Two weeks in . . .

Look, there really isn’t that much that I can tell you. It’s just over a fortnight since I broke my shoulder, but my appointment at the fracture clinic isn’t until tomorrow. I’ll be honest with you, I don’t want to start talking to work about going back until after I’ve had the appointment but I am really anxious to get back and start working again. What a difference a couple of years makes.

So, June 15^th, then. My birthday, as it happens. Both Courtney Cox and Michael Laudrup were also born on 15/6/64, although as far as I know neither Mrs. Cox nor Fru Laudrup were in the same ward of Chiswick Maternity Hospital as Mrs. Clark. It is also the anniversaries of both the signing of Magna Carta and the 2007 Mastermind Grand Final. And Father’s Day. Father’s Day. Hmm. I will be honest, I did not know such a thing existed when I was little, until my friend Bill told me his dad was also born on the 15^th June, and so when his birthday fell on a Sunday Bill, being of a pragmatic and practical nature, would only need to get one card and one present. Back then in the early 70s it never seemed like as much of a deal as the big production umber that was Mother’s Day.

I’ll be honest, I did do a cursory search into the origins of this celebration, and I found very little. What there is seems to concur that the celebration was unknown prior to World War Two, and took quite a long time to gain traction afterwards. Nothing actually said that it was an invention of the greetings card companies but it certainly has nothing like the venerable lineage of Mother’s Day. Both my Nan and Mum insisted on calling Mother’s Day Mothering Sunday, despite neither of them being religious or churchgoers – the two are not always the same thing. Mothering Sunday was the religious festival whose mantle was assumed by the secular Mother’s Day in the early 20^th century. Mothering Sunday always took place on the fourth Sunday in Lent and was an official day of respite from the Lenten fast. Certainly sounds like a good idea. The purpose of the celebration was to honour one’s mother church, that is, the church in which one was baptised. Over the years this extended to honouring the Virgin Mary and then all mothers.

Well, as I said it is my birthday as well. 61. You know, I spent so many years wishing I was 60 so I could take the money and run from teaching that when I got there this time last year I just wanted to stay 60. Well, that was never going to happen. But I am still living in the moment and enjoying pretty much every second of it, shoulder notwithstanding.

Do I feel stupid. . .

     Right. If I don't post much in the next few weeks, it's because, rather stupidly, I've gone and broken my shoulder. Typing is a bit of an effort at the moment. Which is a shame because I planned a great post on Loomis Day which was yesterday. Shame.

Harry Clarke's Legacy

Do you know of the great contribution that Father Harry Clarke made to British culture? In case you don’t, he is credited with introducing the car book sale to the UK in the 1970s. The catholic priest had spent time working in Canada where he saw car boot sales in action, and he recognised a good opportunity for a charity fund raising occasion.

Over the decades Mrs. Londinius, I and our family have often made a visit to a car boot a regular Sunday outing. This has not always been with unforeseen consequences. For example, the las one we visited was in a farm near Cowbridge a week ago last Sunday. The field was bumpy and uneven and quite unpleasant to walk upon, even going at the pace I like to think of as the ‘car boot amble’. As a result, I’ve been suffering with sciatica ever since.

More than three decades ago I attended my oldest daughter’ Parents Evening where the teacher observed that she had a ‘butterfly mind’. By tis he meant that she was never occupied by one topic for more than a short time and was always wanting to move onto something new. Judging by he way she turned out, the fact that she earned a good university degree and has held down an important management job for a long time since it suggests that the teacher was either exaggerating, or that it certainly hasn’t done her any harm. But I have to admit, I do recognise that tendency in myself. I am prone to new enthusiasms, and just as prone to losing that enthusiasm almost as quickly as it developed.

It's probably true that of all the things I’ve ‘got into’ over the years, the only ones I’ve kept going with over a long period of time are quizzing and art. Now, this tendency can be managed so that it is relatively harmless, but it does make car boot sales particularly dangerous places. Mrs. Londinius could testify to this. I still have a too many vintage transistor radios hanging around the house, for example, none of which I ever really possessed the skills to repair.

Funnily enough I have never bought much in the way of art supplies from boot sales – generally they’re not worth using however cheap they are. I haven’t bought much quiz stuff either, although did pick up some vintage quiz books once, including an original copy of the 1940s Puffin Puzzle book – what on earth that was doing at a car boot sale, I have no idea.

Mike Yarwood, a bed of lettuce and a pub in Builth Wells.

Whatever you might have thought of her yourself, I don’t think you could realistically disagree that Margaret Thatcher was a divisive figure. Her election as UK Prime Minister seemed to kill off Mike Yarwood’s career. If you’re under fifty his name might not mean anything to you, but he was one of the UK’s most successful and popular entertainers of the 1970s. He was the UK’s top impressionist, and his 1978 BBC Christmas show was one of the most watched TV shows of the whole decade. A large part of Mike Yarwood’s act was his impressions of politicians of the day. It was often said that being impersonated by Mike Yarwood was a mark that you’d arrived, and politicians actually wanted him to ‘do’ them. It’s hardly surprising. If we take the example of Labour Chancellor of he Exchequer Dennis Healey, in real life, although a very cultured and well educated man, he was a rough and tough political bruiser. Mike Yarwood made him into a cuddly, avuncular figure. But with the best will in the world, he just couldn’t do Margaret Thatcher. And after she was elected, everything changed. Cuddly was out.

If you want to understand some of the difference between the 70s and the 80s you should compare the difference between the political satire of the 70s in the Mike Yarwood show with the political satire of the 80s in Spitting Image. I felt that the writing in the first series was a little weak, but it got stronger and more savage as the decade progressed.

One politician who got the full works from Spitting Image was Kenneth Baker. Kenneth Baker, now Baron Baker of Dorking, was a senior Conservative politician who held a number of important posts within the Thatcher and Major governments. But do I think of any of this when I hear his name? No. I think of him being as a slug munching on a bed of lettuce, which is how Spitting Image came to portray him.

What brought him to mind yesterday was the fact that my grandson Ollie, who lives with us, had an INSET day yesterday. INSET days first came into being in the same year that I began my first teaching post. Which brings to mind Kenneth Baker, because he was the Education Secretary who brought them into being in the first place. Indeed, for quite some time afterwards they were informally called Baker days by the profession. And I have to be honest, the thought of INSET days made me want to get down on my knees and thank God that I’m not a teacher any more.

Now, the idea of INSET days, on the surface, is a pretty good one. Five days a year guaranteed for staff development and training – bloody great. But in reality, I would say that I took part in almost 1000 hours of INSET during my career. I’d guess that at least 600 of those hours were a waste of my time. Why? Well, in no particular order:-

So much time was wasted on bolting down educational rabbit holes, whatever the latest fad was – VAK – the Highly Reliable Schools Project – AFL – DFL – Key Skills. So much time was and probably still is wasted on ideas which actually had no factual basis to them, or which had been concocted by academics who had no experience of a classroom situation. All of them were quietly forgotten about when the next fad came along.

So much time was wasted on things which were irrelevant to my situation. For example, the last INSET day in which I participated was about the new Curriculum – sorry, the latest new Curriculum. Together with our partner Primary schools  we were addressed by a former headteacher of a primary school. After three hours in which he had ignored the Secondary contingent completely I got up and walked out. I felt slightly better about doing so because my own Headteacher was doing so too. Too much of my INSET time was wasted on things which could have no impact on my own teaching and therefore no impact on my pupils.

Terrible presentation. For heavens sake, we were supposed to be good at teaching and training, yet INSET was almost always delivered so badly! The last 10 years saw a lot more in house INSET in my schools. Not surprising since it’s a lot more cost effective. But basically, you’re asking people with a highly demanding full time job to find time somehow to plan INSET and deliver it to colleagues who they know aren’t really interested, for no extra payment. But even external facilitators who have been paid to deliver are guilty of really poor delivery. Even before I developed sciatica I found it difficult to sit still for 2 hours nonstop. When my hearing got worse I would despair of facilitators who would refuse to use a microphone, then stand and 'broadcast' to the other side of the hall.

The lack of personal development in personal development. It’s a lot easier and cheaper to sit a whole staff down in a hall and talk at to them for two and a half hours than to provide each one with a meaningful personal development activity. Sure, it was always nice to be given half a day to get on with marking and preparation while the grown ups were talking  (Heads of Department and Senior Management meetings) but that is blatantly not a developmental activity.

If I am honest, there are only two INSET days I look back on as having been a particularly good experience. About fifteen years ago we used a company to provide training for us. The presenters varied from the mildly interesting to the deranged – I think of the time that one came in to try to get us all to teach our pupils to revise by singing their revision notes to the tune of ‘You Are My Sunshine.” That was always going to end in tears. However we also had one come in who spent a half day on the subject of making quizzes a valuable part of your teaching. To me, this was about as much of a revelation as the facts that kids are unpredictable and if you go out in the rain without a coat or an umbrella you might get wet. But for partt of it he used a quiz game which involved triangles which had answers to questions on two side and a question on he other, or vice versa. He trick was to match up questions with answers. “You can have three quarters of an hour,” he said, “ but probably won’ finish it.” 10 minutes later it was fun watching the Head explaining to him why my department had fiished it so quickly. Yes, little things please little minds.

The other one was when we took an INSET day to visit an educational trade show called Education 93, held in the Royal Welsh Show ground in Builth Wells. We walked straight out of the show into Builth, had brunch, then spent a most enjoyable few hous in the pub before home time. Which, let me tell you, had a far more beneficial effect on staff morale than any other INSET day I ever took part in.

There are Russians in the Harrow Road!

Arthur Nounce, of Old Holborn was not, as it happens, a character from Dickens’ lesser known novel, “The tragic Misfortunes of Josiah Buttockfondle”. Many years ago, in an episode of “Only Fools and Horses” the Trotters’ father appears on the scene, and Del is far from ready to welcome him back into the bosom of the family. At one point he makes the observation “He sold his soul for half an ounce of Old Holborn.” The moment I heard this line I thought immediately of my father.

I wouldn’t want you to think that I had a grim childhood, far from it. But the happiness and normality were due to the efforts of my mother and my nan. When it came to fatherhood the late George Clark was a bit pants. Well, he was a lot pants. In fact, let’s call a spade a spade. He was the whole underwear drawer.

I don’t want to make this out to be a tale of woe and misery, because it really wasn’t. But I don’t think I was that old by the time I realised that there was precious little that he wouldn’t do to get his fix of the aforementioned tobacco product and Taunton Autumn Gold Cider. At a pinch he could do without the tobacco, but not the cider. Which doubtless contributed to the pickling of his pancreas that resulted in its removal in the mid 70s. By the end of the decade he’d left the cider far behind and graduated to some awful concoction called Clan Dew, which blended whisky with wine if I remember correctly. After his penultimate drinking binge in 1981, our long-suffering GP, Doctor Cowan, came to the house (which shows you just how long ago this was) and told him, “Mr. Clark, if you drink again, then you will die. Not could die. Not might die. You will die.” This shocked my father sober for a year, but being who he was he had to test whether Doctor Cowan was exaggerating or not. So a year later he went on one last binge, and it practically did kill him. He survived, but was only kept alive by a combination of drugs for the last 9 years of his life.

In one way I think it’s pretty amazing the way that he went cold sober without joining any support group like Alcoholics Anonymous. But, being the person he was, by the mid 80s he found another way of getting off his face without taking to the demon drink. He discovered that if he took a week’s dose of his medicines in one go, not only did it save time, but it also got him completely out of his tree. And this is where the title of this post comes in. In the summer just before I moved to Wales, I came in to the house to find him sitting stark naked in his swivel chair. “Why are you sitting naked?! I asked him, or words to that effect. He mumbled what to him seemed like a perfectly logical answer, “Because there are Russians in the Harrow Road.” I promised him I would deal with them if he put his clothes back on – a promise, incidentally, that I have never kept. My younger brother happened to walk in during this exchange, and ever since that time this phrase has been part of our shared vocabulary. Even now, if we’re together and someone says a particularly baffling non-sequitur one of us is bound to say “There are Russians in the Harrow Road!” setting the both of us off in fits of conspiratorial giggles.

If you have been sharing these ramblings with me for some time now you’ll know that I have an enquiring mind. I have often wondered just how the old man’s mind latched onto the idea of Russians in the Harrow Road. I mean, back at the time the Soviet Union was consistently portrayed as the Evil Empire, but why on earth the Harrow Road? As far as I know he had no connection with the Harrow Road at all. Well, even if I’d asked him about it on one of his more compos mentis days I somehow doubt he would have been able to shed any light on it, or why the thought of it necessitated him stripping or action.

Now, in my current occupation I talk to many people on the phone every day. Some of the people I speak to seem to have no familiarity with the word or concept of ‘oversharing’. One of the people who rang with a query proceeded to tell me about how the pain from his teeth had led to him overdosing on his prescription drugs and boom – the phrase “there are Russians in the Harrow Road” flashed into my mind.

So, today, on a whim, I googled that same phrase, fully expecting nothing even remotely connected to Russians or the Harrow Road to come up in the results. Yet what did come up was a news story from earlier this very month. A group of Bulgarian people, living in Harrow, were convicted of spying for Russia and sentenced to a combined total of about fifty years in prison. Apparently  the neighbours’ suspicions were first raised a couple of years ago when they put up a large satellite dish, conspicuously pointing in the opposite direction to all of the other dishes in the street, and tried to put up an aerial about half the size of the Eiffel Tower. Alright, slight exaggeration there, I admit. Now okay, I don’t know if the part of Harrow where they were based was anywhere near the Harrow Road, and they were Bulgarian, and just spying for Russia. But come on! You have to admit that it’s interesting, don’t you? Well, please yourselves.

Mastermind Grand Final Review (Spoilers)

Well, that’s Mastermind done and dusted for another year. You know how invested I was in this final through the fact that I refused to predict the winner this year for fear of scuppering anyone’s chances. Would it be a case of the prolonged build up to the final just heightening the anticipation, or would it all prove to be a huge anticlimax? Well, you see what you think about it.

Nancy Braithwaite was the first contender to go. She was answering on the playwright Sir Tom Stoppard. Before she did we got to see her filmed insert, where she got to talk to critic Mark Lawson, although not Sir Tom himself. That was a little disappointing considering some of the luminaries who got to leave messages for some of the others. Nancy’s round was not disappointing. She missed a couple, but to even get close to a maximum in the Grand Final is immensely difficult. Nancy posted 10 to show that all of the others were going to need to be at the top of their game to be in with a shout.

John Harden, answering on the 1953 expedition that conquered the summit of Everest was certainly one of the winners of the filmed inserts, getting to share a Zoom call with the son of Sir Edmund Hilary. John also reminded us about the circumstances of his involvement this year, following the very sad passing of his wife. He played down his chances, which I always feel is a sensible thing to do. If you win you can always say you were being modest afterwards, and if you don’t then there’s no embarrassment. There was no embarrassment about John’s round either. He too scored 10.

Ivan Milatovic also scored heavily in the filmed insert stakes. Having answered on Diego Velasquez and then Novak Djokovic it seemed a natural choice to go for Led Zeppelin in the final. Who did he receive a filmed message from? Why, none other than Robert Plant, who made the quite funny observation that Ivan undoubtedly knew a lot more about the band than he remembered! He was right too. Ivan has been pretty much perfect throughout the season on specialist and he came very close again. I think that he only dropped the one point, finishing with 12 points.

I can say this now and you can decide whether to believe me or not but before the final I did not think that any of the first three contenders were most likely to win. I really felt that the winner would be one of our last three, and going on the statistics Dom Tait looked most likely. He was the finalist with the highest average going into the Final. He has won Only Connect. Dom was answering on Penguins, and he did so brilliantly. However, this is the Grand Final and so he was caught out on just one question. He too finished with 12 and no passes.

Claire Reynolds was answering on the only subject in the final about which I knew absolutely nothing, the mathematician Emmy Noether. Claire’s insert reminded us that Claire was in the unusual position of having been beaten in her first round heat by fellow finalist Nancy Braithwaite. But then Claire’s semi final performance had been better than that first round showing, and I did feel sure that Claire would be on the podium in this final. Claire’s enthusiasm and love of quizzing really shone through her filmed insert and it was nice to see her filming in the University of Birmingham, home of the Birmingham mega quiz. Claire too really knew her subject, but she too was still caught out by one question to finish with 12 and no passes.

Finally then John Robinson. John took part in the first semi final and he’d had to knock out the top scorer from the heats, Ian Grieve, to win. I really enjoyed John’s filmed insert. I knew John was a teacher, but not that he was a secondary school English teacher. It’s a great subject and I loved teaching it for about two thirds of my career. The less said about the last third the better. I didn’t know that John had won half a million pounds on Millionaire. The fact that he’s still teaching shows his commitment to his career and his love of teaching. Answering on The Empire State Building John’s Zoom call was with the director of New York’s skyscraper museum. I didn’t visit that last year, but if you ever get a chance to visit the City Museum of New York you’ll love it. Lightning struck for the third time in John’s round, as he too scored 12 with one wrong and no passes.

So this meant that the GK round maintained the same order as the specialist round. First back was Nancy Braithwaite. Without wishing to sound harsh, I did think that Nancy dropped some points in the first minute of her round that she possibly should have known. To be fair she did rally, and finished her round at a cracking pace, scoring 13 for a total of 23. With the amount of General Knowledge firepower that I knew some of our contenders were packing I couldn’t see that being a winning score, but it was certainly a good one.

John Harden returned to the chair. He started well with his trademark style of considering each question carefully then giving the right answer. However his round was holed below the waterline with a long pause on one question. He rallied – that’s what finalists do, and kept going into double figures, finishing with 11 for 21 points. Not a winning score, no, but I don’t know that it was all about that for John. I think it meant the world just getting to the final in the first place, and so it should. I salute you, sir.

Ivan came back to the chair and really gave his round some welly. In his semi he scored more on GK than he did in his first round, but to take the lead he was going to need to do better again. He gave it a lash, he certainly did that. Come the end of the round he had fallen just a point short of Nancy’s score, adding 10 to take his score to 22.

Dom Tait came into the final with the highest GK aggregate and the highest GK average of any of the finalists. To be honest, I had thought his GK rounds in both heat and semi were fantastic. I’m not suggesting that Dom’s final round of 13 points wasn’t good, because it was. But crucially, although it gave him the lead, it did not blow the others out of the water, and he missed things that I thought he might get. You see , when a really top player has a bit of an off night – which is what I think happened to Dom – they still get a good score and a good performance. But a winning one?

Claire Reynolds had 13 on GK in her heat, and looked even more of a class act in her semi with a brilliant 15. That would certainly be enough to give her the lead. Now, in my preview I wrote about how the players who become champions each year manage somehow to drag their best performance out of themselves in the final. Claire certainly did that. In a fantastic round she answered nearly everything and scored 17 to leave the whole field in her wake with 29.

Or nearly the whole field, for John Robinson had yet to go. I shall not lie to you. After his magnificent semi final win, I had John as a genuine contender to be the next teacher to win the show. It was mostly for his benefit that I decided I was going to make no predictions this year. My hope for John to win was even more heightened when he said the subject he taught. Now, though, he was going to need a monster score to do it. Well, he stumbled on one or two, but he was racking up the score, and the vanishing white line hadn’t yet heralded the end of the round. Closer and closer. Yes, I’ll admit it, I was shouting at the telly, willing him on, probably more excited by this than any final since Isabelle Heward’s. John equalled Claire’s score with one question to spare. And I knew that he knew the last one. Alright, I didn’t know for sure, but I was certain. I was right.

Congratulations to all 6 finalists. In particular I offer commiserations to Claire, who performed superbly and would have been a most worthy champion in her own right. But the night belonged to John Robinson – LAM reader, dedicated English teacher, and Mastermind Champion. I could not be happier for you.

Thanks to the production team for a great series. I don’t blame you for the way that the schedulers have mucked us around this year. And a thank you to all 96 contenders. Without you, there is no show.

The Details

Nancy Braithwaite	The Plays of Tom Stoppard	10	0	13	1	23	1
John Harden	The 1953 Everest Expedition	10	0	11	0	21	0
Ivan Milatovic	Led Zeppelin	12	0	10	1	22	1
Dom Tait	Penguins	12	0	13	0	25	0
Claire Reynolds	Emmy Noether	12	0	17	0	29	0
John Robinson	The Empire State Building	12	0	18	0	30	0

Stop Press! English Teacher becomes new Mastermind Champion!

I’m going to post about this in more detail later, but my heartiest congratulations to John Robinson! Not only is he a teacher, but he’s a secondary school English Teacher too. I am so happy to lose the title of the last schoolteacher to win Mastermind. I couldn’t think of a better person to pass it on to.

Congratulations John! A truly magnificent performance.

In Defence of People Pleasers

Even as late as the 1990s they were still teaching student teachers some pretty stupid things in university. We had a mature newly qualified teacher once, a very intelligent, very empathetic and sensible person, who once asked for my help one lunchtime. “I don’t understand it, Dave,” she told me – Mr. Clark when children were present, Dave at all other times. Helmet off Korky, helmet on Constable Turnbull. “I don’t understand it.” she repeated, “Every time anyone misbehaves in class I punish the whole class. They all hate me now.” To which I replied by asking her if everyone was misbehaving every time. Of course, they weren’t. “Well in that case Karen (name changed to protect the guilty), if I was in your class, and you kept punishing me for something I hadn’t done, then I would hate you too.” We discussed using a different approach from the one she had been told by people who should have known better in the university, and Karen went on to become the fantastic teacher that she was destined to be.

What I distinctly remember is that Karen’s primary concern had been that the kids seemed to hate her and the fact that the bad behaviour was continuing was only of secondary concern. And what brought this to mind was being asked last week why I don’t go to Sunday quizzes any more. You know that I’ve retired from teaching and am now working in admin in the NHS. My colleagues in the team I work for are still fascinated by the world of quizzing I have been talking about with them in odd moments. They’ll grow out of it, it’s only a matter of time. I’d mentioned that I had gone out to a quiz with an old mate on the two bank holiday Sundays recently. I also made the point that these were very rare occurrences and I don’t regularly go out to Sunday quizzes any more. Well, the fact is, with my mental health the way it was back 8 or 9 years ago, I couldn’t take the hostility.

I’m sure you know how it works. You go to the quiz the first time. If anyone does pass comment its all about how nice it is to see new people, and they’re generally pretty decent if you win. If you’re sensible you don’t go back and do the same the next week. But over a period of time, you get into the habit of going every other week, or one week in three and the chances are that you don’t win every time, but you win on the majority of occasions. The welcome becomes icier each time. The rules might be changed. In the last Sunday quiz I regularly attended, we turned up one week and we dropped four points all evening. We came last that night. All the other teams outscored us. Kosher? I have no evidence other than circumstantial that it wasn’t, but the glee with which our collective nose was rubbed in the dirt did make me suspicious.

Time was, two decades ago, that this sort of thing would have just made me more determined to go back the next week and keep beating everyone as many times as possible by as many points as possible. I can see now that when applied to pub quizzes, to social quizzes, this is really not the most mature or sensible attitude to have. Yes, Dave, if you acted towards me like that, then I’d hate you too. Of course, to use the word ‘hate’ in this case is probably a bit strong. ‘Think you’re an annoying, smug, knowall’ is probably more accurate, although nothing like as succinct.

One of my new colleagues in the first team I worked with here put her finger on it. Oooooh, Matron. “Your problem, “ she announced to the world in general, “is that you’re a people pleaser.” Far from being offended I took it as a huge compliment. Because she’s right, I don’t actually get off on offending people. I hate conflict and if I can make someone else happy by going just a tiny bit out of my way, then that’s great.

Well, whatever the case, I’ve resisted any temptation to go to a Sunday quiz to anything like a regular basis since and I’m probably a lot happier for it.

Although I did enjoy those two bank holiday Sunday quizzes . . .

Mastermind 2025 Grand Final Preview

I still get excited to write about the Grand Final of Mastermind. It’s not surprising. I always watch every (non-celebrity) show and there have been very few that I haven’t written about in the last 16 or 17 years. Those I didn’t write about had the misfortune to fall during one of my more severe bouts of depression.

It seems an obvious thing to say but then that hasn’t stopped me in the past. The Grand Final is different. For one thing you may well have had less time to prepare for it. I had 6 weeks, considerably less than I’d had for first round and semi. For another thing, your friends and family probably know all about it and are probably really excited that you’ve made the final. So you have all of the pressure of the build up, which is far more than for the heats and the semi. Then you also have to make your filmed insert, and while that can be a wonderful day it can also serve to bring home to you that this is a much bigger deal than the other rounds were. Granted, they don’t tend to go anything like as far afield to make the films as they used to, but it’s still something special.

With the show now being filmed in Belfast (I think) flights and overnight stays in a hotel must be used a lot more in this day and age. For my 2007 heat I drove to Manchester, filmed the show, then drove back all on the same day. But the final was filmed in Glasgow, which necessitated a flight and two nights rather than one in the hotel. All of which added to the feel of a special occasion.

Then there’s the day of the final. I don’t know what time of day filming of the final is done now. For mine we didn’t have to be anywhere or do anything until about 3pm. So we had a lot of time to kill. Do you spend time in last minute revision? Do you go off sightseeing for the morning, which is what I did? Maybe you have family with you, so how do you manage that? How do you keep your mind occupied so you’re not getting yourself too worked up thinking about what lies ahead?

The actual filming of the final is, in retrospect, the easy bit. They always tried to do it in as close to real time as possible, with only a short break between Specialists and General Knowledge. The before was a little awkward as four of us were staying in the same hotel and had waited in the lobby together for about half an hour with none of us saying a word to each other. Thankfully, when we got to the University where it was being filmed and had a small reception with the university bigwigs the conversation started to flow.

One difference about the final is that in the heats and semis, once your show has been filmed you are, in the nicest possible way, surplus to requirements and in the way. With the Grand Final, once it is all in the can there’s a bit of an end of term feel about it. Well, there was for most of us. As soon as the filming was over there was a John Humphrys shaped hole in the door and he couldn’t get away quickly enough, but there we are.

The best thing, in retrospect, is probably the getting together with your fellow contenders afterwards. As I said, four of us were in the same hotel and together with families and friends we all sat in the bar for a few hours, talking (an apologies for how this sounds) sharing the experience. Because it was a shared experience, and I was a shame that Stewart and Sandra weren’t staying in the hotel too, because I think that only the 6 of us who actually played really got to understand the full experience.

I’ve been lucky enough to play in grand finals since – Brain of Britain, Only Connect and Brain of Mensa. They are all very enjoyable occasions. All completely different from each other, I grant you. But there was just something about being part of a Mastermind Grand Final. I hope that all of this year’s super 6 finalists will find the same to be true.

So let’s have a look at the form book.

The Tale of the Tape

Round	Name	Specialist	Passes	GK	Passes	Total	Passes
Heat	Dom Tait	11	0	16	0	27	0
Semi		12	0	15	0	27	0
Average		11.5	0	15.5	0	27	0
Round	Name	Specialist	Passes	GK	Passes	Total	Passes
Heat	John Robinson	12	0	12	0	24	0
Semi		13	0	13	0	26	0
Average		12.5	0	12.5	0	25	0
Round	Name	Specialist	Passes	GK	Passes	Total	Passes
Heat	Claire Reynolds	10	0	13	0	23	0
Semi		10	0	15	0	25	0
Average		10	0	14	0	24	0
Round	Name	Specialist	Passes	GK	Passes	Total	Passes
Heat	Nancy Braithwaite	11	0	14	0	25	0
Semi		12	0	11	0	23	0
Average		11.5	0	12.5	0	24	0
Round	Name	Specialist	Passes	GK	Passes	Total	Passes
Heat	John Harden	13	0	11	2	24	2
Semi		12	0	12	0	24	0
Average		12.5	0	11.5	0	24	1
Round	Name	Specialist	Passes	GK	Passes	Total	Passes
Heat	Ivan Milatovic	12	0	10	0	22	0
Semi		10	0	12	0	22	0
Average		11	0	11	0	22	0

 

Of course, the form book only tells you so much. Last year’s champion Ruth Hart did not have the best average of the finalists going into the final. Neither did Stuart Field in 2023. Nor Alice Walker in 2022. Someone is going to find a fantastic performance from within, and they will be our champion.

One other thing links our last three champions. I didn’t predict that any of them would win. Well, I won’t predict this year’s champion correctly either, for the simple reason that I won’t predict who will be the champion at all. I don’t actually believe in the Curse of the Clark sofa, but just in case, I don’t want to scupper anyone’s chances retrospectively.

Congratulations to all 6 of you. You’ve entertained us royally this season.