On the BBC quiz show 'Pointless', who are the 100 people they give the questions to before the show? Do they have specialised knowledge (ie film buffs for the film questions, football fans for the football questions, etc), or are they random members of the public?

Endemol (or rather their appointed agents, specifically market research company Redshift Research) has given 100 people, 100 seconds to name as many things as they can in a given category. These categories are fairly varied, although categories relating to countries and their languages, locations, affiliations etc, do seem to appear far more often than any other category.

TV Panels – Content creation is not limited to marketing agencies. We’ve been working on the BBC TV’s Pointless show since its inception in 2009. In all this time the client has not once disputed the respondent or answer validity; a testament to our longstanding quality.

Alexander: The point is those who answer can’t know they’re being polled for Pointless. You can’t ‘apply’ to be one of the 100 people, because that would then affect the outcome. Who knows who these people are? I’d be delighted to meet someone who had been asked, and find out if they knew they had been asked a Pointless question.