You know, it occurs to me that I didn’t get round to previewing the specialists on Sunday. Had I done so I would have told you that this might well be one of my better weeks. Still, it’s easy to be wise after the event.
Let’s get started then. First into the chair in last
night’s show was Tom Flowerdew. Tom was answering on Sir Isaac Newton. That’s
one of those subjects where I always feel I have a chance of sneaking in an
educated guess or two. In this case it was two. Tom did a lot better and for
almost all of the round he looked on for a double figure score. The last
question let him down but he still finished on 9, which was competitive at
least.
Our second contender, Vicki Hingley, was answering on my
‘banker’ subject, “Red Dwarf”. Vicki achieved a respectable 7. She knew her
stuff, but it seemed to me that nerves hampered her a bit, and in a couple of
questions names I am sure she knew just wouldn’t come past the tip of her
tongue – Jake Bullet and Tarka Dahl being two examples. Not wishing to brag –
if you believe that you’ll believe anything – but I didn’t have the pressure on
me sitting on the Clark sofa, and I managed my best specialist score of the
series so far with 10.
On another night Gilliam McLean’s specialist subject, Mary,
Queen of Scots, might well have been my banker. To be fair, I didn’t do badly
either, taking five . Which was not as good as Gillian. She managed 7 points.
It’s all in the eye of the beholder and the ear of the behearer, but I did
think Gillian was given a tough old round here.
Bringin the specialists to an end was Paul Halliwell. He
was answering on the Bard of Barking, Billy Bragg. I scored a big, fat zero,
but nonetheless my aggregate of 17 was one of the best I’ve managed for a very
long time. Paul started extremely well. I don’t know enough about Billy Bragg
to comment on the relative difficulty of the questions, but in the second half
of the round he slowed so that he finished with 8. Normally this would have put
him amongst the wines and spirits, but in this show he was right on the
leader’s shoulder.
Okay, Vicki’s GK round. My heart went out to her, because
she seemed extremely nervous. She passed quite a few at the start but did
manage to rally a little bit. Her 4 was not what she would have been hoping
for. But judging from her reaction when Clive gave out the answers to her
passes she knew a lot of them but was just struck by brain freeze. It happens.
Vicki finished with 11.
It can’t have been easy for Gillian having to follow that.
We’ve seen before that there are some shows where there’s something in the air
that affects all of the contenders on GK. Gillian did a bit better, adding 7 to
raise the target to 14.
It didn’t look to be enough to put Paul Halliwell into the
corridor of doubt. Indeed, it wasn’t. Starting a point to the good, Paul fairly
easily took the 6 he needed for the lead and went on to add another 4 for the
first double figure round of the contest. It was a good round – anything in
double figures these days is distinctly useful.
Still, it did mean that Tom, who’d had a long wait to
return to the chair, only needed his own ten to win outright, or 9 and no more
than 1 pass to win. 9 and 2 passes would mean a tie break, anything else and
Paul would win. I liked Tom’s economic way of snapping out brief answers as
quickly as he could. However the number that he was getting wrong seemed to
increase as the round went on, and it was touch and go whether he would get to
9. He just managed it, and with just the one pass, that was enough for the win.
Well done to you, sir.
|
Tom Flowerdew |
Sir Isaac Newton |
9 |
0 |
9 |
1 |
18 |
1 |
|
Vicki Hingley |
Red Dwarf |
7 |
2 |
4 |
6 |
11 |
8 |
|
Gillian McLean |
Mary Queen of Scots |
7 |
0 |
7 |
2 |
14 |
2 |
|
Paul Halliwell |
Billy Bragg |
8 |
1 |
10 |
1 |
18 |
2 |
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