The BBC's new Saturday night game show Wisdom Of The Crowd, hosted by John Bishop, pits contestants against the combined knowledge of the studio audience for a chance to win £10,000. The show, from the team behind The 1% Club, is based on a scientific discovery made over 100 years ago by scientist Francis Galton.
Galton visited a farmers' fair where a competition asked more than 800 people to guess the weight of an ox. He found that the average of all the guesses was more accurate than the best individual guess, a concept now known as the Wisdom Of The Crowd.
How the show works
Contestants take on the collective brainpower of the watching studio, answering questions about UK life and habits. Bishop said: 'It's based on science, but it's also fun. It's one of those shows that everyone can watch and get involved in.'
Viewers at home are encouraged to play along, testing whether their own knowledge can outperform the crowd. The questions cover everything from dating habits to how many cups of tea people drink each month.
Sample questions and answers
Among the 17 questions are: how many adults in the UK visited an online dating service in 2024 (answer: 4,900,000, Ofcom 2024); what percentage of people use their smartphone on the toilet (59%, Nord VPN 2022); and how many pairs of knickers the average woman owns (19, Stripe and Stare 2025).
Other answers include 45 minutes for a woman to get ready for a night out (Kantar 2026), £368 spent on Christmas presents per child aged 0-6 (Finder 2022), and 3 hours 39 minutes spent cleaning per week (Norstat 2026).
More figures from the show
The average person eats 114 packets of crisps a year, drinks 64 cups of tea a month, and showers 275 times a year (all Norstat 2026). Children aged 7-16 consider someone "old" at 49 (Axa Health 2025), and the average person has 1,357 unread emails (Norstat 2026).
Children receive £475 pocket money a year (NatWest 2025), women own 15 pairs of shoes (Kantar 2026), and the average phone camera roll holds 3,012 photos and videos (Norstat 2026). Single people spend 55 minutes a day on dating platforms (eHarmony 2023), teenage boys aged 15-17 play video games for 34 hours a week (YGAM 2025), and the average UK adult eats 41 takeaways a year (Norstat 2026).
Wisdom Of The Crowd continues on BBC One on Saturday night at 8.30pm.
