number One s, presented by Richard Allinson. He also currently compiles and produces Radio 2 s top Saturday morning radio show, Sounds Of The Sixties , presented by Brian Matthew. Neil Myners Having studied music to degree and post-grad levels, he has, since 1995, produced BBC Radio 2 s coverage of Paul McCartney s return to the Cavern, The Brit Awards and the Ivor Novello Awards. He was both music programmer and producer on Richard Allinson s Sony-award winning late night show for the network and has similarly been recognised for his work with Bob Harris and Bob s company WBBC on the documentaries The Sandy Denny Story and The Day John Met Paul . Neil was also series editor for the 16 part OGWT 40 in 2011 - WBBC s 40th anniversary radio celebration of the classic TV show - featuring 70 guests and nearly 40 newly recorded sessions.