One, finishing with a score of 141 points. Widely recognised as host and participant in quizzes and panel games, he has been chairman of TV's Cabbages and Kings (quotations), Challenge of the South (general knowledge), Amoebas to Zebras (natural history) and First Things First (panel game) — all on ITV. For 18 years, he was a regular guest in Dictionary Corner on Channel 4's Countdown. Writing In 1978, he wrote the first Quote... Unquote book, which led to a series under varying titles and devoted to aspects of the English language and especially the humour that derives from it. One of his five graffiti collections was a No. 1 paperback best-seller in the UK. Since 1992, he has published and edited The Quote... Unquote Newsletter, a quarterly journal (now distributed electronically) and devoted to the origins and use of well-known quotations, phrases and sayings. In 2011, his autobiography, My Radio Times, was published. Reference books he has written or compiled include the Cassell's Movie Quotations, Cassell's Humorous Quotations, A Word in Your Shell-Like and Brewer's Famous Quotations. In The Yale Book of Quotations, Fred Shapiro describes Rees as a "pioneering quotation scholar". Selected bibliography Graffiti Lives OK (1979) Cassell Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins (1987) The Bloomsbury Dictionary of Popular Phrases (1990) Politically Correct Phrasebook (1993) Cassell's Movie Quotations (2000) Cassell's Humorous Quotations (2001) I Told You I Was Sick (2005) A Word in Your Shell-Like (2005) Brewer's Famous Quotations (2006) A Man About a Dog – Euphemisms &c (2006) All Gong and No Dinner – Homely Phrases and Curious Domestic Sayings (2007) Don't You Know There's a War On? (2011) My Radio Times (2011) References External links 1944 births English writers English radio personalities English game show hosts Living people Alumni of New College, Oxford People from Crosby, Merseyside People educated at Merchant Taylors' Boys' School, Crosby