“Can I have a P please Bob?” and so begins the legend that was Blockbusters…

Blockbusters was shown from 29 August 1983 to 4 June 1993 with Bob Holness as the quiz master. The show was on ITV and was played by sixth form students with prizes accrued for the students and their colleges. The theme music for Blockbusters was by Ed Welch, and soon became one of the most recognisable television themes of modern times.

Blockbusters pitted a team of 2 against a single student in the game which ran in a 'rolling' format, allowing for games to last a different length of time, meaning that episodes would often begin and end mid-game, and matches often crossed over into two episodes.

The show was screened at 5.15pm Monday to Friday, intended to fill the half-hour timeslot between Children's ITV and the ITN News at 5:45pm. A similar timeslot was also allocated on Saturdays for a time.

As a career actor, Holness played up the role of being an 'old duffer' to the young contestants, which helped win him a cult following amongst students, with catchphrases that included "Can I have a 'P' please, Bob?".

In a famous clip in the UK version, a contestant was asked "what 'O' is the generic word for any living animal or plant, including bacteria and viruses?". The contestant realised that the answer is organism but in one of those momentary lapses he instead replied orgasm. After the ensuing laughter, Bob replied "there are reasons, which I won't go into, that I can't accept that particular answer".

Another notorious and often-repeated clip features a contestant mistakenly saying "Kama Sutra" instead of "kamikaze."