At Long Last - Mastermind 2025 Semi Final 6

 

							Table Position
Olivia Woolley	11	0	13	1	24	1	5
Ivan Milatovic	12	0	10	0	22	0	=9
Neil Pritchard	9	1	10	1	20	2	16
Rakesh Sharma	10	0	7	0	17	0	24

Well, thanks BBC. Good of you to at last let us see the final semi final of a series that has already been needlessly prolonged through a tiresomely extended season of the Celebrity show.

The first round stats showed we had two contenders from the top 10 and two from the bottom 10. For all that though, first round form can only tell you so much. So let’s get on with it. First into the chair was Neil Pritchard who was answering on Spike Milligan’s war memoirs. I’ve read them all in my time, finding parts of them to be sublimely funny. It didn’t help me that much – I had three. Neil gave it a lash, but the fact is that you cannot afford to be more than one or two points behind at half time in a semi-final and having scored 7 it really looked like this was going to happen to Neil.

Next came Rakesh Sharma. He had a bit of a hard time of it in his GK round last time out. He won his heat largely on his double figure specialist. In tonight’s show he was answering on singer M.S.Subbulakshmi. I could tell you that I am familiar with her work, but it would be a lie. So I did not add to the aggregate. Rakesh, although he failed on a couple, put in a similarly good performance to his first round heat, scoring 10 and no passes. So from this point on the banker was only going to pay out for double figures.

Olivia Woolley was in the top five performers in the heats, which is an achievement in its own right. Her subject was my ‘fill yer boots’ subject for this show in the shape of The Glorious Revolution. Fair play, I had five of these, which was only half of the total that Olivia achieved. I was interested that when asked about the story that the baby James Stuart had been smuggled into Queen Mary of Modena’s bedchamber Olivia gave the answer it was said to have happened in a bedpan – the usual answer being a warming pan. Granted, a warming pan is a pan you put in a bed, but an actual bedpan has quite a different function from a warming pan. Whatever the case, Olivia got the nod for the answer and she too finished with 10. Game on.

Finally Ivan Milatovic. Ivan had particularly impressed with his Specialist round in the heats. Then he was answering on Velasquez. I don’t know if his semi subject, Novak Djokovic, paints at all, but I bet Velasquez was no great shakes at tennis, not least because it would be a couple of centuries before lawn tennis was invented. We’ve seen before how in some shows there’s something in the air, so it didn’t prove too much of a shock when Ivan slightly underperformed compared with his heat score and he too ended with 10 and no passes. I had 2 which took me to a double figure aggregate of 10.

The way things worked out meant that the order for the GK rounds remained the same as for the specialists. Neil returned to the chair knowing that he was three points behind and nothing short of something extremely good could bring him a realistic chance of a win. Well, he did produce a good round, no doubt about that. 11 gave him a total of 18, but a rueful smile in the chair showed that he realised that at least one of the remaining three would surely beat that total.

I wonder Ramesh Sharma reflected on the fact that his GK score from the heat would not be enough to bring him the lead? Whatever the case the fact was that he managed to put on a much more effective display now. It wasn’t quite as good as Neil’s, but it was good and with 10 points it was enough to take him to twenty and make him the leader in the clubhouse.

So to Olivia Woolley. Now, you can only call things as you see it. To me, Olivia had looked a little more keyed up and nervous in her specialist than she had in the heats, and again she seemed to be a bit more on edge in the GK. Although she had quite a bright start she became a bit bogged down, snatching at answers as the time ebbed away. By the time that Clive asked the last question she knew that she had not scored enough, judging by the expression on her face. She still scored a respectable 8, but it could only take her to 18.

Finally Ivan, who returned to the chair I what I like to think of as the Dave position – last to go in a semi final where the total required is within your capabilities and you know deep down that you’re never going to have a better chance to get to the final. He set about his task with grim determination.11 and no passes would do it, and he passed this point and added another 1 for good measure, finishing with 22 points, which incidentally was the score he achieved in his first round heat. There’s a lot to be said for consistency.

Well done sir! You are now a Mastermind finalist and nothing can take that away.

And so to the final. I will be posting my non-tip preview within the next few days.

The Details

Neil Pritchard	The War Memoirs of Spike Milligan	7	1	11	1	18	1
Rakesh Sharma	M.S.Subbulakshmi	10	0	10	0	20	0
Olivia Woolley	The Glorious Revolution	10	1	8	1	18	1
Ivan Milatovic	The Career of Novak Djokovic	10	0	12	0	22	0