Staff from Chester’s Grosvenor Museum just missed out on the £12,000 jackpot when they took part in BBC2’s Eggheads quiz show.

The five-strong team lost all their lives except one and last man standing, Richard Euston, performed exceptionally in the last round but fell down on the tie-break question.

The question was: which music hall performer, born in Rochdale in January 1898, was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1979? The answer was Gracie Fields.

Other members of the squad to feature in Tuesday’s programme were Gillian Roe, Judy Peters, Mari Elliot and Phil Cox.

Call for filming came quickly

Presented by Jeremy Vine, Eggheads is a general knowledge quiz show in which a team of five from anywhere in the UK battles to beat the Eggheads – dubbed one of the most formidable quiz teams in Britain.

The Chester group called themselves ‘The Bunce Street Kids’, a name which cleverly combined a popular exhibit in the museum called The Period House, based in Bunce Street, at the rear of the museum, with Bash Street Kids from the Beano.

Before travelling to the BBC studios in Glasgow, the quizzers got in some practice and had their first outing as a team at a council-sponsored Children in Need event. From there they tried various pub quizzes with increasing success.

Team leader Gillian Roe, a visitor assistant for CWaC, said: “A team of us from in the museum shared a common interest in random quiz questions and as a consequence of that we decided we would like to enter our team for Eggheads. We submitted our application and very quickly found ourselves being called for filming.

A fantastic achievement

“We had a lovely day in Glasgow at the BBC studios, where we were treated like stars; it was at that moment we realised that we were slightly more nervous than we first anticipated, and that the Eggheads are quite unbeatable due to their wide range of knowledge. We were very disappointed to lose to the Eggheads but we had a wonderful experience.”

Cllr Louise Gittins, cabinet member for culture, leisure and wellbeing, said: “This is a fantastic achievement for the group; the team really did give the Eggheads a run for their money, ‘The Bunce Street Kids’ team did exceptionally well!”