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.

Mastermind 2026 Semi Final 5

 The Tale of the Tape

1	David Ford	11	0	16	0	27	0
5	Paul Richardson	12	0	13	3	25	3
7	Paul Smith	10	2	13	0	23	0
=8	Milena Melcharek	12	0	10	0	22	0

Well, looking at the positions on our unofficial table based on first round performances I suppose you could say that this was a more top heavy semi than we’ve seen in this series so far. All 4 contenders featured in the top 10 of the table. Three of them each had GK scores in the teens. Time would tell whether this would translate into a high scoring contest.

Paul Smith offered us the subject on which I failed to score and that was Yellowstone National Park. I should probably have had the black bear, but hey, you can’t know everything. Or when it comes to Yellowstone Park, anything. Paul Smith did much better than that. He seemed to be struggling a little in the middle of the round but pulled it all back to finish with a competitive 8, giving him a chance if he could reproduce his GK form from the heats.

Milena Melcharek was answering on JRR Tolkein’s Silmarillion. My identification of this as one of two ‘banker’ subjects was correct as I took the first three questions on the bounce. Mind you , I didn’t manage another one for the whole of the rest of the round. As for Milena, well, she added a further 8 correct answers once she too had taken the first three answers. This was exactly what she needed to do, if you took the first round GK performances as a guideline. It looked as if she would need a half time lead of a couple of points and at the moment that is what she had.

David Ford headed our unofficial table. He had a great performance in the heats where he produced the best GK score of the series so far. Well, talking about his GK now is putting the cart before the horse. He had the round on Grace O’Malley to negotiate first. He did well too for the most part, however a couple of wobbles restricted him to 9 and that meant Milena still had daylight out in the lead between herself and him.

Could Paul Richardson do anything about it? Well, I have to be honest, his round on the England Men’s Football team at the FIFA World Cup was my joint banker and again I got three, Cards on the table, this was a tricky round. I know enough about the subject to recognise that this was asking for real, in-depth knowledge of the whole subject and I felt Paul was just a little found out by it. 7 is a perfectly respectable score at this stage but a 4 point deficit is too much to make up, barring exceptional circumstances.

He gave it a go, mind you. He never quite got up the head of steam that you need to get into double figures on GK but he came close and posted 9 for 16. Which was only 1 point less than last week’s winning total. Unlikely to be enough but honour satisfied, I think.

Paul Smith had achieved 13 on GK in the first round heats. If he could repeat this, then that would probably do very nicely. Well, he did manage double figures, but I did think that while good, this would maybe leave him a point or two off the lead when all the dust of the contest had settled.

So to David Ford. Let’s remind ourselves that he scored a monster 16 on GK in the heats. If he could repeat that then the game would probably be as good as over. Well, he didn’t do that. What he also didn’t do was let his concentration slip when the wrong answers were coming out and he managed to keep adding to his score. As a result he accumulated his own 10, which gave him a total of 19.

Putting this into perspective it meant that Milena did not need to equal the 10 she had scored on GK in the heats. 9 would be enough to win outright, and 8 and no passes would see her through on countback. Ah, but the fate of the contest can often be decided on the smallest margins. For one question Milena gave the answer ammonium when the answer on the card was ammonia. Clive had no choice but to rule it a wrong answer. She scored 7 for 18, and as David pointed out in his winner’s filmed insert at the end, had she said ammonia then she would have won.

I enjoyed the contest, even though once again we didn’t really see the kind of fireworks we might have hoped for. David, I wish you the best of luck in the final. Not long to go now.

The Details

Paul Smith	Yellowstone National Park	8	0	10	2	18	2
Milena Melcharek	The Silmarillon	11	0	7	0	18	0
David Ford	Grace O’Malley	1	0	10	1	19	1
Paul Richardson	The England Men’s Football Team at the Fifa World CUp	7	0	9	1	16	1

Oxford

Yes, thank you, I had a very nice weekend. Mary and I and our daughter Jenn visited Oxford yesterday, stayed overnight in Reading and popped into Bath on the way home today.

I have been to Oxford once before. About 10 years ago I took a busload of our most academic pupils to enjoy a taster day in the university. I liked it a lot but really didn’t see much of Oxford itself apart from the inside of some lecture halls. Yesterday we only scratched the surface but at least I did get to pay a visit to the Ashmolean Museum.

I’m sure you already know this, but the Ashmolean is the oldest public museum in the UK. It was created when Elias Ashmole passed on his collection to Oxford University on the understanding that it would be housed in a public museum which the University would build. Having seen at least part of the collection yesterday I’d say that the University got a pretty good deal out of it. I only scratched the surface when I got the phone call from Mary to come and have some afternoon coffee (I’m teetotal – I don’t touch tea) but the Museum had already passed the 2 hour test and while a coffee is always welcome I could have stayed longer.

Old Elias Ashmole seems to have been a bit of a lad, one way and another. He married a wealthy widow who was 20 years his senior so that he could avoid anything as distasteful as paid employment, for example. More pertinent to our story, though, was that he obtained the collection of John Tradescant the Younger. John’s father, John Tradescant the Elder was a very successful gardener to the nobility and even royalty, who was also an avid collector, not just of plants and seeds but also of curiosities. His son, John the Younger, was if anything even more of a collector. They called their collection, which they kept in Lambeth, The Ark, then the Musaeum Tradescantianum. Wily old Elias became friends with John the Younger and helped produce a catalogue for the collection. John the Younger lost his only son (John the Even Younger?) in 1652 and when he died in 1662 his will bequeathed the collection to Ashmole. John the Younger’s widow, Hester, contested the will – well you would, wouldn’t you? Her claim was that Elias had conned him into the will when he was blind drunk. Well, even if there was any truth to this, a widow, in fact any woman, could expect little sympathy from the courts in the 17^th century, especially considering that Elias had been a committed Royalist and had been rewarded at the time of the Restoration.

One less than finest hour for the Ashmolean concerns the remains of the ‘Oxford Dodo’. Tradescant the Younger had acquired a stuffed and mounted specimen of a dodo. We don’t know where from – there are records suggesting that a couple of dodos were brought to London in the last few decades before John II died, and it may well have been one of these. It was displayed in the Ashmolean from the Museum’s opening, but the care it was given was not all it could have been. In 1755 an inspection revealed that it was infested, and it was incinerated with only a foot and a head being deemed to be saveable. These are now in the Oxford Museum of Natural History. It’s not true to say they are the only extant remains of a dodo, but they are certainly the only remains with any soft tissue.

On the subject of the Oxford Museum of Natural History, the museum first opened in 1860. Now, sadly, I just didn’t have time to visit yesterday, but it’s on my list. I love a Natural History Museum and I’ve visited them in many cities. It’s quite possible that Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who included a dodo as a character in ‘Alice in Wonderland’ was inspired by the Oxford dodo remains in the Oxford Museum of Natural History, in fact it’s highly unlikely that he wouldn’t have seen it, living in Christ Church College himself. The famous painting of a dodo by Dutch artist Jan Savery was also on display in the museum, and it seems highly likely that John Tenniel based his illustration of the dodo on this picture, bearing in mind the similarities. The story of the dodo was well entrenched in the Victorian consciousness by the 1860s as a cautionary tale about man interfering with Nature. Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection” had been published on a few years earlier in 1859, and the huge furore surrounding it had heightened public interest in zoology and extinct creatures.

Coming back to the Oxford dodo, the tragedy is that these are the most complete remains of any single dodo, and the only known tissue remains  of one on the planet. As a footnote, in 2018 researchers from the University of Warwick, using highly powered scanners, discovered lead shot in the back of the head and the neck, leading to the conclusion that this dodo was shot, rather having died of old age or mistreatment as had been previously conjectured.

The phrase insult to injury seems somehow appropriate.

Be a Good Chap and Tick That Box, Will You?

Last week I made a non-quiz related post about chocolate and in particular the chocolate tins sent by Queen Victoria to the British and Empire armies fighting in the Second Boer War (which is what we usually mean when we use the more general term, The Boer War). I’d hate to give you the idea that I think that the Second Boer War is anything to be proud about. I absolutely don’t condone war generally and I particularly don’t condone the Boer War. But I am interested in the ‘ordinary’ people who experienced that war and others and the way that they were treated by all sides. I explained the process by which I became interested in the tins in that previous post.

So, to recap, Queen Victoria sent a New Year gift of a tin of half a pound of chocolate to each of the soldiers. The chocolate and the tins were made by three quaker manufacturers – Cadbury, Rowntree and Fry. Not wanting to profit from war the three firms donated the chocolate. Victoria paid for the tins and for the cost of shipping them to South Africa. Incidentally, to her the cost of manufacturing each tin and shipping it to South Africa was 3d – 3 old pennies. Many of the soldiers so treasured the tins that they wanted to send them to their families back home. It cost them about five shillings to do so, a very substantial sum. An example of one law for the rich.

For all the cost, I guess a lot of soldiers did this, or at the very least looked after their tins carefully and brought them back home with them, because they’re not uncommon even more than a century and a quarter later. I have two, as I mentioned. The tins all followed the same design but each chocolate company had their own manufacturer, so even though the producers did not put their company names or logos on the tins it is possible to tell who made which one due to differences between the tins. I have a Rowntree’s tin and a Cadbury’s tin and I’m hoping to eventually acquire a Fry’s tin.

Fine, most of the above I covered in that previous post. Since I posted that I’ve been looking into the company that designed the tins, Barclay and Fry of Southwark. The company was begun by Robert Barclay in 1855. He’d started out by printing banknotes for Barclay’s Bank – I have no idea if he was connected to them or if this was just coincidence. When he joined with his brother in law John Fry they began developing the process of offset lithography. Again, I have no idea if John Fry was related to the chocolate Frys. They patented their process of printing on tins, licensed the patent and generally made rather a good thing of it.

The firm continued after the deaths of its founders. During the first world war several of the country’s biggest tinning firms collaborated closely and four of them, including Barclay and Fry, amalgamated into the Allied Tin Box Limited although each constituent company operated independently – a bit like Fry’s and Cadbury’s in most of the 20^th century. In 1922, the company was renamed Metal Box.

If you’re around my age, that name may well be known to you. On a personal level, I began teaching in Briton Ferry in 1987. Briton Ferry is part of the South Wales town of Neath, and not far from the school at all was a Metal Box factory. I hadn’t been in the school very long when Metal Box merged with French company Carnaud to become Carnaud Metal Box, or CMB.

Now, being that the best part of 40 years has passed since these events occurred my memory is a little sketchy, But as I recall, as part of the merger a decision had to be made as to what to do with the old Metal Box benevolent fund, or something of that ilk. What CMB decided was to do something to benefit the children in the communities where the factories were based. They offered to buy us interactive video software and equipment. Now, I’m not really sure why but it was decided that the English department and the Maths Department should participate in the whole rigamarole of choosing the software. Being the youngest in the English department at that time I was told it would be me, together with a member of the Maths department. This involved a visit to the factory and a guided tour. At the time we visited the factory as I recall CMB were trying to perfect a microwavable tin for baked beans/soup/you name it. Well, I guess they never caught on.

The second part of the process was an overnight stay in Telford, together with a couple of executives from CMB, a member of the Baglan schools’ IT centre and representatives from the other schools involved. Now as for the software, I think we got to choose 2 out of 4. I can only remember one of them. I think it was called Discovering Presentations, and it featured the late Mel Smith as Christopher Columbus. For the time it was actually pretty good. But.

The school was provided with one computer and one copy of the software.

That meant that you couldn’t use it with a whole class. Back in those days there was no internet. The school had one computer room and that was populated with BBC B micro computers which couldn’t have handled the software even if it had been available to all of them.

This meant that the best you could do was use it with small groups or pairs, who went off to the room opposite the library to use it unsupervised while the rest of the class got on with other work. In practice this meant that the use of the equipment and software was minimal.

Until executives from CMB asked the local authority if they could visit the school to see how their gift was being used. So this meant that the Headteacher made it pretty clear that we had to cobble together a unit of work based on the using the stuff. Actually I never minded this sort of thing. Making units of work always appealed to my creative side and it was one aspect of teaching that I always enjoyed. However, we had to also put together a fictitious protocol for taking turns using the equipment with our own classes, and to actually follow it for the few weeks leading up to the visit. This despite the fact that I would say that, because of the problem with using it with a whole class, the effect of all of this effort was frankly negligible. We weren’t doing it because we could see huge benefit for the children. We were doing it so that boxes were ticked to keep people in authority happy. Some things never change – they certainly didn’t through my career.

This week's Mastermind Semi-final Specialist Subjects

Heads up peeps. Two more semis to go. Tomorrow night’s specialists are:-

Yellowstone National Park,

JRR Tolkien's The Silmarillion

the Irish ‘pirate queen’ Grace O'Malley

the England men's team at the Fifa World Cup.

Well, I wouldn’t say that list of subjects is exactly full of Eastern Promise but at least I should score points on the second and fourth. Yellowstone is a bit of a lottery – it’s the kind of subject where I might scrape 1 on general knowledge. But for all I know Grace O’Malley might just as well be the big ginger tom in the Aristocats.

Principles be damned

Principles can be a dangerous thing to have.

I have always said that I will never not go to a quiz in the rugby club simply because I don’t like the quizzes from a particular setter. Yes I’ve missed quizzes because I’ve been ill or otherwise engaged. There was one setter whose quizzes I stopped going to because she made a very personal comment about me on the microphone. But there’s no one for whom I’ve said - they are so bad at this that I just can’t sit through another one of their quizzes. Even though I’ve wanted to say that.

Nobody who sets quizzes on a Thursday night in the Aberavon Rugby Club has ever tried to present themselves as a professional quiz master. Nobody has, to the best of my knowledge, received anything more than a couple of drinks for doing the quiz. You have to respect that.

But.

As much as I do really like last night’s setter as a person, his quiz was awful. Seriously dire and not even in a ‘so bad it has a certain ironic enjoyability ‘ way either. Our question setter committed many of what I would call simple yet serious blunders, all guaranteed to turn the evening into an unentertaining slog. We had:-

Some very turgid questions requiring very specific knowledge – for example How many metres in a nautical mile? If you’re going to ask a question like that, at least make it a multiple choice to give people a chance

Some questions where the answer did not match the questions as they were asked. For example – which three countries have capital cities whose capital city is less than 400 miles from Mount Everest? Check the wording of that question again. Okay – we put down Nepal, Tibet (which you can argue is not a country because it is not currently an independent sovereign state rightly or wrongly ) and Bhutan. Answer given – Kathmandu, Lhasa, Thimphu. He had asked for the countries, yet gave the capitals for the answer.

In two rounds he had to leave a question out at the end of the round because he had already asked it in a previous round. Once is careless. Twice – supply your own adjective.

He has difficulty pronouncing or reading his own questions. His very idiosyncratic way of doing this sometimes renders even straightforward questions much more difficult.

He would ask quite a few questions with multiple answers – for example, name the 4 chemical elements named after the Swedish town of Ytterby – and then only award 1 point if you had all 4. When challenged about the fairness he fell back on the ‘It’s my quiz!’ argument. I’ll be honest, that was the point where I really lost any sympathy for him. When you’re a question master it is NOT about you using and abusing your little bit of power. It is supposed to be about providing everyone else with an evening’s entertainment. Full stop.

There was a bit of a feeling of ‘couldn’t be arsed’ about some of his questions. He asked for a boxer’s nickname and when I pointed out he had more than one he replied ‘I know but I couldn’t remember the other.’ Which just shows that he couldn’t be arsed to google it when compiling the quiz. There really is no excuse for not checking your answers.

It’s difficult to be sure but I don’t think that the other teams, except possibly his own, are that fond of his quizzes. The poor guy was supposed to do this quiz three weeks ago, but he was ill. Now, back when it was announced that he would be doing the quiz, none other than Captain Slapdash himself called out ‘I can feel a headache coming on next Thursday!’ implying he wanted to avoid it. Now, okay, you might not like his quizzes but I think that’s unnecessarily rude, especially bearing in mind the crap that the Captain himself so often produces in his own quizzes. Whatever you think of the quiz, the tradition is that at the end of the quiz, after the QM has signed off, one of the audience will shout thank you  (supply name here)! And everyone will give them a round of applause. Last night no one else seemed to want to issue thanks so I shouted it, and hardly anyone joined me in a round of applause. In a way I understand, but again, it is a bit rude.

Now, if it was me, I wouldn’t mind anyone coming up to me and telling me what was wrong with my own quiz. We would talk about it calmly and rationally, I would explain the beauty and brilliance of the quiz they had just been fortunate enough to participate in and in the end we would agree that I was right and they were wrong. But there’s just no way I can do it with anyone else. Even though, in this case, I just don’t think the setter is cut out to be question master for a pub quiz. Not everyone is. We can’t all be brain surgeons. We can’t all be formula 1 drivers. We certainly can’t all teach. It’s nothing to be ashamed of if that’s not where your skills lie. Read the room and call it a day. But I can’t actually tell him that.

The trouble is, despite everything, I still probably take quizzes too seriously. If I didn’t then last night’s quiz would just have been the best part of two hours’ tedium. But I get so frustrated with bad quizzes that I honestly don’t think I can deliberately go through an evening like that again.

Principles be damned.

Cheers Balfie - we owe you one

I don’t often think about Balthazar Sanchez, but I did today. Who, Balthazar Sanchez? Why, none other than (reputedly) the first man to import chocolate to England. From 1995 to 2011 my mum used to live in Tottenham, not very far from the Bruce Castle Museum and on more than one occasion I’d take my kids for a walk along the road to take a look and play in the park. The museum is housed in a building that was once the home of the Royal Mail supremo Rowland Hill, the man who introduced pre-paid postage, and it has a courtyard which houses several pillar boxes. In the same area there was a large stone plaque, bearing the name Balthazar Sanchez. I did a little research and found out that he was a Spanish confectioner from Jerez who came to England in the wake of Mary Tudor’s husband Philip II of Spain, liked it and stayed. I believe he is the first person we know to have introduced chocolate to Britain. He seems to have done rather well. After settling down in Tottenham he endowed almshouses there and the stone plaque in the museum was removed from them when they were demolished.

Chocolate. The Aztecs gave us chocolate while we Europeans gave them smallpox. Not exactly in the spirit of fair trade. (Incidentally, research has shown that it’s an urban myth that the Spanish conquistadores introduced syphilis to the Americas – apparently it had been present for thousands of years prior to their arrival.)

I found myself thinking about good old Balfie through a rather circuitous process. For Christmas my brother gave me a Princess Mary tin. In brief, in 1914 Princess Mary, the daughter of King George V and Queen Mary wanted to send a gift to all the British soldiers serving on the Western Front. She did not have the funds to do so but it was such a good idea that members of the public were invited to subscribe to the Princess Mary Gift Fund which proved so successful that eventually all members of the British and Empire Armed services received the gift, although it was 1920 by the time the last was given out. Many of these tins still exist. I have written in more detail about this in an article for a future edition of PASS, the Mastermind Club magazine and if you’re interested you can read more on this page from my other blog – click the link.

Princess Mary Tins

Through my Mary tin, I became interested in what I guess might have inspired the Princess Mary Tin. After the start of the second Boer War in 1899, Queen Victoria decided to send a gift to each soldier, NCO and officer serving in the British and Empire armies in South Africa. She decided to send each man a tin of chocolate. Victoria wanted to make sure that her boys knew she was sending them top quality merch and she was obviously a Cadbury fan since she commissioned Cadbury to make the gifts. This proved a tricky problem for Cadbury, though. The Cadbury family were quakers. They did not want to profit from war, nor to be seen to be doing so. However, such a patriotic commission from the Mother of the Empire was difficult to refuse. The solution was that Cadbury invited Rowntree and Fry, both also quaker-owned, to share the commission. Each firm would donate the chocolate within the tin. Victoria would pay for the cost of making the tins and sending them to South Africa. She wanted each company to put their name on their tins, but they refused and compromised by stamping their names on the chocolate within the tins.

The tins all followed the same design by Barclay and Fry of Southwark. However, each chocolate company used their own manufacturer for the tins. This means that even though they used the same design there are differences between them and it is possible to tell them apart even if the chocolate inside is long gone. I’ve collected a Rowntree’s tin and a Cadbury’s tin and I’m currently in the market for a Fry’s tin.

Top - Rowntree's tin
Bottom - Cadbury's tin. Wanted - a Fry's tin

I must admit that it does strike me that amongst the three companies, Fry’s seemed to me to be the runt of the litter – small fry if you should excuse the pun. When I was growing up, at the height of my chocolate eating days, it seemed as if Cadbury’s, with the mighty Dairy Milk and associated products and Rowntree’s with their wide range of confectionary dominated the market, along with the ubiquitous Mars company. Fry’s, well, what did they have? The dreadfully boring Fry’s Chocolate Cream and Fry’s Turkish Delight were all I ever noticed.

Yet actually, a little research shows that Fry’s were very much a big name in the 19^th century. Fry’s are credited with marketing the very first solid chocolate bar. They were responsible for several firsts in the 19^th century. They also created the first chocolate easter egg. The afore mentioned Chocolate Cream, still available today, is believed to be the world’s oldest surviving chocolate bar brand. Although they merged with Cadbury’s in 1919, forming the British Chocolate and Cocoa Company, they maintained their operational independence until the end of the 1960s. It was Fry’s who first made Crunchie although this was taken under the Cadbury brand by the time I was eating them.

You know, when I first started attending the Thursday night quiz in the Aberavon Rugby Club, all of the other regular setters and question masters were a minimum of 20 years older than me, and it wasn’t unusual for them to ask questions about things which were from their own youth. I remember one QM asking a question about Fry’s Five Boys Chocolate. Now, a quick google reveals that Five Boys chocolate was discontinued in 1976. Well, I remember 1976 and quite a few years before it for that matter, but I don’t remember Five Boys chocolate. If, like me, you don’t recall the product, the unusual name came from the branding. The wrapper of the bar showed not five different boys but 5 photographs of the same boy, wearing a sailor suit going through the 5 emotions one feels when anticipating then enjoying a bar of Fry’s chocolate. For the record these were Desperation – Pacification – Expectation – Acclamation and Realisation. Not so much the five stages of grief as the five stages of throwing a tantrum to get a sweetie. Don’t knock it.

Well, marketing and branding in 1902 when the bar was launched wasn’t what it is today. Mind you, it didn’t do too badly, since I’ve heard the bar described as the most recognised chocolate bar in the world in the middle of the 20^th century. Incidentally the young shaver on the wrapper was a real boy called Lindsay Poulton whose father and grandfather took the photos for which Frys paid £200 in 1902. For the record that’s the equivalent of almost £16,000 today – a nice little earner.

I have heard it said that the philanthropist, prison reformer and former tenant of the £5 note, Elizabeth Fry was a member of the family, and I’ve also heard it said that she was no relation. The truth actually lies somewhere between. Her maiden name was Gurney and she married Joseph Fry, who was a cousin of the chocolate making family.

The  business began in Bristol in 1761, becoming J.S.Fry and Sons in 1822. Compared with this Cadbury began in 1824 while new kids on the block Rowntree didn’t begin until 1862.

So, does knowing all this make me feel more determined to get hold of a Fry’s Boer War tin? I dunno, but it certainly doesn’t make me any less!