Quiz time. This is for £10,000. Match any item on our hidden list of the top three things you might find in a car’s glove compartment. Thinking caps on, then, and away you go.

The car’s log-book, you say? Good effort. And very likely, too. But it’s not on our list of three, I’m afraid. Have another stab.

Gloves? Well, I can see where you’re coming from with that one. But be serious for a moment. Nobody ever really puts gloves in a car’s glove compartment, do they? One more go.

A map? Again, nice try, but I’m afraid not. The answers we were looking for were broccoli, a packet of multicoloured pipe cleaners and The Hinge of Fate, volume four of Winston Churchill’s history of the Second World War. Sorry. Try again soon, though, won’t you?

If you are unfamiliar with the shape of this game, you can’t have been watching enough of the phone-in quiz shows from which ITV currently makes millions of pounds between midnight and 4am. Controversy presently attends Quizmania in particular, which once asked callers to name one of 13 things likely to be found in a woman’s handbag. Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator, has agreed with aggrieved viewers that they could not reasonably have been expected to say “balaclava” and “Rawlplugs”. It was also intimated that the programme was not entirely playing fair by offering places on the list to “dog biscuits”, “rubber band” and “false teeth”.

That’s easy for Ofcom to say. Based on my own experience of rummaging through handbags, it wouldn’t entirely surprise me to discover anything in one, apart from the thing I’ve been asked to look for. (“What do you mean, you couldn’t find the keys? They’re right here, under the balaclava.”) Yet it cannot be denied that, on ITV’s The Mint, say, the lengthy intervals between callers are carefully calibrated to suggest painfully slow custom at the switchboard, thus beckoning your call. Whereas, in fact, with an average of 100,000 people calling the programme each hour, you may only have a 1 in 400 chance of getting through — and an even slimmer chance of correctly saying “Rawlplugs” when you do.

Still, it beats that other ubiquitous TV quiz device, the soft non-question, designed to stimulate the greatest number of premium-rate responses (eg, What is John McEnroe’s first name? Text A for John, text B if you think it’s Harriet). From the less than taxing nature of these inquiries, it is traditional to conclude that we are now officially a nation of dimwits. The far more cheerful assumption of ITV seems to be that we are, in fact, fast becoming a nation of late-night Salvador Dalís.

So, again, for £10,000. Name something you might find in a fish tank.

Wrong. The answer I wanted was Richard Branson on a bicycle.

What’s that? You DID say Richard Branson on a bicycle? Sorry, I’m afraid we’re right out of time.

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