University Challenge 2026 Semi Final 2 - Manchester v. Imperial

The Teams

Manchester

Ray Power

Kirsty Dickson

Kai Madgwick (Capt.)

Rob Faulkner

Imperial

Raheem Dina

Eugenia Tong

Oscar O’Flanagan (Capt.)

Justin Keung

Amol did mention the fact that both of these teams have shown that they can be beaten already during this series. But which team would be defeated again in this match? It certainly pitted two of this series’ most proficient buzzers against each other – the skippers Kai Magdwick and Oscar O’Flanagan. If you were looking for an omen to show who would win, it arrived in the shape of Kai Madgwick who correctly answered the first starter to identify the flag of Guyana. Starter 1. One bonus fell to the team on languages of Ethiopia. I got one right too by the expedient of answering the only Ethiopian language I know about, Amharic, to each. Various people with the given name Camille were identified by Kai Madgwick. Starter 2. A lovely bonus set on triple crowns in sport brought a full house. Now, with the third starter came what was arguably the key point of the match. It was a long starter, and Oscar O’Flanagan buzzed in early but gave a wrong answer. Given the whole question it became clearer that the city being described was Amman, This gave Kai Madgwick his triple. Starter 3. Russian artist Ilya Repin – who was surely also one of the Men from UNCLE – brought 2 bonuses and took us to the picture starter. A neurological condition described in French saw Oscar O’Flanagan, doing what a captain should in trying to spark his team into life, buzz early but he could not provide an answer. This allowed medical student Kirsty Dickson to identify a description of Tourette’s. More conditions, described in French and named after French people brought two bonuses. Nice to see a namecheck for Raynaud’s Syndrome, with which I was once misdiagnosed. Another story for another time. Kirsty Dickson came in too early for the next starter but in the spirit of it never rains but it pours, Imperial did not have the answer, Dead Space. Nevertheless, Manchester had achieved a near perfect start and they led by 75 to minus 5 as we approached ten minutes.

Kai Madgwick knew Tithonus from Greek Mythology. Starter 4. A couple of bonuses on neurotransmitters added to the already impressive lead. Now, we didn’t get enough of the question for the next starter to know why the name of Barbara Loden inspired Ray Power’s answer of Wanda, but it was right. Stuffed breads caused amusement when Ray Power admitted after the first bonus ‘Sorry, I zoned out there.’ It was like me with a chemistry bonus. Manchester took one of these. Rob Faulkner took the next starter with Diophantus – nope, me neither. I apologise for pointing this out but it did mark that rare occurrence when all 4 of one teams answered a starter correctly before the whole of the opposing team answered one correctly. Sometimes, however good you are – and Imperial ARE good – it just ain’t your night. It was nice to see Chretien de Troyes being namechecked in the set of bonuses on Arthurian myth. He’s been out of the spotlight too long, in my opinion. Manchester took two. Nobody recognised a bit of Ludwig Van for the music starter. Likewise, nobody knew the Washington consensus for the next starter. That was enough. For the next starter Oscar O’Flanagan finally beat Kai Madgwick’s somewhat flamboyant buzz to give the correct answer of the play “A Raisin in the Sun’ They received the music bonuses for their pains, three pieces of music that use variations of ‘God Save the King/Queen. Sadly they could only convert one of these into points. But at least they now had a positive score. Kirsty Dickson knew a description of paracetamol when she heard it in the next starter. Tunisian politics proved not to Manchester’s collective liking. Nobody recognised clues to the Futura font. Kai Madgwick knew that David The Builder - yes, I really wish he had been given the name Bob too – had reigned in Georgia. Starter 5. The Harvard system of stellar classification and two bonuses took Manchester serenely past 150. Nobody took fulminate for the next starter. Rahim Dina knew that both the prose and poetic Eddas describe Ratatoskr, a squirrel. I’ve read both in Old Norse but I couldn’t answer that. Short stories of Katherine Mansfield brought two very quick bonuses and meant that the score stood at 160-25 to Manchester on 20 minutes.

Nobody identified Apollo and Daphne for the second picture starter. I’ll be honest, I don’t remember Apollo being in Scooby Doo, but then I don’t know everything. Kai Madgwick knew that Sgurr Alisdair is the highest peak on Skye. Starter 6. More Apollos and Daphnes brought two more bonuses. Kai Madgwick knew that if the next starter was asking about Mansa Musa then he could afford to take a flyer on Hay on Wye’s twin town of Timbuktu. Starter 7. Supergroups proved right up Manchester’s street and they took a full house. As soon as Amol mentioned a novel’s subtitle Kai Madgwick identified it as “Tess of the D’Urbervilles.” Starter 8. Terms that appear more than once in citations for the Nobel Prize for Chemistry (ugh) may have appeared more than once but only once they brought any points to Manchester. Raheem Dina could not quite pull Eduardo Paolozzi out from the dump bin of memory for the next starter, but Manchester had lost 5 for an incorrect interruption. Kai Madgwick knew the Delian League. Starter 9. My team, Spurs, will probably be playing in it soon if things get much worse. The Via Emilia brought two more correct answers. Credit to Oscar O’Flanagan. He was still attacking the buzzer as if there were only 5 points between the teams and it now paid off as he identified several Irish architects. Iranian film directors bro9ught two more correct answers. I guessed that the roman law mentioned in the next starter was about marriage, but neither team did. Eugenia Tong recognised a quote from Twelfth Night’s Malvolio. Expressions taken from the Vulgate brought a full house. Oscar O’Flnagan zigged with Chile for the next starter allowing Kai Madgwick to zag with Peru. Tenth starter. Algorithms in quantum computing (no , of course I didn’t get any) took Manchester’s score to 250. That was it.

It really wasn’t so much about the bonuses in this show, but for the record Imperial managed a BCR of 66.6% while Manchester’s was 57.1%. It was all down to the buzzing, and I must be forgiven for singling out Kai Madgwick for his double figure total of starters in this match. That puts him in very good company. Hard lines to Imperial and thank you for the excellent entertainment you’ve provided this year. Manchester – congratulations and best of luck in the final.

Amol Watch

Amol pretty much put his finger on what happened in this match in his comments at the end. Manchester got off to such a good start that Imperial were doing what you must do, trying to take a flier and put the brakes on the Manchester momentum. Had Oscar O’Flanagan’s first attempt worked, it might well have been a closer contest. I do like the way that that Amol always tries to apply a little balm to the feelings of the defeated teams.

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

Futura font was used on the plaque left on the moon by the Apollo 11 astronauts.

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

The citations for both the 1937 prize, won by Norman Haworth and the 1970 prize won by Luis Leloir reference which group of biomolecules with Leloir’s citation specifically noting his discovery of sugar nucleotides and their role in the biosynthesis of these molecules?

You know it, I know it – it’s dum de dumdum dum dum dum dum dumdum.

Mastermind 2026 Semi Final 5

The Tale of the Tape

4	Carolyn Rowe	12	0	13	0	25	0
=8	Miles Searle	9	0	13	0	22	0
=12	Ben Abbott	9	0	11	1	20	1
13	Robert Cohen	8	1	12	1	20	2

Here it is, dearly beloved, the last semi final and for one more intrepid Masterminder to book a place in the grand final. But which one would it be? Well, for all of the fact that once again we had a fairly wide spread, all four of these semi finalists achieved double figure GK scores in winning their heats. Would it largely be decided on the specialists, then?

Carolyn Rowe was the only one of tonight’s semi-finalists who had scored double figures on specialist in her heat. This time, answering on Amelia Earhart she again produced a round from the top drawer, only slightly let down by a couple of long hesitations before producing the correct answers. 11 meant that chances were that she would be in the hunt at the turnaround, while maybe one or two of the others wouldn’t.

Miles Searle would, though. He must have known that his specialist was weaker in his heat than his GK was and this he seemed to have well and truly remedied. His round was a contrast with Carolyn’s, since in his case it was sheer speed of answer that pulled him through to equal the lead with 11. Incidentally I tentatively identified this as my banker subject of the four on offer tonight and so it certainly proved, as I was happy to pocket 5 and take the points and run, having failed to trouble the scorer on Amelia Earhart.

Despite being teetotal – altogether now, I don’t touch tea – despite that I managed 1 on Robert Cohen’s specialist round on the Red Wines of Burgundy. Now, this is the sort of specialist subject that has, with hindsight, government health warnings written all over it. It’s not just the wines. It’s not just the regions. It’s not just the grapes. It’s not just the growers. . . and so on and so forth. My heart went out to Robert, but he never seemed to lose his composure, and returned to his chair with 5 points, bloodied but unbowed.

Our final contender to embark upon his specialist round in the 2026 semi finals was teacher Ben Abbott. He was answering on the songs of Sir Noel Coward. I took the first and finished this last semi with a specialist aggregate of 7.. Ben did better, but surely not quite as well as he would have hoped. I don’t know the subject hardly at all, but it seemed to me that the questions by and large were pretty fair. Oh well, sometimes it just doesn’t work out the way that you want it to.

Still, to all intents and purposes we were down to a two-horse race. If you’re four points behind at half time in a semi, you’re highly unlikely to feature in the shakeup. Even more so if you’re six points behind. So I give Robert Cohen full credit for producing a 10 point double figure round to finish with 15, and in this series that’s a perfectly respectable semi-final total.

Ben, also down amongst the wines and spirits as it were, did not have the best GK round he’s ever had, not matching the 11 he scored in his heat. He took 8, but again, kept his composure and if anything seemed to be enjoying his semi-final experience. Smell the roses, is my advice to anyone who reaches a Mastermind semi-final, because most of us only pass this way once. Ben seemed to be doing so and he too finished with a respectable 15.

So to the business end of the semi-final. Carolyn began with another long pause and I feared for her. It was a case of ye of little faith as calmly and steadily Carolyn produced correct answer after correct answer and continued to pile on the points. She passed 15 and by the time she crossed the line she’d scored 13 for 24. Putting that performance into perspective, that would have been good enough to win 4 of the other 5 semi-finals. But would it be good enough to win this one?

Well, like Carolyn, Miles had scored 13 in his GK round in the heats. That would not be good enough now. If he was daunted by the size of the challenge before him he certainly didn’t show it. From the first question to the last he maintained momentum, quickly answering what he did know and quickly guessing what he didn’t. It’s a good tactic but it needs real presence of mind to maintain it throughout the round. As he approached the tape he reaped the benefits, scoring his 14^th and then 15^th GK points to win with 26.

A word of congratulations to all 4 contenders, for we did not see a single pass in the whole show. Commiserations to Carolyn, but then if you’re going to be beaten, it should be a consolation to have played so well that the winner had to produce such a magnificent performance to beat you. But of course, huge congratulations to Miles. That was a classy performance, sir. As you know, like last year I shall not be scuppering anyone’s chances by tipping them to win, but I certainly wish you the very best of luck for the final.

The Details

Carolyn Rowe	Amelia Earhart	11	0	13	0	24	0
Miles Searle	Sir Laurence Olivier	11	0	15	0	26	0
Robert Cohen	The Red Wines of Burgundy	5	0	10	0	15	0
Ben Abbott	The Songs of Sir Noel Coward	7	0	8	0	15	0

I Really Should Invent That Time Machine

I’ve read back my post about the Crystal Palace Park dinosaurs and I wouldn’t like to give the impression that I think that Crystal Palace Park itself isn’t a great place to visit, because it is. I haven’t been back for over 20 years, but I remember taking my kids there for a day out once when we were visiting my mum in Tottenham. Well, all of my kids are in their thirties now so that will give you an idea of how long ago. You know, the thing I enjoyed most about that visit, was walking up the steps that led to where the Palace itself was, and taking a good look at the sheer size of the footprint it had and letting my imagination run wild.

The Crystal Palace. 1900. The water tower on the left of the picture was a later addition by IK Brunel.

You see, I find the Crystal Palace itself very interesting. When I invent my time machine (honestly, it would be a lot easier if my future self who builds it would just pop back in time and leave me the blueprints) it will probably be the second place that I visit. What, the first? Oh, that would be Old London Bridge – which I would visit twice, firstly in about 1400 just after the remodelling of the Chapel of St. Thomas a Becket, and the second about 1629, just before the fire which destroyed the northern end, while Nonsuch House was in all its glory. But I’d love to see the Crystal Palace.

I’ll never know of course, but it’s not impossible that some of my ancestors might have visited the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park in 1851. A set of my 3x great grandparents and their family were living in Hammersmith down the road at the time. Then I remember my own grandmother talking about the Crystal Palace burning down in 1936. 

1936. After the fire but prior to demolition of the remains. Brunel's water tower remained until it was destroyed during World War 2.

I don’t recall her saying she had ever visited it, but again, it’s not impossible.

I will be honest, it’s the building itself that really interests me most, but I became interested in what remains from the Great Exhibition. If we take Old London Bridge, even though it was demolished in 1831 there are remnants of it to be seen if you know where to look. Well, I don’t know of any remnants of the original Palace building other than what’s there in Crystal Palace Park. However, as regards the exhibits within the Palace, well, that’s a different story. The Victoria and Albert Museum, whose creation was a direct result of the Exhibition, has tons of them, over 3000, I believe. But one exhibit that I have seen many times but never previously knew it was an exhibit in the Great Exhibition is in another well known London location, and it’s a clock.

It’s not Big Ben, mind you, and yes, I know that the name strictly speaking belongs to the bell, not the clock. But it’s not even the clock within the Elizabeth Tower if you want me to be that specific. No, apparently, the clock in the tower above the entrance to King’s Cross Station was an exhibit in the Great Exhibition. You know, it definitely could be. The dating works – Kings Cross was built in 1852, the year after the Great Exhibition. The contractor who built Kings Cross, Lewis Cubitt, was the same contractor who erected the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park.

Kings Cross Station c. 1910

I’ll be honest, I look at the façade of King’s Cross, and in terms of its design I find it hard to believe that it wasn’t built decades later than it was. The restraint and lack of ornamentation seems distinctly unVictorian, especially when you contrast it with the gothic splendour of the Midland Grand Hotel atop St. Pancras station – which is actually younger than King’s Cross.

Coming back to my time machine, the third and fourth different locations I would want to visit would be another London station, and the spiritual successor of the Great Exhibition. Third on my list would be the original Euston Station, specifically the Doric Arch that stood at the entrance.

Euston Station Doric Arch c. 1900

In terms of my own life, this was a near miss, as it was demolished just two years before I was born. The original Euston was the first terminus to be built north of the River Thames and construction began in 1837. Putting this into perspective, this was the same year that Queen Victoria came to the throne. London Bridge station, south of the River, had opened the year before. 1837 was a mere 8 years after the opening of the world’s first inter-city railway, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway.

By the time that the reference photograph I used to help with this sketch was taken Euston was already over half a century old. It’s tempting to imagine the awe that visitors exiting the station in those first decades must have felt .

The first threat to the arch came in the late 1930s when a radical plan to rebuild the station was drawn up, which would have involved moving the arch at the very least. The second world war put paid to this, however it only turned out to be a stay of execution. Despite the fact that both station and arch were grade II listed, the plan for the current station wee put forward in about 1960, and nobody in officialdom showed any appetite whatsoever for moving the arch to a new home. The London County Council balked at the cost, and Transport Minister Ernie Marples said all options for not demolishing the arch had been carefully examined and rejected. This was the same Ernie Marples whose company built motorways – not that he was at all biased, you understand. Pleas from great men such as Sir John Betjeman to be given time to raise the money to meet the cost of removing the arch and storing it until such time as a new home could be found for it were ignored.

Contrary to how it might seem from what I’ve just written, I do appreciate that you cannot keep things just because they have been there a long time. Otherwise we’d all be living in Bronze Age roundhouses.  But I do think that there was a very strong case for keeping the Euston Arch and I point my finger at those who made the decision and rushed to demolition, and am happy to say that you have let down the people you were working for and sold all our birthright for a mess of concrete.

As for my 4^th location, that would be the South Bank complex at the time of the 1951 Festival of Britain. It’s ironic that a politician who was heavily involved in the decisions to demolish the beautiful Waterloo Bridge, the London County Council’s Herbert Morrison, was the prime mover behind the Festival of Britain. By the end of the second world war Morrison, having been Home Secretary during the wartime coalition, had become Leader of the House of Commons in the Labour Government that followed, often deputising for Clement Atlee. Morrison picked up on the 1943 proposal from the Arts Council to hold an exhibition celebrating the centenary of the Great Exhibition.

1951 Festival Of Britain Dome of Discovery and Skylon

This didn’t become a world’s fair or expo – of which the Great Exhibition is often said to be the first – because post war Britain couldn’t afford it. The festival, then, as the name suggests, had no international or Commonwealth aspect to it, but was envisaged as a symbol of a Britain starting to recover from the devastation of the second world war.

There were Festival of Britain events staged in every country of the UK, but the focus was on the South Bank complex, and this is what my sketch represents. The two most visible symbols of the Festival in the sketch were the Skylon, a strange, needle-like construction that seemingly balanced in mid-air, and the Dome of Discovery.

In terms of sheer numbers the Festival was a great success, with 10 million tickets sold to events. In terms of architectural legacy though it’s a little more difficult to quantify. Very little of what was built for the Festival remained there for long after the Festival ended. The Royal Festival Hall is a grade I listed building, although to be honest it’s far from one of my favourite London buildings if I’m honest. However the Festival did promote contemporary British architecture and surely influenced some of the interesting buildings of the 50s and early 60s in the UK.

The Festival did little to help the Labour Government, mind you. The Government called a snap election in the hope of increasing their majority from the 1950 election. Despite winning more votes than any other party, the vagaries of the British electoral system meant that the Conservative Party won a working majority of seats, and Winston Churchill, who thought that the Festival of Britain had been a ridiculous idea became Prime Minister again.

If you had a time machine - where would YOU go?

The Fifteen Mile Journey that took three weeks (or so it seemed)

I do occasionally muse on the way that our perception of time changes as we ourselves age. Last weekend Mary, our daughter Jenn and I drove to Reading for an Overnight stay – either side of visits to Oxford and Bath. The journey was a bit longer than 2 hours, but sat in the back of the car, with a book, it seemed to absolutely fly by. That was a journey of 138 miles. I remember what seemed to be the two longest journeys I took as a kid were both on London buses and both of them were only about 15 miles. The number 65 bus from Ealing Broadway went all the way to Chessington – just Chessington Zoo in those days before the World of Adventures. That journey – a couple of hours at most, seemed to last about a fortnight. The journey that seemed to last about 3 weeks was the journey from our house in Hanwell to Crystal Palace Park.

We changed buses more than once, and so for this early 70s journey my parents bought red bus rover tickets. If these are a mystery to you, I guess they were a kind of forerunner to the one day travelcard. As the name suggests , this was a ticket that enabled you to use as many different red London buses as you needed on a particular day.

Why Crystal Palace Park? Hey, it was a nice place to visit – still is – but for the 8 or 9 year old me, the number 1 attraction was the dinosaur models. Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Crystal Palace Park, but if you have, I wonder whether your reaction to the dinosaur models was the same as mine? You see, the models were made in the 1850s, and they were the ‘best guess’ as to what these creatures really looked like according to the fossils that had been found. And for some of them, the best guess did not prove to be a particularly good one. I really didn’t think much of them.

It wasn’t as if there wasn’t a lot of thought put into them. The models were sculpted by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, working under the scientific direction of Richard Owen. Look, I know that you’re all intelligent and knowledgeable people, so please accept that I’m not trying to insult your intelligence by telling you a little about Richard Owen. But how many people owe a lot of their place in our collective memory to a single word, like Owen does? That word, of course, being dinosaur.

Of course Richard Owen achieved far more in his life than just coining the word dinosaur. Not least among his achievements was being the driving force behind the British Museum’s Natural History collection being given its own separate establishment in South Kensington. It’s rather appropriate that Owen coined the term dinosaur, when you consider that in some ways he was a little bit of a dinosaur himself. I’ve seen it said that Owen was a staunch creationist who viciously opposed Darwin’s theory of Evolution through natural selection. That does not appear to be the case. Owen felt that species could and did change over time, but through other processes than natural selection. He was a vocal proponent of the argument that Man could not be descended from apes, and some of his contemporaries believed that he twisted and misrepresented facts to fit his argument.

On a personal level, Richard Owen does not seem to have been much liked. He was not above withholding credit for his contemporaries. For example, he wrote about prehistoric marine reptiles without once mentioning that the first ichthyosaur and plesiosaur skeletons were discovered by Mary Anning. Well, he was not the only early palaeontologist who displayed this misogynist attitude to Miss Anning. However Owen would also claim other men’s discoveries as his own. He famously claimed credit for the discovery of Iguanadon, completely ignoring the fact that it was in fact the discovery of Gideon Mantell. At one point he was even dismissed from the Royal Society’s Zoological Council for plagiarism. So maybe, just maybe, being remembered for inventing the word dinosaur is actually the best thing that could have happened to him.

I may be doing his memory a little bit of a disservice here. In everything I’ve read he comes across as a mean, austere and exceptionally humourless sort, but then maybe he did have his lighter side. On New Year’s Eve 1852 he and Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins hosted a celebration dinner inside the body of the Iguanadon model – the top of which was open for the occasion. Contemporaries including even Gideon Mantell were present. Maybe Owen was in a good mood because he was sitting at the head of the table, where the creature’s brains would have been. Mary Anning was not there, but then that wasn’t so much of an omission since she’d been dead for five years.

Mastermind 2026 - Semi final subjects and a few thoughts

Heads up peeps. I’ve just been over to the BBC Mastermind website. The specialists for the last of this year’s semi finals will be:-

Amelia Earhart

Sir Laurence Olivier

The red wines of Burgundy

The songs of Sir Noël Coward.

I have to be honest, on a personal level it’s hard to call any of them a banker subject. I suppose that I have more chance of getting one or two right on Sir Laurence Olivier, but with the others it will be a matter of pure luck whether something I can guess the answer to comes up.

On another level I looked at the photograph of tomorrow night’s line up and it didn’t look as if Dennis Wang was among them. On one level it’s good if it means that everyone who won a heat got to experience a semi final. On another level though, I can’t help feeling sorry that we are in an era of the show without repechages. I do feel that the talent is thinly enough spread as it is.

So I’ve had a think about this. Earlier this year I suggested my option 1 - that we make a series of 29 shows. We do 22 heats and then the two highest scoring runners up get wild cards through to the semis. But then maybe there’s a reason why the Beeb need the series to comprise of 31 shows. If this is a case then I have an option 2 as a compromise. We do 23 heats. This will provide 23 contenders for 24 slots in the semis. Then we have a repechage for the 4 highest scoring runners up, with the winner becoming the 24^th semi-finalist. I don’t like it as much as option 1 because it would mean that the contender who wins the repechage would have to learn 4 subjects throughout the series if they won the semi final. But then, in 2006 when I was a highest scoring runner up  in the heats when there was no repechage, if you’d offered me the chance to do something like this I would have bitten your hand off to take the opportunity.  

I reiterate that I would not like to see Mastermind turn away from tournament play. I would not like to see the top six performers from the heats go straight through to the finals, which is what happened with Sport Mastermind. But we can tweak things so that we don’t lose potential finalists because fate has placed them a freakishly strong heat.

As always, just my opinion. Feel free to disagree.

One of his Exceedngly Good Poems

Some teachers acquire a fearsome reputation amongst their pupils that is quite out of proportion to their physical stature. Miss Forsey was a good example and looking back I think that she was well aware of this and cultivated and enjoyed this reputation. For all that, I do remember with fondness some Friday afternoon lessons she gave us on ancient history. I think that this subject must have been a personal interest of hers as she taught us with knowledge and enthusiasm, and when I actually got to see the reconstruction of Babylon’s Ishtar Gate in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin a few years ago, I immediately remembered Miss Forsey showing us a picture of it back in the baking hot summer of 1976.

I thought of Miss Forsey again today. My final addition to my Boer War Queen Victoria chocolate tin collection, the tin produced by Joseph Fry and Sons, arrived today, and I couldn’t help thinking of Rudyard Kipling’s poem “Tommy”. If you haven’t read it, it goes like this:-

TOMMY.’

I went into a public-’ouse to get a pint o’ beer,

The publican ’e up an’ sez, ‘We serve no red-coats here.’

The girls be’ind the bar they laughed an’ giggled fit to die,

I outs into the street again an’ to myself sez I:

O it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ ‘Tommy go away’:

But it’s ‘Thank you, Mister Atkins,’ when the band begins to play,

The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,

O it’s ‘Thank you, Mister Atkins,’ when the band begins to play.

 

I went into a theatre as sober as could be,

They give a drunk civilian room, but ’adn’t none for me;

They sent me to the gallery or round the music ’alls,

But when it comes to fightin’, Lord! they’ll shove me in the stalls.

For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ ‘Tommy wait outside."

But it’s ‘Special train for Atkins’ when the trooper’s on the tide,

The troopship’s on the tide, my boys, the troopship’s on the tide.

 But it’s ‘Special train for Atkins’ when the trooper’s on the tide,

 

O makin’ mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleep

Is cheaper than them uniforms, an’ they’re starvation cheap;

An’ hustlin’ drunken sodgers when they’re goin’ large a bit

Is five times better business than paradin’ in full kit.

Then it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ ‘Tommy, ’ow’s yer soul?’

But it’s ‘Thin red line of ’eroes’ when the drums begin to roll,

The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll.

It’s ‘Thin red line of ’eroes’ when the drums begin to roll,

 

We aren’t no thin red ’eroes, nor we aren’t no black-guards too,

But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;

An’ if sometimes our conduck isn’t all your fancy paints;

Why, single men in barricks don’t grow into plaster saints.

While it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ ‘Tommy fall be’ind’;

But it’s ‘Please to walk in front, sir,’ when there’s trouble in the wind,

There’s trouble in the wind, my boys, there’s trouble in the wind.

It’s ‘Please to walk in front, sir,’ when there’s trouble in the wind.

 

You talk o’ better food for us, an’ schools, an’ fires, an’ all;

We’ll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.

Don’t mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face

The Widow’s uniform is not the soldier-man’s disgrace.

For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ ‘Chuck him out, the brute!’

But it’s ‘Saviour of ’is country’ when the guns begin to shoot;

An’ it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ everything you please;

An’ Tommy ain’t a bloomin’ fool — you bet that Tommy sees!

 

RUDYARD KIPLING.

I was introduced to this 1890 poem from the “Barrack Room Ballads” by the best Local Education Advisor for English that I ever met, when he suggested it as a poem to study alongside the hardy perennials like ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ and ‘The Soldier’. And it was while I was thinking about this poem that it suddenly occurred to me who it was who had first told me all about the nickname, Tommy Atkins. It was Miss Forsey.

I can’t remember the exact context after all these years, but Miss Forsey had asked the question – does anyone know what occupation you have if you’re a Tommy? – The answer, it appeared, was no. So she gave us a clue – It’s something to do with war.’ – A range of strange guesses followed, none of them right and I guess that maybe the right answer – soldier – was just too obvious. Miss Forsey went on to inform us that the nickname had come about because it was the sample name printed in the Army pay book.

Well, we like simple and straightforward explanations, don’t we? To be fair, from what I have read there is a lot of truth in this one. It seems that in The Soldier’s Account Book of 1815, every example form for the infantry had the example signature – Tommy Atkins – His mark -X. The explanation for that name is that I suppose it has a kind of Everyman quality to it. However, it seems as if the choice of name wasn’t quite as random as all that. For there is documentary evidence dating back to the middle of the 18^th century that Tommy Atkins was already being used as a generic term for British soldiers.

Here’s a wee footnote. According to Professor Richard Holmes’ excellent 2005 book ‘Tommy’, in the Soldier’s Account Book of 1815 they used a different sample signature for cavalrymen's forms which was, I kid you not, Sergeant John Thomas. I kid you not, Imagine if his signature had been used for the common or garden infantryman. I will be honest, I have real difficulty imagining Miss Forsey asking us in class what a John Thomas did for a living.

University Challenge 2026 Semi Final 1 Edinburgh v. Darwin, Cambridge

The Teams

Edinburgh

Parthav Easwar

Johnny Richards

Alice Leonard

Rayhana Amjad

Darwin, Cambridge

Lewis Strachan

Ruth Ni Mhuircheartaigh

Louis Cameron

Jonathan White

Are we already at the semi final stage? Sure are. Just as a point of interest, going into the match Edinburgh were the only unbeaten team left in the competition, the other three teams having lost either in one of the quarter final matches or round one.

Jonathan White drew first blood, interrupting the first starter when he recognised the Oldenburgs as the royal family of Denmark. Three famous instances of politicians being told ‘In the name of God, go!’ brought a full house.

The second starter was one of those long, long starters which suddenly includes a word or name that clarifies everything. That name was Montjuic and Johnny Richards won the buzzer race to identify Barcelona once it was said. Plains Indian Sign Language only yielded one bonus. Louis Cameron came in very quickly for the next starter, identifying that TS Eliot had written about John Webster. The River Neman brought only one bonus, but had they said Kaunas rather than Kanaus they would have had two. For the picture starter we were shown a map of the Holy Roman Empire (which was neither holy, Roman nor an empire) at a particular point in history. Jonathan White correctly identified the electorate of Brandenburg. More electorates brought another single bonus. Darwin lost five of their total for an incorrect interruption allowing Parthav Easwar to buzz in with Bayer. Gawd knows what the hell the Physics bonuses that followed were about but Edinburgh took one of them. This took us to ten minutes and Darwin led 50 – 30.

Neither team knew that Fashoda, scene of an international incident in the late 19^th century, is in modern day South Sudan. Rayhana Amjad knew various video game titles were all linked by the word Shadow. Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano yielded two bonuses. Nobody knew the painter Judith Leyster for the next starter but Darwin lost five. An ABS starter (another bloody Science) proved ungettable for any of us. Rayhana Amjad knew Philemon was half of the Derby and Joan type couple in Greek mythology visited by Zeus and Hermes – Baucis being the other. Works by Maurice Ravel naming other composers in their titles brought two bonuses and the lead. For the music starter all of the participants were too young to recognise the work of George McCrea. Rayhana Amjad knew the latin literary term Ubi Sunt. I remember dear old John Browning teaching me that the first time he introduced my class to Keats’ Ode to Autumn – “Where are the songs of Spring? Aye, where are they?” Indeed. Apparently Ode to Autumn was one of the first times Keats used a drum machine and other tracks which were early examples of the use of them brought one bonus. The next ABS starter saw Darwin buzz too early again but nobody quite got chloride. Again the buzzing hoodoo struck for Darwin on the next starter as they lost another 5. Edinburgh didn’t know that the directors of the films mentioned each had the given name Alice. Rayhana Amjad whose buzzing was proving to be very effective in this match identified the Portuguese writer Pessoa for the next starter. MBS (more bloody Science) bonuses brought nowt. Rayhana Amjad struck again with the word superstructure for the next starter. A full house on pomelos and their descendants boosted Edinburgh into triple figures and they led by 115 to 30.

For the second picture starter Louis Cameron struck for Darwin and got their score moving upwards again, with Titian.

While Titian was mixing rose madder

His model posed nude on a ladder.

Her position, to Titian

Suggested coition

So he climbed up the ladder and had ‘er.

I can only apologise. Three more works of art made for rulers of countries other than the countries in which the artists were born brought two bonuses. The Darwin revival continued as Louis Cameron recognised clues to the word version. French bicycle racing terms did not help  and I think captain Louis Cameron was right to move them out of the way asap. Now, whenever I hear the phrase ‘Swiss mathematician’ I always say Euler and it’s right more often than it’s wrong. Ruth Ni Mhuircheartaigh said it as well and it was right this time. When I’d stopped wheezing after my lap of honour around the Clark sofa, pairs of place names which can be made by doubling one letter of the first to make the second had brought Darwin a full house. Nobody knew the correct answer of Lake Chad for the next starter and sadly Ruth Ni Mhuircheartaigh gave the answer of torsion for the next starter while she meant torque. This allowed Alice Leonard in.  Two bonuses meant that Darwin would need at least three unanswered visits to the table, and there just didn’t seem to be enough time left. Jonathan White took the next starter with Tsar Nicholas I, or as my old headteacher, Nick Wheeler-Robinson told me once, Nick the Stick. Two bonuses on writers followed, but the gap was still 35. Louis Cameron was still straining every fibre for his team and he recognised literary characters with the surname Moore for the next starter. Fashion houses namechecked in Sister Sledge’s ‘The Greatest Dancer’ – a philosophical work of yesteryear – brought nothing. However, a full house for Darwin would level the scores. ‘That’s quite enough of that!’ Rayhana Amjad may well have though t, as the next MBS starter fell with halogenation. Nope, me neither. UNESCO world heritage sites in Mexico brought a single bonus, but it would not affect the outcome. The gong sounded and Edinburgh had preserved their 100% record so far, winning by 155 to 110.

A good contest. For the record there wasn’t a great performance gap between the teams on the bonuses. Edinburgh’s BCR was 51.8% to Darwin’s 50%. Edinburgh were slightly better on the buzzer, benefitting from Darwin’s interruptions. Again, I’m sorry to see the last of Darwin, but thank you for the entertainment you’ve given us during the series. Congratulations to Edinburgh. But who will you meet in the final?

Amol Watch

Amol did mention Darwin’s incorrect interruptions in his summing up at the end and it was nice to see him pay tribute to the tactic as the right thing to do. He’s right. You have to try and if you’re going down, then go down with both your guns blazing away.

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

I love the Tour de France but somehow the term puncheur for a racer capable of making short, sudden thrusts, at the start of a climb for example, a la Peter Sagan, is one that has always passed me by before.

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

In IUPAC notation what two letters are used to classify stereoisomers of alkenes according to whether the higher priority substituent groups at each end of the double bond ae on opposite sides of the bond, or on the same side of the bond? The letters in question stand for the German words for opposite and together.

I mean, come on, you could use that one to tranquilise a rhino and you wouldn’t need a dart gun. Dum de dumdum dum dum um dum dumdum.