THERE can’t have been many people on our planet who haven’t heard of the brilliant physicist Professor Stephen Hawking.

Rather fewer will have heard of stand-up comedian and TV presenter Jim Bowen, who died on the same day.

Which is why Bowen, host of the popular TV quiz show Bullseye - which attracted 17.5m viewers at its peak and ran for 14 years from 1981 - would win me more points in a new family game the boys and I created quite by chance recently.

Sitting in a café a few weeks ago, one of them glanced at his phone and announced: “Roger Bannister’s just died.”

“Who’s he?” said the 19-year-old.

“He’s only the first runner to break the four-minute mile. How can you not have heard of Roger Bannister?” said the 26-year-old, calling up a picture of Bannister on his phone and waving it at him.

“But that was back in 1954,” I said. “Roscoe wasn’t born until 45 years later.”

“None of us were born in 1954, but it’s an important part of our cultural history,” said his brother.

Roscoe came back with a photo on his mobile phone of some grime artist most of us had never heard of. Yet we had to agree, when he presented us with the internet biography, this was a musician who has enjoyed considerable success and has a huge following.

“You’ve clawed back a few points there,” I told him.

I thought I could catch them all out with an image from a film that came out when I was young, convinced they’d never get it: “This is a classic and he is a big star, world famous, everyone should know him.”

They studied his face for a minute or so: “Oh, he’s that guy from Meet the Fockers.” Even though they hadn’t heard of Taxi Driver, where the picture I was showing them came from, they all recognised Robert de Niro. So no points for me.

Charlie tried his hand with a few footballers, all playing for major clubs nationally or internationally. But since Georgie Best, Paul Gascoigne, David Beckham and Alan Shearer weren’t on his list, I did pretty badly.

I did score a few points, though, with a photo of Arthur Scargill since Roscoe – who’s paying £9,000 a year to study politics - didn’t recognise him. And the rest of us agreed Charlie was too vague when he described the famous trade union leader and President of the National Union of Mineworkers as ‘a politician’.

I caught my politics student son Roscoe out again with a picture of Northern Irish politician John Hume: “But I didn’t grow up in Northern Ireland in the Seventies like you, why would I have heard of him?” he protested.

But part of the game was that you had to argue your case for just what a significant figure the image you are holding up is. And everyone agreed that this Nobel laureate and architect of the Northern Ireland peace process did cut it.

Roscoe fought back with the photo of someone called Zoella which he thrust front of me. The 27-year-old beauty and lifestyle ‘vlogger’, who has around 17million followers on her YouTube channels, has made millions through videos posted online.

I’ve never heard of her, but had to agree I should have. For this girl from a quiet village in Wiltshire has turned herself into a cyberspace superstar from her bedroom. She’s quite a phenomenon.

I tried my luck with Eighties music stars, but wasn’t doing as well as I thought I should have, since Patrick and Charlie have heard of most of them: “Eighties music is really cool now,” they explained.

But I racked my brains and managed to finish on a high, with the biggest selling singles artist of that decade, who had them all stumped.

“I can’t believe none of you have heard of platinum-selling rock and roller Shakin’ Stevens. This Ole House? Green Door? He’s an important part of our cultural history,” I said.

Game over.

MY friend Jo was telling me that her son, Rowan, loved the Mini Babybel cheeses as a youngster and always asked for ‘baby cheeses’ as a snack. “So we always called them baby cheeses in our house.” There was some confusion though in Rowan’s first year at school, when he came home one day in early December and announced: “Our teacher says we’re going to be doing a play about the baby cheeses at school.”