Yes, with tomorrow's Mastermind fast approaching I've been having a quick look at El Tel's wiki page, and here's the questions I've culled from the information thereon. We'll see how many - if any - feature in the show.
Terry Venables Wiki Challenge Questions
1. Where was Terry Venables born ?
2. What is his middle name ?
3. For which team did he make his first team debut as a professional footballer ?
4. IN which year did he make this debut ?
5. Terry Venables has managed England and which other national football team ?
6. What was the name of the secondary school attended by Terry Venables ?
7. Terry Venables signed for his first professional club after being left out of which amateur squad ?
8. Against which cub did Venables score in the final of the 1965 League Cup ?
9. For how much was Venables sold to Tottenham Hotspur in 1966 ?
10. Venables was one of the players whose bust up with which manager over a pre match curfew eventually leading to his sale to Tottenham Hotspur?
11. How many goals did Venables score in his professional league career ?
12. How many games did Venables play for Crystal Palace before being appointed their manager ?
13. Venables was appointed manager of Crystal Palace in succession to which manager ?
14. In his first season as manager Palace achieved promotion through a dramatic away win on the last day of the season against which club ?
15. In which month of 1979 did Venables’ Crystal Palace top the first division for the only time in the club’s history ?
16. In October 1980 Venables left Palace to manage which club ?
17. Against which side did Venables QPR lose an FA Cup Final replay in 1982 ?
18. In 1984 QPR achieved their highest League position while he was manager, what was it ?
19. Which fellow British manager recommended Venables for the position of coach of Barcelona ?
20. In which year did Barcelona under Venables win La Liga ?
21. Which team defeated Venables’ Barcelona in the final of the 1986 European Cup in a penalty shoot out ?
22. In the semi finals of the 1986 European Cup, Venables’ Barcelona overame a 3- 0 first leg deficit to beat which team ?
23. Which British team defeated Barcelona in the quarter finals of the Uefa Cup in 1987, which was one of the contributory factors towards the end of Venables’ tenure ?
24. Whom did Venables sign for Spurs in the first £2 million transfer between British clubs ?
25. Who was Venables partner in his failed £20 million bid to takeover Spurs ?
26. When Venables was appointed as Chief Executive by Alan Sugar which former manager was reappointed as team manager ?
27. What was Venables’ official designation when he was appointed in charge of the England National team in 1994 ?
28. Which team did Venables’ England team defeat 4 – 1 during the group stages of the 1996 Euro ?
29. Venables was appointed the manager of Australia following whose resignation ?
30. Which competition did Venables lead Australia to the final of in 1997 ?
31. Which team beat them in the final of this competition ?
32. Venables’ Australia missed out on qualification for the 1998 World Cup when they were beaten on the away goals rule in a play off against which team ?
33. While managing Australia Venables became consultant with then Chairman of which English league club ?
34. Which of his former clubs did Venables return to manage in 1998 ?
35. With whom did Venables co-manage Middlesbrough in 2001 in their successful fight against relegation ?
36. A fortnight into his appointment as manager of Leeds United, Venables sold which England international for a record transfer fee to Manchester United ?
37. What was the name of Venables’ London Drinking Club ?
38. Which TV series was co – written by Venables for ITV ?
39. Under which pseudonym did Venables and his co writer write the series ?
40. Venables has co-written four novels with which author ?
41. In 1994 which BBC programme made allegations against Venables ?
42. A photograph of Venables appeared on the cover for which single by Morrissey ?
43. With which band did Venables record England Crazy in 2002 ?
44. Venables appeared in a 1996 TV advert with former managers Graham Taylor and Bobby Robson for what ?
45. Venables is Chairman of which Welsh League side ?
46. In 2010 Venables’ version of “If I Can Dream reached number 23 in the charts. It was produced in association with which newspaper ?
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6 comments:
Rather a short Wikipedia page on Venables! (about 1/3 length of the typical lengthy write-up for a notable). I hope the setters dig much deeper. I guess they can make good use of the biography, commentaries, and fictional works.
It would probably be quite a painful experience to read said fiction, though.
We are moving ever closer to the specialist subject round of 'The Kardashians'...in fact lets take bets on when the first reality star becomes the subject of a specialism. I'm gonna go with 2014-15 series (unless it's already happened?)
PS Not including celeb mastermind.
Hi AaronW. This is a debate which has been going on since before Mastermind was revived for BBCTV. In my 2007 SOBM (Season of Blessed Memory ) , in my first round heat a lady called Stacey Mitchell took as her specialist subject The Life and Career of Jennifer Aniston. This sparked comment in some of the national papers – ill informed comment in my humble opinion, although that’s just my opinion, and as always, feel free to disagree. By a curious twist of fate I later found out that Stacey is a member of the same Amateur Dramatic group as my best mate from University . According to him Stacy was quite philosophical about the things which were said, and I’m glad, because it wasn’t very pleasant. It also failed to take into account that even a popular culture subject such as Jennifer Aniston still has to be prepared for. The tone of most of the comments implied that a subject like Jennifer Aniston was a ‘soft touch’ compared to more traditional subjects. The fact is that assessing the relative difficulty of different specialist subjects is a complex, and I would suggest, inexact science. But every subject has to be prepared for thoroughly if you’re a contender. If you do prepare, there is still the possibility that you’ll fall flat on your face. If you don’t prepare . . .
Which is not to say that I support an ‘anything goes’ approach to selecting specialist subjects. If I might pick up on some of your examples, I think you might draw the line between a reality star who maybe went on to have a career of interest , of which the reality show was only the start . I’ll be honest – not many occur to me off the top of my head. But it may well be the case that a reality star would at some time have enough of a body of work, or enough of a ‘media’ career or presence to make them a viable subject. However the winner of a reality show who has no other claim to notice than being the winner of a reality show, no. I can’t see that such a person would be a viable subject. If I might risk being controversial – I can see someone one day applying to take the life of the late Jade Goody as a subject, but then due to the nature of her life following her original appearance on Big Brother, and the level of public interest in her high profile life afterwards, she would possibly be a special case.
I can see someone taking a more A level Media Studies Approach to the subject, possibly offering something along the lines of – The TV Reality Show in the UK – 1990 to the Present Day. And to be honest, it’s not without validity as a specialist subject at all.
Sounds like the papers were harsh on her as a person, but the broader point that not 'anything goes' can still be true. You can ask insanely obscure questions about popular subjects and make the quiz extremely hard to answer, but it's not quite the same thing as offering an inherently challenging subject at the outset (even if you answer fewer questions on it, i think people will be more respectful of the effort).
'The TV Reality Show in the UK – 1990 to the Present Day'
Now that's a respectable subject. It covers a social phenomenon as a whole, from a detached perspective. It is intimidatingly broad, too - 20 years and numerous shows.
Lots of philosophical issues - democratisation of fame (Warhol), voyeurism, impact of digital technology on social networks etc.). There have been real social impacts too e.g. reality shows contributed strongly to the acceptance of gay rights, something i'm personally grateful for. And lots of characters that, for better or worse, entered the national language and become part of the modern folklore.
There are very interesting spin-offs of the basic reality premise in literature, film, TV drama, too etc e.g. Charlie Brooker's Deadzone, which i absolutely loved, that couldn't have existed without this type of game show. Once something is mature enough to be widely parodied, then it probably deserves a place in university courses (and by implication Mastermind quiz sets). I'm fine with all that.
Incidentally, I thought the very first Big Brother was the most interesting, even though the least effort was made to make it interesting. It was stark in its content, and kind of fascinating as a result. BB become a real eyesore as the years went on though. More about gimmickry and shock in the end.
I won't pretend that i'd like it if more and more popular culture ended up in Mastermind - there are 100s of other quizzes for that. And i wouldn't like it if University Challenge went the same way.
I'm not saying that 'popular' subjects are easier to answer questions on (although actually i do think it requires less effort to watch a funny TV show than master the history of the Romanovs, for example) - just that they send out the wrong kind of message in what is one of our only national institutions on television representing all things academic.
This is a debate which goes way beyond mastermind of course. People's natural state is to prefer to be quite lazy and chilled out, and that's fair enough (it's very nice to relax!). But if it gets harder to convince people to bother aspiring to really tough intellectual challenges, because the easy options are rewarded just as well, then of course we will have less concrete achievements in the end - something which affects the economy, directly, and the standard of life of the nation more indirectly too (which ultimately might make it harder to have the nice relaxing life that was sought out in the first place!). ok, that's a bit off topic, but it underlies why i like some kind of 'standards' to be kept in place - whether in schools or in Mastermind, or wherever else.
Keep the life of Jade Goody for idle time flicking through Cosmo in a hairdressing salon, and that's fine. But when it comes to Mastermind, lets see people making a real effort to stretch themselves and inspire others to do the same!!
P.S. Deadset not Deadzone.
Must have been getting muddled up with the Crystal maze lol
Just had bit of a revelation. I don't think it's about high brow v. low brow actually!!! Or not ONLY that.
It's actually much more to do with whether something is contemporary or in the past!
The conservative press would not whip up a storm about someone offering a music hall performer, such as Marie Lloyd from the 1900s, but they probably would if you offered an X-factor contestant from the 2000s.
Perhaps that's the problem with choosing Aniston - rather than say a comic acress like Carole Lombard from the 30s. It's not that she is an actress but that she is living, and also probably too young. It's a little like people releasing their autobiographies at age 20. It tends to provoke sarcastic comment.
I'd find Lennon a more acceptable than McCartney, because the story of McCartney isn't yet something you can look at in a detached way as a whole. The definitive biography has not yet been written.
'The Beatles' is ok because, even though 2 of them are still alive, the complete canon of Beatles music already exists, and there have been a few decades to make sense of it all.
However 'One direction' would fail this test, not only because they have said much less, but because we do not know the complete story yet.
J.Edgar Hoover would be fine, but Barack Obama would not be; Elizabeth I would be good, but Elizabeth II would not be. And i think it does feel right. Obama and Liz II are significant characters, and you can obviously ask as many quiz questions as you like about either of them - but they don't make such satisfying SPECIALIST subjects as the people that are now in the past (where we can assess them as a complete story, more detachedly). I'm not saying they are completely invalid choices, just that the choices aren't so academically satisfying.
For lots of reasons it could be preferable to avoid contemporaries (and this has nothing to do with high culture v. low culture).
Just an idea...?
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