Hello and good evening, dearly beloved. Well, let’s call a spade a spade, tonight’s heat wasn’t a classic, but there was still a bit to enjoy, if you looked closely enough.
So let’s start with Julie Clifton. Julie was answering on
the TV series Detectorists, which is not a series I can ever remember watching.
Well, she started well, and she ended well. In between she faltered a wee bit.
The late rally took her up to 9, which is certainly respectable, but bearing in
mind some of the scores and performances we’ve already seen this series, it did
look as if this was going to leave her with a lot to do.
Now, our second contender, Isabel Burgin, was answering on
the Alice Novels of Lewis Carroll. These are books that fascinated me from a
very early age indeed. Mostly this was to do with John Tenniel’s illustrations –
so much so that I’ve made copies of many of them for my own amusement in the
last year or so. And to be fair, it was enough to bring me 3 points on the
round. Isabel did better, but, sadly, not that much better. I’m going to be a
wee bit cheeky and suggest that Isabel just hadn’t prepared quite thoroughly
enough for the demands of the round.
Pete Westcott’s subject – British Politics in the 1960s –
brought me more points than the previous round, which rather surprised me. Not
as many as it brought Pete though. After the two previous rounds it was a
pleasure to see a round where the contender’s preparation enabled him to post a
score in double figures.
Well, considering that I’d scored nowt on Detectorists, I
was absolutely delighted that my knowledge of Sir Elton was enough to take my
cumulative total for the specialist round up to 17, my best of the series so
far. Yes, alright, Sam did much better. He said in his later filmed insert that
pretty much everything he revised came up, and it certainly looked like it as
he raced away to 12 points to take the lead at the half time interval.
So it was Isabel who was the first to return to the chair. I
have every sympathy for contenders whose round just didn’t come off, and I’m
afraid it was like this for Isabel. She scored five. Things weren’t much better
for Julie when she returned to the chair, either. Once again she started well,
but this time, after becoming bogged down in the middle of the round she didn’t
manage to rally as she had done in the specialist round. 7 was enough to bring
her a respectable total of 16.
So to the real contest. Pete Wescott, while never looking
totally convincing in his GK round did at least manage double figures, adding
10 to his previous score to raise the bar to 21. Bearing in mind the winning
scores we’ve seen so far this season – and quite a few of the totals that didn’t
win, the target looked to be a quite achievable one. Well, it might well have
looked that way, but Sam really had to grapple with his round, and it wasn’t
until the last stages of it that he managed to equal and then surpass Pete’s
total.
Well, there we are. You can’t have caviar every single week
and sometimes a bit of marmite on toast provides a bit of welcome variety. Well
done to Sam – you have nothing to lose in the semi finals.
The Details
|
Julie Clifton |
Detectorists |
9 |
1 |
7 |
0 |
16 |
1 |
|
Isabel Burgin |
The Alice Novels of
Lewis Carroll |
7 |
0 |
5 |
3 |
12 |
3 |
|
Pete Wescott |
British Politics in
the 1960s |
11 |
1 |
10 |
3 |
21 |
4 |
|
Sam Swift |
Sir Elton John |
12 |
0 |
10 |
0 |
22 |
0 |
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