Mastermind 2018 - Round One - Heat 18

What an interesting show that was, dearly beloved.

Now, the first SS subject on offer was Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels. I kind of feel the same way about the Discworld series as I feel about the work of Anthony Trollope. Put the shotgun down and I’ll explain. Whenever I’ve read a novel by Trollope I’ve never been really disappointed, but on the same hadn I’ve never been moved to run down the street shouting – I’ve just read a fantastic novel!, if you know what I mean. It’s the same with Discworld. I haven’t read all of them, and of the ones I have read, while I have ones I prefer, I’ve never read one and felt that it wasn’t up to scratch. Coming back to the show, Michael Benbow put on a bravura performance to score 14 and only 1 pass. That’s the kind of score which will put you in the lead when the half time oranges are passed round in most heats.

Mahatma Gandhi was last a specialist subject back in 2011, I believe. A great and important subject, and Suraj Anad had obviously prepared well and knew his stuff. I’ll be honest, he did look a little tense and nervous to me, and maybe this meant that he jumped in on a couple of questions and possibly missed out on a couple of points. Maybe. Whatever the case he scored a good 11. He was in contention, but he was going to have to make up ground on the GK if he was to win.

I love watching athletics, so it is with some shame I admit that the round on which I scored least was Tony Fleat’s round on the history of the Boston Marathon. The Boston Marathon is the oldest and still one of the greatest and most prestigious city marathons, and a very interesting subject. Tony did very well to score 12 and 1 pass I thought, and I did think John’s comment on Tony’s last answer ‘you’re right, and I can’t pronounce the name either’ was an unnecessary attempt at a cheap laugh. John, I’ve seen you work an audience, and you’re better than that.

Finally Pam Poole. Now, her subject is the sort which can cause controversy. Top 10 singles from 1963 – 1973 might seem like a relatively short period to have to learn, nonetheless, I should imagine that there were many hundreds of questions you could potentially be asked. Pam knew her stuff – although I prided myself that I knew the Lemon Pipers’ Green Tambourine which she missed. We can gloss over the many questions she knew which I missed. A decent 10 looked to me to have put her pretty much out of contention being 4 behind the leader.

Now, before I make any other comment, let me state for the record that it doesn’t matter what questions you are asked, a score in the teens is a very good performance on GK. Which is exactly what Pam achieved. I have to say that maybe it was just me, but I did think that all the GK rounds in this heat were a little bit more gentle than usual. With Pam’s round, I answered all of them correctly, and never had more than 2 wrong in any of the other three rounds. Pam didn’t manage that, but she took 6 correct answers on the bounce at the start of the round, and crucially didn’t let any wrong answers affect her. She kept picking off what she knew, and in the end had taken her total to 23. Incidentally that was last week’s winning total. With that round Pam had just made this heat a lot more interesting, by placing at least 2 of the following contenders within the corridor of doubt.

I say that, but obviously I don’t know what was going through any of the contenders’ minds. Suraj did not look noticeably more nervous than he had in his SS round, and like Pam he started confidently. There wasn’t a huge amount in it, but with about 45 seconds to go it looked fairly clear that he wasn’t quite accumulating points quickly enough to reach his target. He finished with 21. Tony Fleat’s round never looked as good as either of the two rounds that preceded it. His points tended to come in fits and starts, though. At one point he looked as if he was going to fall quite some way short, and then a spurt of answers would put him back on track. . . almost. In the last 20 seconds or so he needed a run of correct answers again to put him across the line, and these didn’t come, leaving him with a total of 21 and 4 points.

Now, it’s not completely unknown for a contender to go from 4^th place at the end of the SS round, to first place at the end of the show. It is rare though, but that’s the prospect we were still facing as Michael Benbow approached the chair. He started his round, though, knowing that anything in double figures would be good enough.  9 and no passes would earn a tie break. There was no sign of panic for the first few questions, however a pass signalled potential danger. As I said, I can’t read people’s minds, so I don’t know for certain , but it looked for all the world as if the pass started affecting Michael, and he rather froze. To be fair, he didn’t give in, but was accruing passes at a fair old rate of knots. He did have that head start, though, and he reached 23 with enough time, just to get over the line. The questions didn’t fa;; for him though, and the 6 passes in the round were the margin of defeat. Very hard lines – that’s a horrible thing to happen in the chair and you have my total sympathy. As for Pam, many congratulations!

The Details

Michael Benbow	The Discworld novels of Terry Pratchett	14	1	9	6	23	7
Suraj Anand	Mahatma Gandhi	11	0	10	0	21	0
Tony Fleat	History of the Boston Marathon	12	1	9	4	21	4
Pam Poole	Top 10 singles 1963 - 1973	10	1	13	0	23	1