Mastermind 2022 First Round Heat 24

Good morning dearly beloved. No, I’m afraid that I don’t know any details about what caused one of last night’s contenders to withdraw. Look, what with covid, this is the world we live in at the moment, I guess. It isn’t the first time that only 3 contenders have taken part, as far as I know. I think that Magnus mentioned in “I’ve Started So I’ll Finish” that the first final was between three contenders – however I could have that wrong. Let’s concentrate on the three contenders that we did have.

Graeme Jackson was answering on Grace Kelly, the answer to the question - which Hollywood film star had an Olympic Gold Medallist father, won a Best Actress Oscar, and went on to become European royalty? Graeme Jackson impressed with his round, snapping answers out quickly and economically, missing but little. I surprised myself managing to get a couple right to start me on the way. Ironically, considering that there were only 3 specialist rounds last night, it was one of my better performances, since I managed to get into double figures.

Four of these points came from Jill Leatherbarrow’s round on Ellis Peter’s Brother Cadfael novels. It was a long time ago, a good 2 years at least, that I read a lot of our local library’s stock of the novels, but I did take a couple of obvious points – Shrewsbury and St. Winifred’s – and a couple of details I remembered from other books. Jill did well, just missing out on double figures, but it was clear that she knew her stuff. Off the top of my head I don’t know how many Cadfael novels there are, but I know enough about some of them to vouch that Jill’s knowledge of them is pretty comprehensive.

The last contender of the first round heats to take the seat for his specialist was David Preece. Now, I have to confess that anything regarding the Beatles usually has me licking my lips and murmuring – fill yer boots ‘ere, son - . As such I’d say that my 5 points was decent, although missing out on Brian Jones was frustrating. Never mind, David doubled my score. 10 points, as I so often say, is a good score in the current era of the show. It meant that there was daylight between him and leader Graeme, but not so much that he faced an impossible task in the GK.

Jill returned to the chair first for the GK round. She was not going at all badly, either, but for the last half minute she was just unable to find any more correct answers which left her becalmed on a respectable 16.

David’s job was clear. Going by what we’ve seen in the majority of the shows, he was going to need a score of at least 20, which meant he needed a double figure score on GK to really give himself a chance. He got it too, just, squeezing in some French cheeses as the white line of death snaked its way around the score. To put this into perspective, it meant that Graeme Jackson would need a score of 9 to get an outright win. That’s not a massive target, but on the other hand, it isn’t a negligible score either.

As the round progressed, Graeme was missing a few he might possibly have got in a less pressurized situation. However, crucially he was just keeping his nose ahead on the clock. He gave his 8^th correct answer to equal David’s score, and then his 9^th to give him the win. That was as far as he went, though anything else is just gilding. He became the 2th qualifier out of 24 for the semis. Well done, sir, and I wish you good luck in the semi finals.

Now, I asked myself, how are they going to fill in time until the end of the show? They did it by putting up the faces of the 24 semi finalists in groups of 4 and showing the piece to camera that one of each group did after winning their heat. It’s always nice to see contenders talk about the standard of quizzers who have won a series, so I didn’t mind this bit at all.

So that’s the first round done, dearly beloved, and we’ve already seen this year’s winner. As to who that will be, or at least, the contenders most likely to get to the final, well, I would d a preview, but I’m off on a sketching trip to Warsaw a little later today, so I think I might leave that for a few days.

The Details

Graeme Jackson	Grace Kelly	12	0	9	2	21	2
Jill Leatherbarrow	The Brother Cadfael Novels	9	1	7	1	16	2
David Preece	The Beatles Recording Sessions	10	0	10	2	20	2