Sleb Mastermind - Show 5

The last sleb show of the year brought together am interestingly mixed bag of slebs. Before the rounds started I made a mental bet with myself that Adam Boulton was most likely to do well. Hmm. Before him, though, was Toby Buckland, a gardening presenter. His subject, Father Ted, was the same as that taken by Pat in the final of the 2005 series, He got a little bit bogged down early on, which prevented him from setting a truly formidable score, but nonetheless his 13 certainly set a marker for the rest to aim at.

Adam Boulton was offering the novels of Anthony Burgess. I must admit that I was a little surprised to see his score stop at 9. It seemed to me that there were a lot of long questions in this round, and I’m sure that they didn’t get through anything like as many questions as Toby had done in the first round. So actually his 9 points was rather better than it looks on paper.

Kirsten O’Brien, children’s TV presenter, was answering on the Comedy of Reeves and Mortimer. Now, I did actually happen to catch one of their original Big Nights Out in the Goldsmith’s Tavern when I was a student, so I was delighted to see this being asked as one of the questions. I’ll be honest, I love Shooting Stars, but I’ve found a lot of Vic and Bob’s stuff is a bit hit and miss. Kirsten’s round, though, was certainly more hit than miss, and she scored 13 and no passes.

Right, here’s an interesting coincidence. Rhys Thomas actually got his start when he was working as a runner on Vic and Bob’s Shooting Stars, which allowed him to put some material he’d written in front of Bob and Charlie Higson. The rest is history. Comedian he may be, but there was nothing funny about the way that he ripped the guts out of his round on the band Queen. From early on it became clear that we were watching something a bit special, and only one wrong answer late on prevented him from perfection. Not to worry. His 21 is a record for Celebrity Mastermind, and it raised the question whether he would actually need to take the chair again in order to win ?

Well, actually, yes, he would. Adam Boulton restored my faith in him by posting a very fine 18 on his return to the chair, taking him up to 27, a score which would have won yesterday’s show as it happens, and looked good for second place tonight. Toby Buckland wasn’t the most knowledgable of the celebs we’ve seen this series, but he looked like he was enjoying himself anyway, and he pushed his score up to 22. Kirsten looked a little daunted by the task of trying to get the 15 she needed to take the lead, but she got into double figures, with 11 to push her score up to 24. So Rhys needed 7 to win. To be honest it looked highly likely that he’d do this, but it has happened that a few celebs have scored less than this in this series, so there was just the slight possibility that he might not do it to keep interest going. It was pretty clear he would do it from very early on. In fact he posted his own highly impressive 15. As a footnote, this equalled the record set by Hilary Kay in the first show of the series. Superb performance – well done !

The Details

Toby Buckland	Father Ted	45 Royal Marine Commando Woodland Trust	13 - 1	9 - 2	22 – 3
Adam Boulton	Anthony Burgess	World Questions/Kings Answers, Kings College London	9-3	18 - 0	27 – 3
Kirsten O’Brien	The Comedy of Reeves and Mortimer	Teeside Hospice	13 - 0	11 - 1	24 – 1
Rhys Thomas	Queen	Mercury Phoenix Trust	21 - 0	15 - 2	36 - 2