Good evening, dearly beloved, and welcome to our review of the third heat of this year’s Mastermind competition. First into the chair was Emeritus Professor Joe Andrew. I must just digress, since it’s not often that I have the opportunity to say anything nice about Rupert Murdock. I was reminded by the word emeritus that Rupert Murdoch is supposed to have told the editor who swallowed the huge shaggy dog story that was the so-called Hitler Diaries that he was being made emeritus editor. When asked what it meant he is supposed to have said ‘E means you’re sacked, and meritus means you deserve it.’ Coming back to Joe Andrew he delivered perfection answering on the life of the Suffragette Emily Wilding Davison. He wasn’t rushing his answers, and maybe could have had another question by answering a little more quickly, nonetheless this was all very impressive.
Padraig O’Kane, by contrast, was answering on the much-loved TV show “The Thick of It”. I’ve no doubt that Padraig pt time and effort
into his preparation – he’d never have got even 7 points had he not. However,
his preparation wasn’t enough to enable him to get a score to challenge Joe.
OK, you might argue and say it is possible to pull back a 6-point deficit at
half time, but let’s be honest, it’s a once in a blue moon occurrence.
I may be wrong, but I think that Anna Kirby Hall is our
first teacher contender of this series, so of course she received the dubious
benefit of support from the Clark sofa. Taking The New Romantics as her subject,
although she managed a decent 8, I can’t help wondering if she was expecting
more of the questions to be about the music – I was. In fact, all of my points
on the round came from this source. Again, while a five-point gap is
theoretically bridgeable, it’s not something you often see happen.
Last to go in the first round then was Joe Karimi. Joe
offered us 20th century US presidents. I have to thank him for this,
since it taught me that I know a hell of a lot less about US vice presidents
than I previously thought that I did. Once again, we saw a contender who
certainly seemed to know his subject, but rather got bogged down in parts, and
left too many unclaimed points behind him.
The upshot of all of this was that the on-course bookies
had probably stopped accepting bets on Joe by the time that the half time
oranges were being brought out. With the nearest contender being five points
behind him it was going to take something extraordinary to deny him the win.
Well, we hadn’t seen a real disaster of a GK round in
either of the previous shows, and we didn’t see one this week either. Padraig
returned to the chair first. No, if I’m honest it wasn’t a brilliant general
knowledge round, but I can live with that. It was a perfectly decent and
respectable general knowledge round and that’s really what I’m looking for from
a contender.
Joe did slightly worse, but only to the tune of one point.
As was the case with Padraig, the evidence is that he’s not a regular quizzer,
and if he has the desire to pass this way again, this is something he could
work on for a year or two.
Anna had proven herself to be the best of the rest in the
Specialist round, and this was a soubriquet to which she cemented her claim
with a rather good general knowledge round. Yes, judging by her expression she
was riding her luck at times, but then being able to make a guess which could
be right is a genuine skill in its own right. If she could put in a really
barnstorming specialist round in a future appearance, then she’d certainly have
a chance of getting through.
No chance tonight, though. If anything, I was even more
impressed with Joe’s general knowledge round than I was with his specialist. If
last year’s series is anything to go by, then Joe’s excellent fifteen will turn
out to be one of the best GK scores of the whole first round. What I found even
more impressive about it was that Joe continued his measured response to each
question. It shows that he was getting most of them right, and could maybe, if
needed, go faster. Very well-done sir – an impressive performance which marks
you out clearly as one to watch in the semifinals.
The Details
Joe Andrew Emily Wilding Davison 13 0 15 0 28 0 Padraig O’Kane The Thick of It 7 3 10 2 17 5 Anna Kirby Hall The New Romantics 8 0 12 0 20 0 Jack Karimi 20th
Century US Vice Presidents 7 1 9 3 16 4
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