Rather unpleasant

Actually, speaking of Mastermind, I had rather an unpleasant experience on Sunday. My mother-in-law had a TIA, or mini-stroke. Before I go any further I should add that she seems okay and recovering well and is at home. That wasn’t just unpleasant, it was shocking.

The unpleasant thing was this. Mary and I were at a quiz. She was out in the afternoon with her friend Helen, and found that the pub/hotel they were in up the Afan Valley, the Afan Lodge, was holding a quiz later. I said I’d join them there for the quiz.

You may find this hard to believe but when I go to a new quiz in a new place I haven’t been before I never go boasting about having been on Mastermind, never mind having won it. Well, when I arrived on Sunday I soon discovered that Helen had been doing just this, broadcasting to all and sundry ‘Mary’s husband’s coming to the quiz and he won Mastermind!” So in part it’s her fault.

We had just completed two handout rounds and were halfway through the first round, on lateral thinking, when Mary received a phone call about her mum. We got up and rushed out, and as we were going the 20-something question master boomed out over the mic – “Mastermind’s going! The quiz is too hard for him!”

I had no time to stop and put him straight. Helen says that she ripped him a new cakehole, but then Helen says a lot of things, which was one of the causes in the first place.

But if by any chance you are the question master from the Afan Lodge last Sunday and reading this – well, now you know. We left for reasons which had nothing to do with your quiz – which to be honest had by that stage showed no signs of being anything to write home about.

Adios, Sleb Mastermind

I’ve just seen an announcement from the BBC that it will show one more series of Celebrity Mastermind and then that will be it. If you’re a regular reader of the blog you’ll know that I greet the news with a certain amount of relief.

At the risk of going over well-trodden ground again, Mastermind was always a strange choice to beget a celebrity version and I’m afraid that in more recent years it has become a bit of a source of ridicule, in part for the low levels of GK shown by the average celebrity, but also due to the fact that for large sections of the viewing public, we don’t have a clue about who the majority of the ‘celebrities’ actually are. LAM reader Daniel Adler hit the nail on the head when he said that it’s coming to something when you recognise more of the contenders on a heat of the regular series than you do on an edition of the celebrity show.

I know that all of the contenders in the celebrity show are giving their services to raise money for charity which is an admirable thing. But that really does not mean that it’s an enjoyable show to watch. In both 2025 and in 2026 the first round of the regular series was ruined by taking it off the air to show the celebrity series. In 2026 they even showed a repeat of the first heat of the celebrity series the week after they broadcast the last one! And it had been crap the first time as it was!

Well, I can at least remember one entertaining moment from the show’s 20+ year run. The late Ian Lavender had just sat in the chair, and when John Humphrys asked “Your name?” Rick Wakeman sitting on contenders row shouted “Don’t tell ‘im, Pike!” Hey, it made me laugh.

There's a novelty -

I met Rod Burton on a tube train the late 70s once. Actually, that’s not strictly accurate. I was on a tube train once and Rod Burton came into the same carriage and got off a couple of stops later. We didn’t exchange any words so I didn’t exactly meet him. Well, be fair, it was a tube train and you didn’t.

Rod, if you’re not sure, was one third of Rod, Jane and Freddy. If you’re still not sure they had a pretty long running kid’s TV series running through the 80s into the early 90s. I watched it a few times with my kids. I think the best way to describe the shows is that each was a 15 minute mini musical, concerning different issues like moving house. It was rather good for what it was, unless memory deceives me.

Of course, the trio are probably far better known for providing the music component of ITV’s iconic and long running younger children’s show, “Rainbow”. Why I mention “Rainbow” is this. I am currently moonlighting in the office today, responding to the live CDS phone line rather than the messages on the DAP phone line. Don’t worry about it. But it does mean that I’ve been surreptitiously looking at Facebook on my phone in the interludes between calls. There’s been quite a bit of clickbait about the show there because puppeteer, Ronnie Le Drew, who operated Zippy, passed away this week.

Now, if you click on clickbait then you probably deserve what you get. But one thing I learned was really rather interesting. I knew in the 70s that Rod and Jane were married. Not for all that long, it appears, though. They divorced in 1979, I think. What I didn’t know though was that in the mid 80s Jane began a relationship Freddy Marks, the Freddy of Rod, Jane and Freddy, culminating in marriage quite a few years later. So, at different times, Jane was married to both Rod and Freddy. Well, good luck to all three of them. Freddy sadly passed away a couple of years ago. Rod made it quite clear in an interview that his split with Jane had nothing to do with Freddy and that their relationship didn’t start until several years later.

I just found it interesting – there’s lots of examples of TV performers marrying their co-stars, but marrying both of your co stars at different times, now that’s a bit special.

Tip 'n Strip

True story. On Monday, my friend, colleague (and former pupil) Viv returned to the office after a week away. She gave us all presents, in my case a biro. I was in the middle of a phone call and only took a quick glance at it and saw a young woman’s head. I idly wondered if it was one of those novelty pens where, if you hold it point down to write with it the lady in the bathing suit on the barrel of the pen miraculously loses her clothes. When I had finished the call I had a closer look at the pen and realised the lady on it was the Virgin Mary. Viv had been to Lourdes with her church. Thanks goodness I had not voiced my suspicions to her. And no, before you asked, nothing happened to Our Lady’s image when I began to write with the pen.

Just out of interest the technology that made the wonders of the ‘tip n’ strip’ pen possible was, like lego, created in Denmark. Baker Peder Eskesen created the leak proof mineral oil sealing process for floating action pens in 1946. The company he created started to market the ‘tip n’ strip’ or ‘disappearing swimsuit’ pen in 1962.

Just out of interest, the first pen to use the floating oil technology was created for Esso, and featured a floating barrel of oil.

I really don’t know if the ‘tip n’ strip’ pen is commonly available any more, but if it is I’d guess it’s probably in seaside souvenir (crap) emporia. Which brings to mind one Wednesday morning seminar I took part in 43 years ago.  At that time the Warden of University of London Goldsmith’s College was Richard Hoggart, father of Simon and author of “Uses of Literacy”. He was a very interesting speaker, whose lectures under the guise of seminars were something I looked forward too. Even if he did remark once that he thought Mastermind was simply the most ridiculous programme on television. He was an incorrigible name dropper (he once told us he had to end the seminar early because he was going for a late breakfast with Graham Greene) and one of the names he once dropped was George Orwell. Rather than going into detail about any of the novels what he really wanted to do was to talk about Orwell’s 1941 essay on seaside posters and the work of Donald McGill.

McGill was the artist most clearly associated with the genre of ‘saucy seaside postcard.’ Reading his Wikipedia biog I was surprised to see that he was actually prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act 1857 as late as 1954. He apparently never received more than 3 guineas per design even at the height of his fame, and no royalties. So even though his most successful postcard “Do you like Kipling?” “I don’t know, you naughty man,I’ve never kippled.” has sold more than 6 million copies, he never received one penny for it after the initial payment.

I’ll be honest, I don’t think that the kind of humour in these postcards - you can call it innocent if you wish but I reserve my right to disagree – has stood the test of time. But when I was growing up in 70s it was still pretty mainstream. The Thames Television Benny Hill shows, for example, are an oft quoted example and they are oft given as an example for a good reason. Now, Benny Hill was actually a very clever and intelligent man and a gifted comic, but he knew the market he was aiming for an he aimed for it unerringly.  To give another example, the Two Ronnies used a far wider variety of humour and was often far more clever than Benny Hill’s ITV shows. But Ronnie Barker – as clever, intelligent and witty as Benny, as good a comic as Benny and a great actor to boot, was very fond of this seaside postcard humour, and had a huge personal collection of seaside postcards. And there are times in Two Ronnies shows where you can clearly see this influence.

I’m struggling to bring this post to any kind of conclusion. So I’ll bring it back to the whole question of seaside souvenirs. 10 years ago, when my daughter Jenn started her career as a travel agent, I rediscovered my love of travel, and in 10 years I’ve been all over Europe and as far as New York City. Wherever I go I try to buy a souvenir cloth patch for my collection, these having been very much one of the tourist souvenirs of choice from when I was growing up, and taking up a lot less space than snow globes. I’ve been places where you just can’t get them. But fridge magnets! They are like stinking fish now! And I just can’t help wondering why that is, and how they have grown so popular to the detriment of other kinds of tourist tat. Answers on a postcard, please. (But preferably, not a saucy, Donald McGill one.)

University Challenge 2027 First Round University College, Oxford v. St. John's College, Cambridge

The Teams

University College, Oxford

Adam Sakabani

Deepro Choudhury

Delia Cropper (capt)

Shaon Bhattacharya

St. John’s College, Cambridge

Callum Thomas

Jonathan Watts

Liam Plimmer (capt)

Aurelia Walker

Deepro Choudhury took first blood for Univ with a deeply impressive early buzz. He needed only the first item to identify that all the items on the list have names ending in -ibo. I do wonder if Haribo would have been one? I guess we’ll never know. Words for lookalikes in different languages brought Univ a good full house. I thank a recent Weaver’s Week post for giving me Prisoner’s Dilemma as the answer to the next starter. Univ skipper Delia Cropper took that one. It would not be her last starter of the evening by a long chalk. Hyperboloid structures in architecture – announced Amol. There’s a novelty, said I, then took two to Univ’s full house. Jonathan Watts elbowed St. John’s into the contest winning the buzzer race to answer incisor for the next starter. Experiments involving drops brought a full house, and the last one was so easy, about Gallileo and the Tower of Pisa, that I didn’t even take a lap of honour for getting it right. The picture starter involved a map of England and Wales highlighting several AONBs (Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty). Delia Cropper knew that their names all contain the word Hills. More AONBs with shared name elements brought Univ one bonus. Liam Plimmer, the St. John’s skipper recognised various uses of the name Gilead for the next starter. Short kings was an intriguing subject for a set of bonuses but these tiny monarchs yielded nothing for St. John’s. At least they managed a second consecutive starter with Callum Thomas buzzing very early to identify a reference to Norwegian. Kinship systems as described by Lewis Henry Morgan. Two bonuses meant that the scores were nicely poised, with Univ leading 65-55 at just after 10 minutes.

Delia Cropper was the first to recognise bands or songs linked by the word Bay which brought her the next starter. Dryden and Shakespeare brought two correct answers. A long and tedious starter on Mersenne (ex Arsenal midfielder Paul?) was thankfully stopped in its overly long tracks by Jonathan Watts. Terms in extraction of metals brought one bonus. I had a rare music starter right, recognising, as did Jonathan Watts, the Radetzky March (Diddle dum, diddle dum, diddle dum dum dum) 3 more marches, also conducted by Leonard Bernstein, brought two bonuses. This just edged St. John’s into the lead. Sadly they lost five for the next starter, but this allowed Delia Cropper to add to what was becoming an impressive total of starters for glyph as in heiro and petro. Univ took two bonuses on the Panama Canal but missed the explorer Balboa, who was named after a well known Sylvester Stallone character. Very quickly Delia Cropper added another starter recognising a series of terms belonging to Mario 64. People recognised by the Roman Catholic Church as patron saints of all Europe – now that’s a big gig – provided a full house of bonuses. Kublai Khan was called Emperor Shizu. I have nothing to add to that – but it gave Shaon Bhattacharya the next starter. Birdsong in classical music provided just one bonus, but the momentum was back with Univ. For the second picture starter Adam Sakabani identified the work of Georges Braque (‘Bricker’ as his mates called him). Three other paintings critiqued by Tom Wolfe in “The Painted Word” provided just one correct answer, but what did Univ care? It ran down the clock and they were leading 160-85 at just past twenty minutes.

Delia Cropper stuck the knife in a little further being first to answer that Vincent Van Gogh had lived for a period in Arles. 2 bonuses on chemistry (I think) brought them to the brink of their double century. Then an interesting thing happened. St. John’s found their buzzing fingers. First captain Liam Plimmer took a starter on Hagarism. Japanese film directrs and composers brought them 2 correct answers . I answered Kurosawa to each, and got a correct answer by doing so. They beat Univ to the buzzer for the next starter but got their Copernicus in a twist by saying Gallileo, allowing the inevitable Delia Cropper in for the correct answer of Copernicus. Meta -ethics promised little and only delivered one correct answer to Univ. But St. John’s were warming to their task as Aurelia Walker buzzed early to identify the Senegal Lions football team. Food terms from other languages delivered a full house in quick time. Callum Thomas then buzzed early with the prehistoric Sunda/Sundaland subcontinent. Another lightning fast full house was taken on the mathematical birthday problem. Delia Cropper just failed to take the next starter, giving best of instead of the best, which fell to rival skip Liam Plimmer. Another lightning full house on cricketing positions meant that, with hardly any time left, St. John’s were only 15 points behind! Neither team could take the next starter but ST. John’s lost 5. Liam Plimmer buzzed first for the next starter. He zigged with Congo, allowing Delia Cropper to zag with Niger. Tat was it. We were gonged before Amol could complete the first bonus question on American states. Univ had won by 200 – 170.

For the record Univ’s BCR was 63.3% while St. John’s was a whopping 70.3%. Good match up.

Amol Watch

Again, a thumbs up for a consistent application of – if it ain’t euite right, it’s wrong with the best question.

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

Worthless rock surrounding otherwise valuable metals or minerals is called gang.

Baby Elephant Walk Moment.

Which polymath and priest gives his name to laws relating the fundamental frequency of a vibrating string to its length , mass per unit length and tension, formulated in his 1636 to ’37 work , Harmonie Universelle? He also gave his name to the set of prime numbers of the form to the N . . . (the questions was not even over yet when we got to thi point and Jonathan Watts buzzed in. He certainly wasn’t dum de dumdum dum dum dum dum dumdum).

Mastermind 2027 First Round Heat 3

Heat three, then. Now, if I may I will reveal my aggregate as we go along this week. So if you’re ready then –

Without much confidence I had decided to make Han Ket Li's subject, Madness my banker subject. This looked justified as I managed to pick three pieces of low hanging fruit from the round. I was very interested to hear that Labi Sifre had a cameo in the video of It Must Be Love. I liked Madness’ cover version, but Labi’s original is one of my absolute faves. Han Ket started well, but sadly she fell a little short of a competitive score, finishing the round with 6.

Of all the subjects the one I knew least about was Lorraine Behrens’ subject, James Hutton. I’m not quite sure just how I managed to scrape a point here, but I’m glad I did. Lorraine, on the other hand, produced a perfect round of 13, effectively putting Han Ket out of the game. It must have been daunting for the two contenders waiting for their own turns.

Piers Merchant looked to be one of the youngest contenders we’ve seen for a while and he did confirm that he is a student at Cambridge. He was offering us the films of Wes Anderson. I did manage another point on this round. Good general knowledge doesn’t just help you on the GK rounds, I guess. Piers was not going to give us a perfect round but he was able to deliver a double figure round which meant that he was still in the game at the turn around, albeit at something of a deficit.

Don Mottram answered on The History of the Paris Metro. Had I not spent time on working through the Wikipedia entry and making up that set of questions yesterday, I would have had nowt. As it was though, I got 4, making it my best subject of the night and leaving me with an aggregate of 9. Don was pretty snookered by the second minute of his round and levelled out with 5 by the end. Sometimes, as we’ve noted more than once, it just ain’t your night.

It was a quick return to the chair for Don. As we’ve already seen in this series, watching Don go through his GK round left us all to reflect on what might have been. He produced a double figure round of ten. It wouldn’t bring him the win, but would leave him to consider what might have happened with a different specialist subject.

Poor Han Ket Li. As much as the specialist round didn’t go the way she wanted, the GK went even worse. Frustrated early in the round she had a couple of answers that just wouldn’t spring off the tip of her tongue. As the round progressed and the incorrect answers and passes piled up she looked close to tears at one point. She finished with a total of ten. Sometimes it is REALLY not your night.

Piers Marchant was the outsider in what had become our two horse race. All he could do was to answer as many as he could, keep answering and let the devil take the hindmost. It brought him 9 for 19 which, honestly, did not really look like a winning score. Still, at least he had not passed which left Lorraine Behrens needing 7 to win outright.

You know, I did wonder whether Lorraine would prove to be the kind of contender who really wanted to shine on a subject on which she was extremely knowledgeable, but might be on a it of a wing and a prayer with the GK. So it proved. She only needed seven, but they were not proving easy to come by. At the end of the round she had only scored 6. She had also, though, incurred a pass, which meant that Piers, our outsider, had come through to win on the line. Hard lines Lorraine, it would be harsh to say that you have to be able to do a bit better in GK than 6 points to be able to win a heat. . . but it's probably true.

Well done Piers. You have to be able to have a good go at both rounds, as we’ve so often seen. Best of luck in the semis.

The Details

Han Ket Li	The band Madness	6	1	4	6	10	7
Lorraine Behrens	James Hutton	13	0	6	1	19	1
Piers Marchant	The Films of Wes Anderson	10	0	9	0	19	0
Don Mottram	The History of the Paris Metro	5	0	10	1	15	1

Mastermind Specialist - One of return of the wiki challenge

Okay, I said yesterday that I was going to take a look at the Wikipedia article on the Paris Metro. Just for fun I’ve derived some questions from the article. I can’t say whether any of them will actually feature, but I’ll be interested to see. Here they are -

How many stations – 361

How many lines – 16

Fully automated lines? – 1,4,14

Operated by? - Régie autonome des transports parisiens (RATP), 

When did it open? - 19 July 1900, during the World's Fair (Exposition Universelle)

First journey? - Porte de Vincennes to Porte Maillot

Originally how many stations opened on first day? 8 

Original operating company -  Compagnie du chemin de fer métropolitain de Paris 

Operating company was part of which group? – Empain group

Name was inspired by? – London Metropolitan Railway

First person to propose an urban railway in Paris? -  Florence de Kérizouet.

De Kerizouet’s plan would have used what? – Cable driven cars

In 1855 who made the first proposal for an underground railway in Paris -  Edouard Brame and Eugène Flachat 

Who did the city commission to plan and design its railway in the 1890s - Jean-Baptiste Berlier,

Whose eponymous project was adopted to limit the Metro and prevent it from extending into outer suburbs - Jean-Baptiste Berlier,

Original plan was for how many lines? – 9

When did construction begin?- November 1898

Who designed the original station entrances – Hector Guimard

How many original station entrances still exist? – 86

Which construction method was originally used? – Cut and Cover

In 1906 which planned line was merged with line 5? Line 2 south

A planned circular section of the metro was abandoned in 1923 after the section between Invalides and which station was completer? -Boulevard St. Germain

In 31 January 1904 which company were awarded the second underground railway concession in Paris - Société du chemin de fer électrique souterrain Nord-Sud de Paris

How many lines were built by Nord – Sud? – 3

In which year did CMP buy out the bankrupt Nord – Sud company ?- 1930

When was the last Nord-Sud train set decommissioned? – 155^th May 1972

Which new line replaced the saturated Belleville funicular Railway ? – 11

Which line, the first to leave the city proper, was extended to Boulogne Billancourt in 1934? – Line 9

With which company did CMP merge on 23^rd March 1948 to form RATP? – STCRP ( buses and tramways)

What was the designation of the prototype train testing rubber tyre wheels and automated systems? – MP31

In the sixties, what was created to combat the unprofitability of building extensions to the network? - Réseau Express Régional (regional express network; RER).

In which year were Ligne A and Ligne B of the RER inaugurated? – 1977

During construction what was the unofficial designation of what became line 14 in October 1998? (Meteor)

In 1903 what was the cause of the Couronnes Disaster? – Short Circuit

What became mandatory following the disaster – Carriages had to be made of steel

8 February 1962 incident in which 9 were killed? -  Charonne subway massacre

30 August 2000 24 passengers injured through train derailed when going too fast around what? – Notre Dame de Lorette hairpin

From the end of the 1960s an unpopular new style was rolled out in around 20 stations. It was named after the first station to be converted. Which was this? -  Mouton-Duvernet

Replicas of Metro station canopies can be found in several cities. In which city is Square-Victoria-OACI station, with the only original canopy located outside France? (Montreal)

Which symbol was adopted in the mid 70s to warn children of the danger of getting hands trapped in moving doors? – rabbit