New Show - Do You Know Your Place?

We’ve not even completed two whole months of the year yet and already I find myself reviewing a 4^th new quiz show of 2026. Yes, I caught up with BBCs ‘Do You Know Your Place?” last night.

If you haven’t seen it, it’s a ‘light hearted celebrity quiz’. A phrase which can strike terror into my heart at the best of times. But let’s try to be fair about it. I believe that the BBC has created this show to fit into the round hole currently occupied by Richard Osman’s House of Games. That has 4 slebs, this has 3. That has Richard Osman, this has Vernon Kay. That has several rounds, this has several rounds. That I find pretty entertaining, this . . .

Look, I’ve only watched the one show. The first time I watched House of Games I didn’t get it and didn’t think much of it. Now I’m always happy to watch even when there are celebrities that I find a bit irritating on it. I’ll come back to that.

How does it work? Well, each show features three celebrities who stay on all week. Well, you know how House of Games and Celebrity Mastermind often use celebrities you’ve never heard of ? Say no more. Each show is about a specific town or city. The slebs watch short films made by Paul Gorton. Paul who? The Traitors series 2 (I think). After each round our Vern asks them one or two questions. Format of the questions varies – basically True or False ( they call it I believe or I don’t believe but True or False is what it is – Multiple Choice, and a round on local dialect. Some of the rounds on House of Games can require quite a bit of mental agility, which is diverting. There’s not a lot in this that is ever going to have the same effect.

There isn’t a lot more to the show than this. Now I don’t want to be horrible about host Vernon Kay. I’m told that he was not the original choice as host, Apparently the original host (my sources didn’t say who this was) cried off at very short notice and so the producers asked Vernon, who was booked as a sleb guest, if he could host instead. Well, our Vern is nothing if not a good, seasoned pro, with a light, friendly manner and bags of experience hosting inconsequential shows. I have seen an in-print interview with him where he described this show as being filled with ‘great banter’. Sorry, but there was none that I noticed in last night’s show about Vernon’s home town of Bolton when I watched. I found Vernon’s bursts of laughter at much of what the celebrities said to be quite irritating – I just couldn’t see what was funny in it. Mind you, it didn’t help that Anneka Rice was one of them. Don’t get me wrong, Anneka was terrific when bounding around in support of good cause building projects in Challenge Anneka, but that was a long time ago. When I saw her a couple of years ago on House of Games, I just couldn’t stand the way she kept interrupting and interjecting every two minutes. When she’s on the screen I want to shout ‘Shut Up! It’s not all about you!’ every time she opens her mouth.

When you get right down to it, it’s all very well trying to make a House of Games style show, but without a House of Games style host it all falls a bit flat. Richard Osmans don’t grow on trees – conjures up quite a mental picture does that. It really all depends on how much you like the filmed inserts, and to be honest, they were a little bit of a bore. When you get right down to it, “Do You Know Your Place” is light, inoffensive and not at all for me.

 

The Problem with Genius

I always find it interesting when a new TV show has the word Genius in its title. Why? Because that word comes with some pretty heavy baggage. In my time since I started writing this blog, I can think back to three shows I’ve written about in the past that had the word in the title.

The first of these was BBC’s “A Question of Genius” which had a couple of series about 15 odd years ago. Presented by Kirsty Wark this was, essentially, a buzzer quiz which really didn’t have much to do with any realistic attempt at a definition of genius. It used the word genius as shorthand for – listen, you have to be really intelligent to win this quiz. - Which wasn’t actually the case. Sure, intelligence featured a bit, in as much as you could use your intelligence to use what you did know to help you make a good guess at what you didn’t. But far more important was having a good general knowledge, which is not the same thing. I’ve written about this before, but a good general knowledge is far easier to quantify than a high intelligence.

I said that the word genius carries some heavy baggage, and I think that this was better demonstrated by the next ‘genius’ show I recall, Channel Four’s “Child Genius”. I first caught this back in 2013 and it did return for a few series. This set out its stall as a fly on the wall documentary focusing on the children competing in Mensa’s UK Child Genius competition. Let’s get to that baggage. I’ve said this before, and there’s a pretty good chance I’ll be saying it again in the future. When you get right down to it, the Great British Public is suspicious of conspicuously clever people – and for most of us, that’s what we mean by the word genius. Now, had the makers of the show set out their stall to pull down the child contestants and hold them up to ridicule, then that would have been pretty unacceptable. Instead they set their sights on the children’s parents. Yeah sure, the show would pay some attention to the children’s remarkable mental abilities, but you will never convince me that it wasn’t inviting us, the audience to sneer at parents some of whom were presented as more than a little eccentric, some as extremely pushy, some harsh towards their children. The show imploded in 2017 amidst complaints from viewers and educational experts (bit of an oxymoron in my opinion) about the pressure put on the children to perform and the exploitative nature of the show.

Then there was 2025’s ‘Genius Game’. I said in my review last year that I didn’t really get who the show was for, and how we, the audience were expected to react. I’ll try to explain. It seemed to me that Genius Game set out its stall to ride a little on the popularity of “The Traitors”, by having our Genii (I dream of Genii? Yeah, old joke, sorry.) trick and manipulate each other and in some cases be quite mean. The trouble with this is that the show had already branded the contestants with the word ‘genius’. For the reasons I’ve already mentioned, this meant that a large section of the GBP were already set against them. Be honest, if you watch the Traitors you wouldn’t enjoy it as much if there was never anyone you felt that you liked on it, would you? Also, if someone is exceptionally intelligent, then that’s great, but shoving that fact down people’s throats on a regular basis is not the best way to make friends and influence people. As well as missing The Traitors’ boat, I felt it missed the chance to appeal to people who might have enjoyed playing along at home by the way that the challenges were presented too.

Well, all of this is a preamble to writing about Channel Four’s new “Secret Genius”, presented by Alan Carr and Susie Dent. Now, I think that Alan Carr is a lot smarter than he’s given credit for. You don’t win a version of the Traitors, as a traitor, without some serious smarts. The more I think about it, the more I think that getting the chatty man to host the show was a stroke of genius in itself. Having an idea how long it can take to get a show on the air, I think it’s quite possible that he was engaged for this before winning Celebrity Traitors. It’s so clever because to me the overall tone, certainly of the first show, was ‘let’s be nice to smart people’. Hey, I’m all for that. But there was even more to it than this. For this is ‘Secret Genius’ and the secret part seems every bit as important as the genius. And for another thing, even more than ‘let’s be nice to smart people’ it seemed as if the show as asking me to feel sorry for these smart people at least. Which is why it’s so smart to ask Alan Carr to present it.

In one way, the show made me feel that I’ve been fortunate in my life. When I was very little my teacher made a point of showing my mum a story I’d written about Dougal from the Magic Roundabout and telling her how good it was. Who am I to argue? From then onwards, I’ve had more people tell me I’m clever than not. Even when I haven’t been very clever (O level Physics lessons come to mind). I have always had a surprisingly good memory for facts (don’t ask me where I put my car keys five minutes ago, though) a pretty wide general knowledge and a good vocabulary. That sort of thing can get you labelled a brainbox. As a result I went to a school where the expectations of me were high and the rest , as they say , is mystory.

It seems to have been the opposite case for some of the people taking part in the show. I’ll get on to the gameplay in a while, but these people were clearly very intelligent and very good at solving puzzles. The point was that each of their lights seemed to have been hidden under a bushel. There was the guy who’d been told at school he’d never amount to anything. That sort of thing makes me really angry. Any teacher worth their salt knows that you can tell a child 100 times – you’re good at this. You can do this. – and they still might not believe you. You tell them just once that they’re not good and they’ll believe you alright. I don’t think that I’m imagining it that there was an undercurrent of being held back by class for some of them as well. I can get that.

I kept thinking back to “Child Genius” while I was watching. This was more of a collection of sob stories than the Freak/Geek show style of the earlier show, but like the earlier show it was clearly far more interested in the players than the games they were playing. This proved to be a problem for me. Like “Genius Game” I never really felt that the show was giving me a fair chance to play along at home. And if I’m going to invest my time in watching this kind of show then I want to have a fair crack of the whip at playing along at home.  Yes, I have admitted to my misanthropy before, and there’s an element of this in how I feel about the show, but I almost feel as if I’ve been lured to the show under false pretences. If it’s a contest, or a game, then more time should be given to that aspect of it. Likewise, it it’s really about the people, then it might be better off as a documentary. I’d certainly watch it. Being a former teacher, most of whose working life was dedicated to trying to help young people develop their potential and as a former member of Mensa I’m sure you can understand why.

As it stands though, it seems to me to be an uneasy melange of people solving puzzles with jolly old Alan Carr, and an exploration of the way that our society often fails people with high intelligence. I’d rather it were just one or the other. Just my opinion and as always, feel free to disagree.

University Challenge - Quarter Final Qualification Match - Edinburgh v. Merton, Oxford

The Teams

Edinburgh

Parthav Easwar

Johnny Richrds

Alice Leonard (Capt)

Rayhana Amjar

Merton, Oxford

Ciaran Duncan

Evelyn Ong

Elliot Cosnett (Capt)

Verity Fleetwood-Law

Thankfully the two week winter Olympics break was not long enough to make me lose interest in this year’s UC and that’s all to the good for last night we saw the first qualification match of this year’s quarter final round. Parthav Easwar recognised that the clues to various film titles all had answers whose only vowels were O and A. Philosophical debates brought two bonuses, which is two more than I managed. A world heritage site in Georgia passed us all by. Elliot Cosnett, so good on the buzzer in previous appearances seemed a little twitchy in this contest and came in too early for the interminable science starter that followed. The answer was Lewy bodies – no, me neither (and Edinburgh neither for that matter). The next starter asked for the type of structure appearing in a number of paintings. Brueghel gave me Towers – I have seen The Tower of Babel in the Kunsthalle in Vienna and I absolutely love it. Neither team knew it and Merton lost another 5. Rayhana Amjad recognised part of the introduction to A Suitable Boy and stopped the rot. Poet John Clare yielded nothing whatever, although they had a correct answer on the table with the last bonus. Merton again lost five with the next starter but Edinburgh couldn’t quite summon up the title of the James Cagney movie White Heat. Remarkably Merton suffered their 4^th incorrect interruption in the first 10 minutes with the next starter, and again Edinburgh did not capitalise. Nobody knew Huerta , a founder of the UAW. Rayhana Amjad recognised various works with the word Annals. At last the Chinese Century of Humiliation yielded some bonuses. At just past the ten minute mark the score stood at 40 to minus 20 in Edinburgh’s favour – a remarkable first ten minutes but sadly for the wrong reasons.

For the picture starter again neither team could make any headway, as nobody recognised part of another blockbuster from Pliny the Elder. Fair play to Elliot Cosnett. Earlier misfires did not stop him from chancing his arm in the next starter and coming in early with the correct answer of limbo – the religious concept as opposed to the dance. Picture bonuses showing maps of the locations of ancient cities mentioned by P the E which are the locations of ruins which are world heritage sites brought two bonuses and saw the Merton score zoom up to zero. Sorry – couldn’t resist it. Nobody knew Ras – el – hanout – who was surely one of Batman’s protagonists. Elliot Cosnett buzzed early for the next starter on Wicca (the worship of baskets?) which earned bonuses on carcinogenic chemical elements. Merton managed just the one, but that score was creeping forward. Johnny Richards won the buzzer race to supply the term grand-guignol for the next starter. Bonuses on varieties of spiced coffee (which mostly sounded disgusting) brought a brace of correct answers. Music maestro please for the next starter but nobody recognised the dulcet stylings of Animal Collective (who?) Nobody knew Therapeutic Index (a New Romantic Band?) for the next starter. I don’t recall seeing so many unanswered starters in one show before, but then I couldn’t answer hardly any of them either so I can’t say anything there. I knew Henri de Navarre, or Henri IV which gave me the next starter from the first clue. Sadly, Merton lost five more points they couldn’t afford to lose coming in too early which gave Parthav Easwar a shot at an open goal which he duly converted into points. Songs named after music venues brought just the one bonus, but it kept the Edinburgh score jogging along, which was what was really required in this particular match. I’ll be honest, I didn’t know Pahlavi was the name of an old Persian writing system but I knew it was the name of the deposed Shah and his son and so did Pathav Easwar. The Trappist order ( which is surely “Shhhussshhh!”) brought two bonuses. As we approached 20 minutes the score stood at 100-10 to Edinburgh.

Evelyn Ong scored for Merton knowing the combined total of players in various teams for different sports. Predominantly Young British Artists brought one bonus on my Goldsmiths contemporary Damien Hirst. For the second picture starter Evelyn Ong recognised a diagram of a camera obscura. Paintings by three artists that Dai Hockney claimed has used a camera obscura brought two bonuses. Ciaran Duncan knew that Max Ophuls’ La Ronde is set in Vienna for the next starter. Botanist Lester Sharp (alright, Lester ‘Who?’ Sharp) yielded just one correct answer. However it introduced me to the phrase ‘jumping genes’, the mental picture conjured up by which has surely enriched my life a little. Again, the belated but impressive Merton assault on the buzzer continued as Evelyn Ong recognised a description of the constellation Virgo. They had no luck with their set of bonuses on musical tones. Still they had scored 60 unanswered points. Nobody knew about huge water lilies from Bolivia for the next starter. Nobody knew the island of Skomer for the next after that. Evelyn Ong knew Thiol for the next starter, even though challenged to spell it. Creatures of British and Irish folklore from the Royal Mail’s special set of stamps saw a name check for grindylows which I’d only previously read of in (I think) Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Merton only had the selkie, but this put them a mere 10 points behind Edinburgh. Were we witnessing the best comeback since Lazarus? Neither team managed the next starter on the colour green. I knew that Tower Hamlets and Greenwich are the two boroughs east of the City of London that are homes to world Heritage sites. So did Johnny Richards. Jean-Baptiste Colbert (qui?) brought nowt. Apart from the gong. And so, from being so much in control at the 20 minute mark, Edinburgh won by less than a full set, 105 – 85.

For the record, Edinburgh achieved a BCR of 47.6% while Merton’s was 38%, which shows why it was a comparatively low scoring match. I don’t care. Welcome back UC – I’ve missed you.

Amol Watch

In his welcome to the teams Amol mentioned both teams’ “crazy mascots”, Careful there Amol. That’s just one step from ‘whacky’ or ‘zany’ and if you start using those terms then we will have to call Security.

For once, Amol was right when he told Merton there was plenty of time left, but the fact that he felt moved to say it on 10 minutes told them its own story.

Interesting Fact That I Didn’t Already Know Of The Week

The person ultimately responsible for Wicca was the rather prosaically named Gerald Gardner.

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

What is the name given to the aggregations of the protein alpha-synuclein that can appear within and often displace the components of brain cells. (incorrect buzz from Merton).They are named for the German neurologist who discovered them while examining the brains of patients who had suffered from Parkinson’s Disease and dementia . Dum de dumdum dum dum dum dum dumdum.

Mastermind 2026 Round One Heat 23

So, heat 23. Was it worth the wait? Well, that’s not really the fairest of questions considering how bloody long that wait has been. Well, let’s see how it all went.

First up was Angus Burns, offering what I thought would be my banker subject, the London 2012 Olympic Games. I didn’t do too badly either, with 5. Angus looked extremely assured at the start, but as the difficulty level ramped up from the middle of the round he struggled to add many more points to his score, levelling off with 7. Not actually by any means a bad performance considering the width and breadth of the subject, but it looked likely to leave him adrift by half time.

Kim Mackenzie hardly put a foot wrong in her own round on the architect Frank Gehry. She answered all of the questions she was asked correctly, and it was only a longish hesitation before answering one which seemed to prevent her from achieving a score in the teens. As it was, 12 looked highly competitive.

As much as the 2012 Olympic Games was a broad and wide subject, so was Mark Pagan’s, British waterfowl and wading birds. As with Kim before him, Mark seemed very much in control of his subject, despite a couple of wrong answers. Following Kim’s round it looked pretty much as if only double figure rounds would do in tonight’s heat and that’s exactly what he produced, with 10.

Thus far I’d scored 5,1 and 1 in the specialist rounds and Pete Simmonds’ round on the BBC House of Cards trilogy offered the chance to get a double figure aggregate. I watched and enjoyed the trilogy, all those years ago and this brought me 4 points for an aggregate of 11. Pete did considerably better. As had Kim, Pete answered each of his questions correctly. However Pete did not hesitate as he did so, and this brought him a total of 13 and meant that when he returned to the chair he would know exactly what he needed to do.

I think that it was a case of what might have been for Angus Burns when he returned for his GK round. He’d built up a decent head of steam by mid round and this meant that he scored a good 12 to finish with 19. Had he had a little more luck with his specialist round, then this GK performance would have put his opposition under considerably more pressure.

As it was, though, Mark Pagan showed precious few nerves as he set off on his own General Knowledge odyssey. He didn’t quite match Angus’ score, but then he didn’t have to. A good 11 put him 2 points ahead with 21, and was enough to at least give the remaining two contenders a little food for thought.

Kim Mackenzie had been so effective in her specialist round that it was something of a shock to see her actually getting questions wrong in her GK round. I’m glad that she still seemed to be enjoying the experience. On another show, in another heat her 7 for 19 might just have brought her the win, but it wasn’t going to happen in this company.

So Pete Simmonds walked back to the chair knowing that a round of 9 points would bring him the win outright. Well, he did quite a lot better than that. His 14 was one of the best GK performances we’ve seen this series and an overall score of 27 will put him well amongst the top scorers in my unofficial table to semi finalists which is something we can all look forward to after next week’s show.

So was it worth the wait, then? Well, it was certainly a good show and frankly beat all of those Sleb shows all hands down. Word to the wise, Auntie Beeb, word to the wise.

The Details

Angus Burns	London 2012 Olympics	7	0	12	3	19	3
Kim Mackenzie	Frank Gehry	12	0	7	0	19	0
Mark Pagan	British waterfowl and wading birds	10	0	11	2	21	2
Pete Simmonds	The BBC’s House of Cards Trilogy	13	0	14	1	27	1

Tomorrow Evening's Mastermind

Well, at long last I get to write about the next heat of real Mastermind. Tomorrow night’s 23^rd heat will have these specialist subjects:-

London 2012 Olympics

Frank Gehry

British Waterfowl and Wading Birds

The British House of Cards Trilogy

I don’t think I’ll get 0 but I don’t think I’ll get a record high score either.

As regards Celebrity Mastermind. .. . look, in my opinion, compared with real Mastermind it’s not that watchable a show. Sorry, but . . .

A lot of the celebrities, if they do fit that description at all, only do so in the widest possible application of the term

The average celebrity is not, frankly, very good at general knowledge, and does not put on a very good performance. I don’t blame them so much for this – they’re doing it for charity, but watching ‘celebrities’ squirm their way through relatively gentle GK roundss does not a great evening’s entertainment make.

I don’t really care much more for Clive’s inter-round chats than I did for John Humphrys’.

Just my opinion of course. But please BBC, next year, when you don’t have to accommodate the Winter Olympics, for heaven’s sake please don’t make us wait for weeks and weeks between heats of the first round again.

New Show - Time is Money

You know, in 2025 there were very few new TV shows I got to review, and not all of those were even quiz shows either. So in one way at least it’s nice to have new shows to review in the opening months of the year. Last month I reviewed Rob Brydon’s The Floor. Now it’s the turn of Sara Davies’ Time is Money.

This daytime show began on 1^st January and typically I’d manage to miss it until this week. Since returning from the cruise at the start of November this has been the first time that I’ve taken a week off work. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking with it.

So how does it work? Well, the twist is that all 5 contestants are given money at the start of the first round, and the idea is to keep it by answering questions on the buzzer. Answer questions correctly and your opponents’ timers start to leak cash at the rate of £10 a second. Keep answering correctly and the rate speeds up. Answer incorrectly and you lose money. Once your cash has leaked away, you’re out. Unless two of you lose your last tenner at the same time, in which case there’s a tie break. At the end of each round, however money you have left is banked. You’ll only get to take it away if you win the final.

So the rounds continue. Each remaining contestant’s timer is topped up with a higher amount than the previous round until four contestants have lost their cash and only one remains to play in the final. So the finalist will have saved some cash in each of five rounds. They are shown five columns, each with the money they saved in that round. To take away any cash they have to answer a question correctly in each column. If all of that column’s money runs out, then the contestant gets nowt. If they answer all five, then however much money is left is what they get to take away.

A few observations, then. The timer gimmick isn’t that unique. Both 'Five Minutes to a Fortune' and 'Take On The Twisters' used something similar. Remember them? No, I’m not surprised, and the fact that these earlier shows didn’t make it to a second series does cast a doubt over this one’s future. But let’s consider the show on its own merits.

I think that the game play is quite clever. The idea of essentially restarting the game with all the remaining contestants starting with the same amount of money each round is effective. It means that you might have absolutely aced the last round, but if the category of this one doesn’t suit you could still be out. It avoids the problem you can get on a lot of shows when one contestant is so much faster on the buzzer than the others that the result looks like a foregone conclusion from early doors – so well done for that.

You do get a lot of questions for your money – I’ve seen it said that there’s up to 150 asked in each 50 minute show. They’re not especially difficult – it relies on having round categories to give the contestants potential problems – and in fact as the rounds go on there are more clues offered in the questions. Essentially the show bets the house on the buzzer races being tense and exciting. If that's not what you like, well then this is not the show for you

Cards on the table, I found the show seemed to be flagging a bit in the middle rounds. Some of them seemed a lot shorter than others. Also, for a 50 minute show there was no real variation in the game play until the last five minutes with the final. Now, considering that host Sara Davies makes a point of saying (several times if truth be told) that this is the fastest quiz on telly, there’s quite a bit of ‘talking to the contestants’ padding. To be fair, they don’t do a lot of it at the start which is something I approve of. But it really doesn’t let up much from the end of the first round onwards, every time there’s a break in the questions. If you’ve followed the blog for any great length of time you’ll know that this is just something I don’t care for at all.

I’ve already mentioned host Sara Davies. I’m not entirely sure why Sara is hosting the show. Actually I think I know the answer to that – she’s hosting the show because she was offered the chance to do so. Why she accepted the offer, well, that’s a harder question to answer. Sara is already a very well known figure from several seasons as a dragon on BBC’s popular Dragon’s Den. I don’t claim to be knowledgeable about her personal finances, but I know enough to say that she is a very successful and wealthy entrepreneur. So it’s probably fair to say that she’s not doing it for the money. Does she aim to carve a career as an all-round TV personality? Or is she doing it because she thought it would be fun? Answers on a postcard please.

What I can say is that she plays this role pretty well for someone who has not built a career entertaining audiences through her personality. For one thing she has bags of confidence and never appeared mechanical or wooden in the shows I watched. That’s important. If I think of other TV personalities who chanced their arm with the quiz game show genre, Alex Scott never quite convinced in “The Tournament”. While she seemed genuinely warm and likeable you always suspected that if the autocue went on the blink she’d falter. As for Gordon Ramsey and Jeremy Kyle, I think that they both suffered from the perception that the viewers had of their TV personae – it just seemed insincere when they were in chummy game show host mode. As I said, I’d like to see less chat, but that’s a personal preference. It’s not that I don’t like the way that Sara Davies does it.

I think that this is watchable fare as it is. However I think that the producers have missed a trick since it could have been a real winner. Had the show cut a lot of the chat, and had maybe four contestants rather than 5 so it could come in at a lean and mean 30 minutes then I think it would have been something a bit special. Alternatively, in the format that it is, then they needed something extra. I’ve praised Sara Davies and she does the job that she is required to do professionally and well. But the show as it is really needs a host who provides a significant proportion of entertainment value. Could you really imagine The Chase without Bradley Walsh, for example? Well, for me, “Time is Money” needs a host with the wit and comedic chops as host to elevate it above the herd.

Well, in the past I’ve seen some shows that I thought were oven-ready turkeys go on to success while others that I’ve thought had potential go on to disappear after one series, so it’s hard to say whether “Time is Money” will run and run. I would watch it again, but I wouldn't go out of my way to record it.

The Shriek

As I write this on Friday morning, my ears are still ringing from the quiz in the club last night. Now, okay, I have always suffered from tinnitus, so to an extent my ears are always ringing. But suffered isn’t necessarily the best term for it. For as long as I can remember I have always had a noise in the background of my hearing that is a high pitched whine. It’s a bit like the sound of tuning an old fashioned radio with a large dial, or a really high pitched voice going EEEEEEEEEEE. I’m not asking for sympathy because it has never held me back as far as I can tell, and much of the time I never even notice that it’s there.

However, there are certain things which do seem to make it worse. One of which is having a question master in the club who just doesn’t get how to get the best out of using a microphone. I’ve been acting as question master quite regularly in the club for more than 30 years now. Using a microphone is a strangely counter-intuitive activity. Now I’ve finished with teaching, but I was a teacher for so long that when confronted by a large, open space with quite a few people in it listening, my instinct is to take a deep breath and then use my ‘teacher voice’. Which is just the wrong thing to do with a microphone. I find I get best results when I don’t speak above my normal conversational volume and when I pitch my voice just a tiny bit lower.

Okay. Now, the QM last night was one of our semi-regular setters. As a person, I like her. As a QM, well last night was one of her better quizzes, which meant it crept up to being average. For the first 6 out of 8 rounds she split each between 5 questions on one theme and five on another. What can I say? I just wish that the average setter for the club would set their sights on using the best gimmick of all – well phrased general knowledge questions that provide something for the rank amateur, something for the seasoned quizzer and something for all points in between. Learn how to make a good basic quiz before you try pushing the envelope. But as I said, for a themed quiz it wasn’t so bad. Even if she did confuse her John Collins and Tom Collins cocktails, and even if she did fall into the trap of the impromptu bonus. In this care she asked name the two actors from ‘It Ain’t Half Hot Mum” had a number 1 single in 1975. Then, as an afterthought she added words to the effect of – I’ll give you a bonus if you can name the song. . . I think I remember what it was.- Gawd help us. Thankfully she had it right, but you just shouldn’t ask a question when you haven’t checked the answer first. Thankfully she was right with her answer of Whispering Grass.

I’m getting away from the point here, which is my ringing ears. The big problem with this QM is that she shouts into the microphone. In fact it’s almost a shriek. I, and a couple of others, have started putting our fingers in our ears when she starts, but she carries on, bellowing it out. I’m sorry, but the older I get the more of a wuss I become about loud noises. It’s not really like physical pain, but nonetheless it is painful. Now, whichever way I look at it, I cannot think of a way to broach the subject with the setter in a way which would not come across as unkind, or, let’s face it, downright rude. Which is why I’m sitting here on a Friday morning with my ears ringing.