Hello everyone. I’ve been away all
weekend since Friday afternoon – Mary and I have been in Devon, attending her
first cousin’s wedding, but also celebrating our own Pearl Wedding. So it’s
only now that I’ve managed to catch up with Friday night’s Mastermind.
First up was Steve Lacey. Steve was
offering us the films of Peter Sellers. Don’t mind admitting that I’m a bit
partial myself, and so I was quite happy to take 7 on this round. Nice to see
that it mentioned one of my favourite of his films, “The Wrong Arm Of The Law”.
Steve didn’t have a perfect round, but it was still a pretty good one, and as
we’ve seen, scoring 12 n the first round should give you a realistic chance of
a win.
I can’t really explain what happened
at the start of Nigel Jones’ round. Whether it was nerves, whether it was not
getting the first question in the round which put him off for his first few
questions I just don’t know. Still, he was floundering at the start. 4 or 5
questions in everything suddenly clicked into place, and he showed that he does
know his subject. Sadly, though, by the time that this happened he was fighting
a bit of a rearguard action, and in the end he finished with 8. I scored 7
myself, and that aggregate of 14 was what I ended the whole of the SS round with.
First of the 2 subjects on which I
scored narry a point was Graeme Ross’ round on Arthur Lee and Love. When I was
reading up the blurb on this show I thought it said Arthur Lowe and Love, which
might have been interesting but bizarre. Graeme posted the best SS score so
far, and so he was going to be in the shake up when we got to GK.
As indeed was Lynne Edwards. Now,
many moons ago I did read the first Forsyte Trilogy, but baulked at the second.
Made no difference to this round. For all I know there might have been some
easy questions in the round, but none of them were easy enough for me to
answer. Lynne though made short work of everything which was put in front of
her, and finished with a tremendous score of 15.
I don’t know if he was daunted by the
target, or whether the questions just didn’t fall his way, but after his first
30 seconds or so Graeme Ross was behind the schedule needed to match Steve, and
by 1 minute it was clear that he was going to fall a little way short. In the
end he finished with 23. This left Lynn. Now, there were a number of times
throughout the round when Lynn looked as if she was very much in the corridor
of doubt, judging by her expression. Well, if she was guessing on these
occasions, then she was guessing correctly for the most part. No, she couldn’t
quite match Steve’s 16, but she didn’t have to. Leading him by 3 points at half
time, her 15 was more than enough to give her a fine total of 30, with just a
little daylight between her and Steve,
Well played both. Lynn, good luck in
the semi final, and Steve, fingers crossed that you make it.
The Details
Steve Lacey
|
The Films of Peter Sellers
|
12
|
0
|
16
|
1
|
28
|
1
|
Nigel Jones
|
Astronomy
|
8
|
0
|
13
|
2
|
21
|
2
|
Graeme Ross
|
The Life and Music of Arthur Lee and
Love
|
13
|
0
|
10
|
2
|
23
|
2
|
Lynn Edwards
|
The Forsyte Novels by John Galsworthy
|
15
|
0
|
15
|
0
|
30
|
0
|
4 comments:
Nigel Jones is a former Brain of Britain champion, which makes his performance even more bizarre - a throwback to the very early days of Mastermind, before people learned to focus their specialist subjects onto small areas of knowledge, rather than offering vast subjects like 'Astronomy' whole and entire. A suicidal move on his part, I would say.
I sat next to Nigel Jones in the 2015 final of Brain of Britain, which he went on to win, beating Brian Chesney, somewhat controversially, on the very last question. He managed to beat me to the buzzer on at least one Astronomy bonus question, although I had no idea that might be his specialist subject. I remember suggesting to him that he should have a go at Mastermind and he seems to have taken my advice. Incidentally, I managed to score 10 on his Astronomy questions, although that was once my specialist subject way back in 1978.
Ah, thanks for your comments gents. In the last year or two I've been a bit out of the loop and haven't caught BoB. My own fault entirely. I suspect that ony Nigel himself could say what really happened with that round, but I certainly take your point about this being a throwback round, as it were, Stephen.
Hi Neil - Nigel jones here.Good to hear from you !I really do not like the Mastermind format at all - I prefer pure general knowledge and hate the specialist subjects.Unfortunately it is difficult to settle on a subject - I did not want to do Astronomy,but I had a couple of other choices ruled out,so I chose it in despair really.I was not too worried though - I just wanted to have a go in the chair.Just something I wanted to do.No worries.By the way,has anyone had a go at 'The Chase'? I had a go and wondered if it was fixed.I filled the entry form in honestly so I wondered if they would fiddle it,as the questions are supposed to be random.Lo and behold it was announced that I would have to go first and the questions were slanted toward my least favourite subject - films.Having suspected this I resisted the considerable pressure to go for big money, but still got eliminated. So I would not recommend anyone with a good general knowledge entering !
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