Bizarre University Challenge fail sees contestant confuse Godzilla with Lassie

Questions about Godzilla don’t often appear on television quiz shows, especially a show as high brow as University Challenge and you would hope that contestants on that type of show, the contestants would get the question right.

On the 26th December edition of University Challenge, which was a special alumni episode, host Jeremy Paxman asked the respective contestants from Loughborough University and the University of Central Lancashire the following question; “King Ghidorah, Megalon and Mothra are amongst creatures to have fought which enduring film character in films made between 1964 and 1992?”

To the initiated, the answer to this is pretty easy. All the above are monsters that Godzilla has battled during his many, many movies that are still being made in Japan and the United States to this day. The gigantic green lizard is pretty iconic and unmistakable.

Although the likes of King Ghidorah and Mothra aren’t exactly household names and an educated guess would probably suggest that they are from some sort of sci-fi franchise so saying something like ‘Star Wars’ or ‘Superman’ wouldn’t have been ridiculous.

However, Richard Askam, who is a BBC Sports presenter thought for some reason that Lassie, the cute dog from wholesome children’s adventures on TV and film might have gone toe-to-toe with three-headed monsters at some point during her stories.

Fortunately, writer Kate Fox from Loughborough would get the question correct and Paxman perhaps spared Askam’s blushes by not acknowledging his preposterous answer.

Thankfully Askam took the embarrassment well later tweeting ‘can we try that again please?’ and #lassiemonster.

Remember folks giant scary monsters are usually in Godzilla films and not child-friendly tales about intelligent dogs like Lassie.

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