Mastermind 2020 - Heat 3

Already at heat three, Dearly Beloved. Doesn’t time fly. Okay, then, without further ado, first into the chair last night was Phil Welch. Phil was answering on the Members and Music of Genesis. Now, back in the day I was quite partial to a bit of Genesis. I even saw them in Wembley Arena in Christmas of either 1982 or 1983 – old age robs of me of the almost perfect recall of yesteryear, sadly. Last week I set this year’s first aggregate specialist target of 16. This subject, I thought, might give me the springboard to beat that. Well, it did and it didn’t. It brought me 5 points, which is certainly a decent enough start, but I was hoping for a couple more, and it meant I’d need some big hitters in those subjects still to come. Phil, on the other hand, equalled the top specialist mark for the series so far with 12, in what seemed to be a pretty nerveless performance.

Right, now or some years I’ve taken pleasure from being the last schoolteacher to win a series of Mastermind. I worked it out that even if a schoolteacher should win this series, then I would still have held the distinction of being the last schoolteacher to win for 12 years, which beats the previous record of 11 years held by my friend, David Edwards. So it is high time for another of my brethren and sistren to win. I mention all of this, as our next contender, Emma Welsh, is also a teacher. Emma was answering on the Elizabethan Tragedies of Shakespeare. – Yum yum – thought I, that being part of the day job, as it were. I managed a decent 6, but Emma did noticeably better with 9.

Up to this point we in the series we hadn’t had a really low scoring specialist round. Sadly, James Leahy had a bit of a ‘mare in his round on the Thirty Years’ War. I thought James looked quite nervous, so who knows the effect that failing to answer his second question correctly might have had? It did look though as if James was a little underprepared- apologies if this was not the case, but I can only go by what I see on the screen. James scored 4. I had three to take me to 14.

Unfortunately that was as good as it got for me last night. I’m afraid that I have never watched either “Firefly” or “Serenity”, so failed to trouble the scorer on this visit to the table. Maureen on the other hand managed a confident 10. What do we say, good people. Anything in double figures in as specialist round in this particular series is a good score.

When James returned to the table, John tried to console him a little by pointing out that Thirty Years is a very long time. Well, yes. But you see, I have a problem with this sort of comment because, for all that it is undoubtedly well meant, the fact that you pass comment about it at all only really serves to point out how low the score was. Best not to mention it, and to let the contender concentrate on the job in hand. Which James did pretty well, it has to be said. It wasn’t the finest GK round we’ve seen this series, but it was a good battling performance, and although James never looked comfortable for the rest of the show, it does show him that should he wish to come back, if he can get his problems with specialist sorted, then he could be a contender. Well done.

Emma Welsh, on the other hand, while never losing her composure, couldn’t produce the sort of performance in GK which would give her the chance of setting a challenging target. In fact she just fell short of matching James’ total as well. After the 2008 season of blessed memory a number of people in the know asked me how I managed to find the time to prepare with all the work I do as part of my career, and it’s a fair question. I wouldn’t say that I was using every spare moment for revision – but it wasn’t far off. I’m not suggesting this is only true for teachers – but it is maybe a reason why we haven’t seen another schoolteacher win since that series.

Maureen Smyth too never lost her composure, and did seem to be enjoying her round. However she didn’t find it much easier than Emma did, and just about breached the tape before the, um, transparent line of death had completed a circuit. She did raise the target, but only by one point to 17. I’ll be honest, if you’d wanted to bet on her winning the show at this stage you could probably have named your own odds, since Phil Welch was starting his round needing just 6 points for an outright win.

Of course he got them. In fact his was a competent, decent all round performance, and it felt just about right that he should win with a mid 20s score of 23. Best of luck to you in the semi finals, sir.

Speaking of which, I have to say that the piece to camera done by the winners of each show is growing on me somewhat. I do often think about what would motivate people to want to appear on the show, and it was nice to hear Phil say that he’d always wanted to appear, which is how I felt when I made my first (losing) appearance in 2006.

The Details

Phil Welch	The Members and Music of Genesis	12	0	11	2	23	2
Emma Welsh	Shakespeare’s Elizabethan Tragedies	9	2	6	4	15	4
James Leahy	The Thirty Years’ War	4	2	12	0	16	2
Maureen Smyth	“Firefly” and “Serenity”	10	0	7	5	17	5