Brian Highley

Brian Highley was born in Halifax, West Riding of Yorkshire, England. Following a short career in teaching, he became involved with the music industry and is credited (in Elton John's 2019 autobiography Me and in Ben Graham's 2020 book Pink Floyd are Fogbound in Paris) 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, near Halifax, where it took place).[1] His music promotion career continued into the late 1970s with events headlined by The Police, The Stranglers, The Pretenders and many 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 a UK question writer for Trivial Pursuit.[2] He was recruited to write questions for the UK 'Young Player's' edition. His contribution led to him being involved in the Trivial Pursuit creators' new game, UBI, and as sole writer of all UK editions of Trivial Pursuit for the next 27 years. He researched and wrote all of the questions for the 1990 BBC 1 game show Trivial Pursuit.

Highley also produced the questions for the UK edition of the Swedish board game Insikt, for UK 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 Collector's Edition, on which his editor was former Rolling Stones bass guitarist Bill Wyman and the Classic Rock Edition.

Four books by Highley are available in paperback:[3]

• In Pursuit of Trivia (2015), (a memoir) also avaialble for Kindle.
• Stuff They Didn't Teach You in School (2017), (a miscellany of unusual and humorous facts)
• The Quizmaster's Quiz Book (2019)
• City, Town and Village Trivia (2020) (Lesser known facts about locations in England, Scotland and Wales)[4]

• "In pursuit of the completely trivial" at HighBeam, by Rosie Millard, The Independent, 31 October 1994
• "Modern pursuit where triviality is the name of the game at board" by David Lister, The Independent, 17 October 1995