Mastermind: Round One: Heat 19

I kind of expected tonight’s Mastermind to be sacrificed to Children in Need, so I was glad to see it still twinkling away there in the schedule. First up was Sinead Jein, answering on the soap opera Eastenders. -Ullo,- I thought – this’ll have the chattering classes up in arms about dumbing down again. Not that it should. I’ll be honest, anyone who would willingly immerse herself in the over 3 decades of misery represented by the chronicles of Albert Square has my respect, and Sinead finished her round with 7 points.

I have to say that following a round on Eastenders with a round on Puccini operas is a very Mastermind juxtaposition. Anne Wray knew her stuff, so it seemed, and fairly comfortably notched up a double figures score of 10. No, of course I don’t know enough about Puccini to be able to comment on how easy, fair or hard this set was.

I do know enough about the late Bill Shankly to be able to vouch for the fact that Peter Bonnell’s round was testing enough. Considering that Bill Shankly was the source of more great football one liners than any one man has a right to be, it was a bit of a shame that we didn’t get at least a couple of questions about these. Nonetheless, it was a pretty decent round which saw Peter also end on 10.

Martin Lloyd’s round on The Battle of Trafalgar – a good old fashioned Mastermind subject if ever there was one – looked quite a bit better than any of the three rounds we had seen so far. So at the end it was a bit of s reprise to see that Martin was only one point in the lead. Mind you, a one point lead is enough provided that you still have it at the end of the show. Still, I guess I’m trying to say that the round seemed to be worth a little more.

So to the GK round, and Sinead. I thought it was rather unfair of the show to draw attention to her nerves, by focusing on her tightly clasped hands at one point during the round. I would imagine only Sinead herself could tell us how nervous she really felt, but the upshot of her round was that she finished with a total of 10.

By contrast, Anne Wray seemd not to be feeling any shred of nerves at all, in fact she seemed to be thoroughly enjoying her round. Once again she managed double figures, and the 4 passes meant that the target was now 20 and 4 passes or better. I had a feeling that this point that what with the scores of the top 3 being so close at half time. This feeling only intensified as Peter’s round saw him close equal but not surpass the target. Could we possibly be in for a tie break?

No, we couldn’t. Martin’s round started with a terrific first 70 seconds or so when he hardly missed anything – and there was a fair old variety of questions in there as well. Had he continued in this vein I think he would have set an exceptionally good GK total. He lost a little momentum after this, throwing in a few passes, and missing some questions. For all the loss of momentum, though, he was comfortably through with time to spare. A final score of 24 was no more than he deserved.

  

The Details

                                                                    

Sinead Jein	Eastenders	7	3	3	7	10	10
Anne Wray	The Life and Operas of Puccini	10	1	10	4	20	5
Peter Bonnell	Bill Shankly	10	0	10	5	20	5
Martin Lloyd	The Battle of Trafalgar	11	1	13	5	24	6