Right then. Last
night our first contender was Lena Gazey. Lena appeared in the first rounds of
both Isabel’s 2017 series and Marianne’s 2015 series. In both of these she produced
good GK performances, but lost out through her specialist rounds. So I was
interested to see how well she would go on Emma, Lady Hamilton. Lady Hamilton –
she was a bit of a goer, wasn’t she? Well that’s the impression that I got from
this set of questions.
Our second contender,
Tricia Blatherwick, was answering on the artist Gerhard Richter, or Gerhard
Who? as we like to refer to him in LAM Towers. Knowing nothing about him it’s
very hard for me to venture an opinion on how difficult or otherwise this set
of questions was. Still, you can’t argue with 12 points, which is what Tricia
had scored by the end of it. Well done, job done.
Now, I like Alexander
McCall Smith, but I’ve only ever read some of his No.1 Ladies Detective Agency
novels. Jo Moody was answering on his other very popular series, the 44
Scotland Street series. Right up until the last question this was shaping up to
be a perfect round. Sadly, it was the last question which did for Jo.
Nonetheless, an excellent round. As we know, in recent years any specialist
score in the teens is quality.
Kit Lane, then, was
left to bring the first round to a conclusion. Kit was answering on Alexander
Hamilton. Now, he’s a truly interesting and seminal figure from the earliest
years of the United States of America, and I did think I knew a little about
him. Nope. I scraped 2 points on this round. Kit did considerably better than
this. She too managed 12 and no passes.
So, well done to all
4 contenders in this heat. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, I do
like to see contenders who have thoroughly prepared their subjects, all 4 had
obviously covered almost all of the bases.
I wonder what Lena
Gazey felt when she was called back to the chair first. She can’t have known
that there was only one point separating all 4 contenders. If it was a concern,
this didn’t show. I have said in the past that I honestly believe that coping
with the demands of the black chair gets a little bit easier each time you sit
in it, and so while Lena didn’t give us any of the pyrotechnics of Allan Wright’s
round in the previous heat, her 12 was steady, calm and assured, and it meant
that any contender who wanted to take the lead was going to have to pass right
through the corridor of doubt to do so.
With all due respect
to Tricia Blatherwick, it was pretty apparent from early doors in her GK round
that she wasn’t going to make it. I can’t say that I felt that any of the four
rounds last night was particularly more difficult than any of the others, and
it didn’t seem as if Tricia was particularly nervous. It just didn’t work out
for her and she finished on 19.
Kit Lane was a little
more convincing in her own GK round, but again, she was losing ground on the
clock, and by the time the blue line of death appeared her chance was gone. She
didn’t quite make it into double figures for the round, finishing with 21.
So only Jo Moody
could prevent Lena from pulling off the remarkable feat of going from last to
first throughout the GK round. Mind you, that isn’t quite as remarkable as it
sounds, since last place at the end of the specialist round was also joint
second place, and only one point behind first place. Jo’s round was rather
similar to Kit’s. Not bad, but one in which she steadily lost ground on the
clock. In the end, she too scored 9 for a total of 22.
So well done to Lena.
Best of luck in the semi finals.
The details
|
Lena Gazey
|
Emma, Lady Hamilton
|
12
|
0
|
12
|
2
|
24
|
2
|
|
Tricia Blatherwick
|
Gerhard Richter
|
12
|
0
|
7
|
3
|
19
|
3
|
|
Jo Moody
|
The 44 Scotland
Street series
|
13
|
0
|
9
|
0
|
22
|
0
|
|
Kit Lane
|
Alexander Hamilton
|
12
|
0
|
9
|
1
|
21
|
1
|
4 comments:
Yes, well done to Lena and good luck to her in the semi. I agree with you, Dave, that it is easier to cope with sitting in the black chair if you have been on before. You know what to expect, you are probably better prepared and you are less worried about making a fool of yourself.
I cannot agree with your statement “In both of these she produced good GK performances, but lost out through her specialist rounds”. That was certainly true in the 2017 series, but in the 2015 series she did reasonably on the specialist round and poorly on the GK round.
I know the old quiz adage “questions are easy if you know the answer”, but I cannot avoid the feeling that Lena was given an easy ride. She got 12 GK questions right out of the 18 questions that she was asked; I would have scored 15 with the same questions. By contrast, Jo Moody got 9 GK questions right out of 17, and I would have scored 11. That suggests (but of course does not prove) that Lena’s GK questions were easier than Jo’s. And maybe, just maybe, Jo would have won if she had had Lena’s GK questions, especially as she had no passes.
And what a funny old year this season of Mastermind has been. The new format, where contenders do not know the scores of the other contenders on their Specialist Subject until the GK round, has been discussed elsewhere.
The demographic criteria of other quiz shows such as The Chase and Fifteen To One have for years crowded out unphotogenic old males with reasonable quiz pedigrees (like me), leaving such BBC shows as Mastermind and Brain of Britain as beacons of fairness, where generally the best candidates get on to the show.
The BBC has been crying out for years for more women to apply to be on the show. This season the BBC managers have engineered precisely that. I cannot recall ever having seen an all-female line-up in a Mastermind episode before. After 10 episodes 22 women (average score 21.8) have appeared and 18 men (average score 24.9). Last season, after 10 episodes, 12 women (average score 23.5) had appeared and 28 men (average score 21.7).
This season we have seen 5 female winners with an average score of 26.4 and 5 male winners with an average score of 28.4. Last season, after 10 episodes, we had 4 female winners with an average score of 26.8 and 6 male winners with an average score of 25.2.
I am getting a nasty feeling of “never mind the quality, feel the width” here. A comparison of 10 episodes from two seasons may not be statistically significant, but it appears that, the fewer contenders of one gender, the better they do. It really looks as if the BBC has been sacrificing quality this season in order to pursue an agenda of social engineering. Well, I suppose that Mastermind is mass entertainment and not a quiz geeks’ playground, but it would have been nice if the BBC had told us that before we wasted time applying.
Hi Mycool,
I do often say feel free to disagree, so I have no problem with that. Interesting statistics. I can only base this on my own opinion, but I felt that all of the GK rounds on Friday were much of a muchness, and were pretty much in line with what we've seen for the last season or two. Personally I think that the GK rounds are a little easier than they were - it was unheard of for me to answer every GK question correctly in a round, if you go back a few years, but now, while it doesn't happen every round or every week, it does happen from time to time.
I am wary of criticising the show negatively, since I do think that there is always a danger of miy moaning 'it's not as good as it was in my day'. I do think that it's a fact that regardless of how good a quizzer you are there are certain factors which can hinder or help an application. In my own case, I'm convinced that I'd have found it a LOT harder to get on the show if I'd still been living in London, rather than in Wales, for example. I'll be honest, I don't recall an all female line up in a heat before, but this doesn't mean it hasn't happened. It must be frustrating when you see a contender who, however thoroughly they've learned their subject, doesn't have a cat in hell's chance because they just don't have the general knowledge. Mind you, this is just as true of men as it is of women. But as you said, the ultimate aim of the show is to produce a piece of entertaining television. I can only commiserate with you, and hope that you will persevere with application.
From my observations over several years, I would say it's often the case that the GK for the lowest scorer is quite a bit easier than that for the highest. It's therefore a really good strategy to post an SS score that's slightly below the level of the other competitors, in order to bag the easiest GK. Not easy to arrange, though!
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