Shooting Stars - Participants

Participants

There are two teams – Team A and Team B. Each team has a regular team captain – originally Mark Lamarr and Ulrika Jonsson – and two celebrity guests on each team. Lamarr left the series in 1997 as he disliked being in too many quiz shows at once (at the time he was hosting Never Mind the Buzzcocks), and was replaced by novelist Will Self when the series returned in 2002. At the same time comedian Johnny Vegas was brought in as a regular guest on Jonsson's team, where he had a pint of Guinness on his desk where all the other contestants had water. Will Self was replaced by dead-pan comic, Jack Dee for the 2008 15th Anniversary Special and for the 2009 series, which also saw Vegas replaced by Angelos Epithemiou, a creation of comedian Renton Skinner. Contestants are often addressed by their surnames, in reference to University Challenge.

In addition to the 'regulars', the panel consisted of other celebrities from music, sports, politics and other fields. Some of the most memorable episodes included members who were clearly unaware of the show's format. On one particularly famous episode Larry Hagman is clearly totally befuddled by the experience. Writing in The Guardian, Nancy Banks-Smith described him as looking like a man in a nightmare.

Actress Lynne Perrie famously appeared drunk on the "Ladies Night" episode in series two and tried to sexually assault Charlie Higson who played a stripper in the episode.

Until the 2010 series, the "score" was kept by George Dawes, a bizarre, overgrown, ranting, drumming baby played by comedian Matt Lucas. (Occasionally George's "mother" Marjorie Dawes – also played by Lucas – appears instead. She also appears in Little Britain.) His arrival at the start of the show would be accompanied by the words "He's a baby!" sung to the tune of Led Zeppelin's "Black Dog". He would also provide a sound effect to signal the end of timed rounds: in earlier series this was a simple scream, but later became random phrases ("Leakage"), sometimes in regional accents ("That's it I'm turning the car around and we're going back to Dorset!"), or advertising slogans ("Have you ever been to a Harvester before?"). In the later series he would also perform "George's Song," on which subject questions would follow. These included "Lesbians", "Everybody's Talkin' About Football", "Hip Hop Is The Best", "1942" (appeared in the 15 year special, while being a song about inventions such as floors, trees, shoes and the 'flu) and even a rendition of the Rentaghost theme song. One of the most famous songs is "Peanuts", with George shouting "Peanuts!" every so often to a backing track, while corpsing. The costume Lucas wore for this performance later became an inspiration for his Little Britain character Andy.

Lucas quit the programme in the 2010 series due to scheduling conflicts with his other projects and the role of scorekeeper was taken over by Angelos Epithemiou.