competitors preferred a more highbrow approach. One of the very earliest editions reported on overspending at the Ministry of Defence in the style of a contemporary gameshow, Beat The Clock. The programme was so controversial it was banned from being shown on ITV by the then regulatory body, the Independent Television Authority (ITA); instead, ten minutes of it were shown on the BBC as an act of journalistic solidarity. The gameshow device re-emerged in 1989, when an academic study of the uptake of tax-funded benefits by the middle-class was transformed into a mock quiz show named Spongers, fronted by a well-known star of game formats, Nicholas Parsons.
Popular music played a significant role in WIA’s history. An early edition, in 1966, carried a fly-on-the-wall account of daily life aboard one of the then pirate radio ships, Radio Caroline, at a time when the British