Good morning to all. So, last night
we reached the climax of the 2019 season. Firstly, though, it is only right to
pay tribute to the late Hamish Cameron. I did not know that Hamish had passed
away until a comment left on the blog a few days ago. I believe that Hamish
passed away on the 6th of June. I cannot claim to have known him
very well, but was fortunate to meet him when he was the stand in for my final.
I believe that Hamish had participated as a contender in more episodes of
Mastermind than anyone else, and the tribute paid to him at the end of the
show, a true Mastermind, seemed to me to be very sincere and appropriate. Rest
in Peace, Hamish.
Let’s have a look at the form shown
by each finalist on their route to the final:-
Mark Grant
|
Keith Douglas
|
14
|
0
|
15
|
0
|
29
|
0
|
1951 Festival of Britain
|
13
|
0
|
13
|
0
|
26
|
0
|
|
Dave Cowan
|
Glamorgan CCC
|
12
|
0
|
15
|
0
|
27
|
0
|
The Life of Aneurin Bevan
|
10
|
0
|
11
|
2
|
21
|
2
|
|
Judith Lewis
|
The Life of C.S.Lewis
|
14
|
0
|
15
|
2
|
29
|
2
|
The Lord Peter Wimsey Novels of Dorothy L. Sayers
|
12
|
0
|
9
|
2
|
21
|
2
|
|
Hamish Cameron
|
John Knox
|
13
|
0
|
14
|
3
|
27
|
3
|
The Life and Times of Thomas Paine
|
8
|
1
|
13
|
1
|
21
|
2
|
|
Ian Orriss
|
Karl Gustav Mannerheim
|
13
|
0
|
15
|
1
|
28
|
1
|
Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II
|
10
|
0
|
11
|
0
|
21
|
0
|
|
Helen O’Connell
|
The History of Prague
|
12
|
2
|
18
|
2
|
30
|
2
|
The Plant Hunters
|
11
|
0
|
14
|
0
|
25
|
0
|
I’m not going to go back through my
comments in my preview. But if you want to check them out after you’ve read
this review, you’ll see that once again, Mystic Meg I am not.
Dave Cowan started us off. It’s
become traditional to look at the filmed insert lottery, and Dave seemed to
have done pretty well. You’ve always got a chance of getting a good trip for
your insert if you take Hollywood film stars in the final, and Dave was
answering questions on The Marx Brothers’ films. Dave had one of the lower
aggregate scores for specialist from his two appearances so far, and he really
needed to find his best form to give himself the chance of being up with the
leaders at the business end of the competition. Well, his 10 points were good,
but even this early in the contest you couldn’t help feeling that this was just
not going to be enough.
Now, having lived and worked in Wales
for over 3 decades, there is no way that I am going to say that Ian Orriss was
anything other than a winner getting to travel to some extremely picturesque
and historic parts of the Principality, before his round on Owain Glyndwr and
his Revolt. Which come to think of it sounds just a little bit like the name of
an indie band. Sorry. Ian’s round of 14 points was probably his best specialist
round of the whole series so far, and you have to say that this was the right
time to produce it. Suddenly my prediction was looking like utter nonsense. Ian
was going to be in the shake up.
So, it turned out, was Judith Lewis.
Before we got to see her round, though, we saw her enjoying a trip to
Bucharest. Again, that’s a fine trip – I do love Central/Eastern Europe myself.
Judith was answering on The Fortunes of War series by Olivia Manning. I’m sorry
to say that I have neither read any of the books, nor seen any of the TV
adaptations starring Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson. But I didn’t need to
know the works themselves to recognise what a towering specialist performance
it is to manage a full house of 15 correct answers from 15 questions in a
Mastermind Grand Final. Superb work.
Then to Mark Grant. Mark stayed a lot
closer to home for his film, being as he was answering questions on the
theatres of Frank Matcham. As for the insert lottery, well, Mark was in the West
End of London, and I’m sorry, I might not have lived in London for a very long
time, but I still think of myself as a Londoner, and so there is no way that I
have any intention of saying that Mark in any way drew the short straw. As for
his round, Mark always prepares thoroughly, but just once or twice seemed
strangely hesitant. Actually, I say strangely, but I’ll make a point here. John
Humphrys has the very annoying habit of sometimes qualifying a correct answer,
thus wasting valuable time for the contender. He did it no less than FOUR times
in the first minute of Mark’s round – and in one of them he did so just to include
the word -the. Did it make any difference? Who can say, but it can’t make it
any easier to build up a head of steam. Mark scored 12. At 3 points behind he
wasn’t exactly out of it, but he was faced with a huge task if he was to win.
Another contender who I felt had a
very good chance coming into the final was Helen O’Connell. Without question
Helen was a winner in the insert lottery, since she got to visit the Sequoia
National Park in California. This was highly appropriate, since her specialist
subject was United States National Parks. That was a good subject to pick for a
final, since it must have guaranteed her a trip across the pond. Helen produced
her best specialist round to date, as she scored 14 to place her level with Ian
and just one point behind Judith. It was shaping up to be an exciting GK round.
Finally Hamish, and for his insert
film he got to travel to a rather grey and murky Paris. Still a very beautiful
city, though, whatever the weather. Bearing in mind that I knew that this was his
last Mastermind performance I was sentimentally rooting for Hamish, and hoped
that he’d rip his round to shreds and join Judith with a perfect set. Well, he
didn’t quite manage that. He did score 13 though, and although he was 2 points
behind he was still very much in it. Indeed, as the choc ices and kia ora were
being passed around, it seemed as if only Dave was so far off the lead that he
was out of the running.
Which makes his GK round all the more
impressive. Let’s call a spade a spade. You might be lucky getting to the semi
final of Mastermind, but lightning rarely strikes in the same place twice. Mugs
don’t get to Mastermind Grand Finals. This may well have been just me, but I
felt that the general standard of the GK rounds in the final were a little
harder than the semis, and I thought that any score in the teens on these sets
was doing well. Dave added a good 13 to his total to take the target to 23. It
wasn’t likely to be a winning total, but it was enough to open the corridor of
doubt.
It's easy for me to say this now, but
I reckoned that Mark needed 15 to give himself a realistic shout. He certainly
came close. However a couple of hesitancies, and a couple of questions like the
Widdicombe Fair one just didn’t go his way. He built up some real momentum in
the last part of the round, but in the end had scored 14 to take the target to
26. 26 was certainly enough to make it interesting, and would mean that any of
the remaining contenders would require good scores to take the lead. It didn’t
quite look out of reach, though.
In his filmed insert Hamish seemed
very happy and satisfied to have reached two Mastermind finals, and rightly so.
By just over the one minute mark in his GK round it seemed unlikely that he
would be going home with the trophy. His tactic seemed to be to pass quickly and
keep banging in the ones he knew, and this brought him a double figure score.
It was 11, though, and left him on 24.
So to Ian. Ian needed 13 to take the
lead, and after the first minute he was definitely on target. In fact his first
minute was extremely impressive, as he snapped out answer after answer, eating
up the distance between himself and Mark. Mark’s finishing burst, though, meant
that Ian had to keep fighting right up to the blue line of death. When it had finished
drawing its noose around the score, Ian had taken the 13 points he needed.
Whatever happened in Helen’s and Judith’s rounds, it was a round worthy of
winning.
Helen O’Connell produced two
brilliant GK rounds in the heat and again in the semi final. In fact if she
could replicate her score from the semi final, where she scored 14, then she
would take the lead. Sadly for Helen, she had one of those rounds where the
question just refuse to fall for you, and you’re fighting it all the way to the
finish line. Helen scored 9 points, to finish with 23. Very bad luck, it is
just one of those things you have to take on the chin, I’m afraid.
In the semis, Judith had the only single
figure GK round of any of the finalists, and it was this which had caused me to
rule out her chances of winning the title and the bowl in my preview. Well, she
could not have chosen a more pressured situation, or a better time, to prove me
wrong. Without seeming to be going especially quickly she kept racking up the
answers, and seemed a shoe-in as her total reached 26 with time to spare. Then
she started to stumble a little, then found an answer to take her to 27. She
had passed just the once. As it stood, on the last question she could answer it
wrong and win on pass countback. What she could not do was pass. To put it
beyond all doubt, she answered correctly. John, seemingly overwhelmed by what
she’d done, told Judith straightaway that she’d won with 28 points, and forgot
to say that she’d passed once, or to announce what the correct answer had been.
Many, many congratulations, Judith. I’m
sorry to you, and also to Ian, for down playing your chances in my preview. It
just goes to show how little I know when you get right down to it.
Congratulations to all the contenders for making it such a close, even nail biting
end to the series.
Congratulations also to Mark Helsby
and the team for another highly enjoyable series, and indeed, thanks to you for
what you have done with the show over the last few years. I know it’s all
change for the next series, and I hope that it will continue to be made as well
as you and your team have done during your time at the helm.
The Details
Dave Cowan
|
The Films of the Marx Brothers
|
10
|
3
|
13
|
1
|
23
|
1
|
Ian Orriss
|
Owain Glyndwr and his Revolt
|
14
|
0
|
13
|
2
|
27
|
2
|
Judith Lewis
|
The Fortunes of War series by Olivia
Manning
|
15
|
0
|
13
|
1
|
28
|
1
|
Mark Grant
|
The Theatres of Frank Matcham
|
12
|
0
|
14
|
0
|
26
|
0
|
Helen O’Connell
|
United States National Parks
|
14
|
0
|
9
|
1
|
23
|
1
|
Hamish Cameron
|
Mary Cassatt
|
13
|
1
|
11
|
4
|
24
|
5
|
