Many a Slip

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Many a Slip is a BBC Radio 4 panel game created by Ian Messiter that ran from 1964 to 1979. It was chaired by Roy Plomley. The contestants were originally Isobel Barnett and Eleanor Summerfield versus David Nixon and Richard Murdoch; in later seasons, Gillian Reynolds, Tim Rice and Lance Percival.

In a typical round, Plomley read out a piece of text prepared by Messiter, and contestants buzzed in if they detected an error. Correctly identifying an error scored one point and supplying a correction was worth a second; if a contestant buzzed in when there was no error, two points were awarded to the opposing team. Occasionally a third point was awarded when a contestant spotted a mistake Messiter had not intended.

For one round in each episode, Plomley handed over to "our musical mistakes man, Steve Race", who would play short extracts from well-known pieces of music, each preceded by a spoken introduction, while contestants attempted to detect errors in the introduction, the piece, or both. Another regular feature was a memory round: Plomley read a short piece, usually of verse, then read it again some minutes later with alterations which the teams scored points for correcting.