Air Brains

Going into its twelfth month this week, a British Broadcasting Corp. program entitled Any Questions? stood among the most popular weekly radio items in England. A program self-described as "serious in intention, light in character," it was originally designed to relieve the Forces from a surfeit of dance bands. Not only the Forces but an audience of about 10,000,000 Britishers now give ear to it.

Something like Information Please, something like Invitation to Learning, Any Questions? has no exact parallel in U.S. radio. But it might have if the U.S. people were ever moved by a hard war to submit, to some suitably entertaining authority, their questions about the world.

Any Questions?, familiarly known as "The Brains Trust," brings together as regulars an old sea dog, a fluent philosopher and a famed scientist--all three bossed by a London wit. Spontaneous and unrehearsed, its object is not to stump the experts but to draw them out. BBC now receives more than 2,000 questions a week, of which the likeliest dozen or so are popped to the Brains Trust during its three-quarters of an hour (5:15 to 6 p.m. Sundays).

The only fanfare that attended the first Any Questions? program last January was the moan of sirens and the smash of explosives. BBC had been bombed; the producer of the program was trying to get his family out of a danger zone 200 miles away; it was a wet, cold, angry evening. At an emergency underground studio arrived Expert No. 1: wild-haired Professor Julian Huxley, fresh from the Zoo, where he had been seeing to the safety of tigers. Expert No. 2, Philosopher Cyril Edwin Mitchinson Joad, clumped in on loud-nailed boots, carrying a vast haversack. Expert No. 3, Commander Archibald Bruce Campbell (retired), glared red-faced at his high-brow colleagues. The first question, propounded by elegant Humorist William Donald McCullough, was "What are the Seven Wonders of the World?" Nobody knew.

"We struggled on," said McCullough afterward, "in a series of furious silences. ..." But Any Questions? soon began to zoom into popularity. People liked salty Commander Campbell (" 'e's not so dumb, 'e's just got common sense instead of heducation."). They liked goat-bearded Cyril Joad because he could and would talk beautifully about anything. They liked Huxley for his precise knowledge (after a brilliant disquisition by Joad on "What is Love?" Scientist Huxley gave a direct biological answer).

Guest artists of increasing distinction accepted invitations to appear. Ellen Wilkinson, M.P., endeared herself by threatening to pull Joad's beard. The Honorable Harold Nicolson was elected to BBC's Board of Governors a few days after experting on Any Questions? ; the Brains Trust disrespectfully took all the credit.

Topics have ranged from the spiritual and economic future of Britain to the flight of the house fly. A bomber-command pilot stirred up a national crisis in entomology by asking "How does a fly land on a ceiling? Does it loop the loop, or what?" This was a poser to all the experts, including Professor Huxley, and the more they thought about it the less sure they became. That night, in pubs all over England, flies were shooed zealously toward ceilings, fly-watchers argued long.*

*The answer, as later rendered by Professor Huxley: the fly's reflexes, as he approaches the ceiling, flip him into a fast loop and bring out his adhesive undercarriage.

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