Yes, after the Victoria Derbyshire crib sheet storm in a teacup we were finally able to get on with the series last night. I wrote about my feelings on the whole issue yesterday, and so we'll put that to one side, and with no further ado I'll get on with writing about last night's show.
'Whispering' Bob Harris kicked us off with the Life and Career of Alan Freed - some American Rock 'n' Roll DJ chappie from the 50s. Bob started off very confidently, but lost his way a little in the middle, before rallying towards the finish of the round to reach 12. ( Grreeeaaattt ! )
Next was dear old Johnny Sessions - sorry, I just went a little Stephen Fry there - answering questions on the Sherlock Holmes short stories. Scoring 15 points on this subject was one hell of an achievement - last time I counted there were 56 of them to choose from !
Louise Minchin, BBC news presenter, came next, answering on The Life and Career of Darcy Bussell. For those who know as little about ballet as I do, she's the ballerina who guest starred in "The Vicar of Dibley" once. Actually this was one of the actual questions that was asked, and correctly answered. There were 11 more of these as well, and 12 looked to be a good score to me on a noticeably highbrow subject.
Andrew "Brillo pad" Neil finished off the specialist round by answering on The Life of Adam Smith. He's the bloke with the wig on the latest version of the £20 note - that's Adam Smith, not Andrew Neil. 14 points on another quite highbrow subject seemed pretty good to me, and what with his journalist's background you might have fancied his chances at the halfway stage. Little did we know of the passfest that was to follow.
Whispering Bob seemed to spend most of his general round sitting in the chair waiting for answers to come to him. They never did. 4 was a modest total, and 5 passes seemed like quite a lot. This was positively conservative compared to what was to come. Louise Minchin managed to dredge up 6 correct answers, but she also collected 8 passes as she did so. Could Andrew Neil maintain the standard ? You bet he could. He also managed 6 correct answers and 8 passes. In fact I would have sworn that he passed on some of the questions even before John Humphrys had finished asking them. John Sessions then needed a modest 6 to win outright, and you have to say that he made fairly heavy going of it. He blurted out a lot of wrong answers very very quickly, but managed to score 7 - a total which was also matched by the number of passes he made. His 22 is the lowest winning score of the series so far, but he wins favour from me for paying tribute to Sir Anthony Hopkins, one of Port Talbot's favourite sons.
As a point of interest, there were no fewer than 34 passes in tonight's show. Is this a record for a 4 person show, I wonder ?
The Details
| Bob Harris | Life and career of Alan Freed | 12 -2/ | 4 - 5/ | 16 - 7 |
| John Sessions | The Short Stories of Sherlock Homes | 15 - 0/ | 7- 7/ | 22 -7 |
| Louise Minchin | The Life and Career of Darcy Bussell | 12 - 1/ | 6 - 8/ | 18 - 9 |
| Andrew Neil | The Life of Adam Smith | 14 - 3/ | 6 - 8/ | 20 - 11 |
No comments:
Post a Comment