Brian Highley
Brian Highley (born 22 December 1943) is an English writer.
Biography
Brian Highley was born in Halifax, West Riding of Yorkshire. Following a short career in teaching, he became involved with the music industry and is credited with giving Elton John his first major gig at the ill-fated August 1970 Yorkshire Folk, Blues and Jazz Festival (generally known as Krumlin, from the name of village where it took place, Near Halifax, West Yorkshire). His music promotion career continued into the late 1970s with events headlined by The Police, The Stranglers, The Pretenders and most of the chart bands from the punk era.
He was a UK TV scriptwriter for Spitting Image, and feature writer for national magazines.
In 1984 Highley became the UK question writer for Trivial Pursuit.[1] During this period he helped establish the UK game as the lead edition of this product with his questions being circulated around the world for use in overseas editions where appropriate. He researched and wrote all of the questions for the 1990 BBC 1 game show Trivial Pursuit.
He was the face of trivia in the UK and has appeared on many television and radio chat shows.
Highley also produced the questions for the UK edition of the Swedish game Insikt, for UBI, which was the follow-up to Trivial Pursuit and for the American games Been There Done That and TimeTripper.
His most recent Trivial Pursuit projects have been exclusively for the US market. The Trivial Pursuit Rolling Stones Collectors Edition, on which his editor was former Rolling Stones bass guitarist Bill Wyman and the Classic Rock Edition.
Books
Three books are available in paperback:
- In Pursuit of Trivia (2015), (a memoir)
- Stuff They Didn't Teach You in School (2017), (a miscellany of unusual and humorous facts)
- The Quizmaster's Quiz Book (2019)
References
- "Diary". The Independent. 9 April 1993.