Maybe I’m being a little bit nasty here, or maybe I’m just showing my own ignorance, but this first show was something of a rarity for me in as much as I’ve actually heard of all four celebrities on it. I’ve had a look at the list of all the people taking part this year, and I have to say that quite a few of the names don’t ring a bell with me at all. Still, let’s deal with the job in hand first. Chrissy Rock, an actress who took part in I’m a Celebrity a series or two ago, kicked off the series with a round on Henri de Toulouse Lautrec. Those of you who caught my previous post will know that this was one of the subjects I took the wiki challenge with. Through a combination of things I already knew, and things I picked up from my Wikipedia research I managed 8 points, which incidentally was the same score that Chrissy Rock managed. I didn’t think that was all that impressive until I realized that the specialist rounds are only 90 seconds long in this series.
Double gold medal winning paralympian athlete Hannah Cockroft came next, answering questions on my second wiki subject , the group McFly. Once again good wiki work brought me 8 points on this round. Hannah though achieved the feat of getting into double figures. In a 90 second round that’s a mark of quality. She was certainly going to be in contention at the halfway stage.
Lizo Mzimba was the second longest serving presenter of BBC’s Newsround, after John Craven , and is currently BBC News ‘ Entertainment Correspondent. Lizo’s specialist subject, the Smiley novels of John Le Carre presented me with a huge obstacle, inasmuch as I have never read any of them, or watched a dramatic presentation of any sort of any of them. So the big fat zero I achieved didn’t exactly come as a surprise. Lizo though was impressively quick and sharp with his answers, although he only outdid Hannah by virtue of incurring no passes as he scored 11.
I can’t say that I’ve ever read any of Val McDermid’s novels , but then she’s probably never read any of mine either. Val was answering on The Life and Works of Christopher Marlowe. There was an awful lot about the life, and not such a huge amount about the work, so much so that I was happy to take my 4 points from this round. Val, though, certainly knew her stuff about the man who suffered a great reckoning in a small room. She too scored 11 and no passes.
John paid tribute to a high scoring first round, and that was fair comment . He also commented that the GK round would probably sort the men out from the boys. He’s been doing this job for long enough to know damn well that this is exactly what it would do. Chrissy Rock came back, and provided a little light relief in her chat with John. Unfortunately she tried to do so during her round as well when she began floundering. I know that this is a lighthearted joust and the slebs are all doing it for a bit of fun, and to provide some cash and a little publicity to some very worthy causes, but I’m afraid I just don’t like it when they start giving John backchat during the questions. OK, unreasonable rant over. Chrissy score 5 to take her score to 13.
Hannah only needed 3 to take the lead, and she managed this in fairly short order. The job now was to whack in enough correct answers to make life difficult for Lizo and Val. To be fair to her she managed double figures again, but bearing in mind the GK scores we often see in the sleb version of the show her score of 22 seemed unlikely to win. A point which was borne out by Lizo’s round, when his 14 took the target to 25. 14 is a very good score in a 2 minute round in regular Mastermind, but the best slebs tend to do quite a lot better than this in their GK. So the only question that really remained was this – was Val a really good celebrity contender or not ? The answer came quickly, as it became very apparent that yes, Val is a very good celebrity contender, as she whacked in 18 correct answers in her two minutes, to put her comfortably ahead of the rest, as she finished with 29. Well played all.
The Details
| Chrissy Rock | Families for Justice | The Life and Work of Toulouse Lautrec | 8 - 0 | 5 - 4 | 13 - 4 |
| Hannah Cockroft | Forget Me Not Children’s Hospice | McFly | 11 - 1 | 11 - 2 | 22 - 3 |
| Lizo Mzimba | Save the Children | The George Smiley Novels of John Le Carre | 11 - 0 | 14 - 0 | 25 - 0 |
| Val McDermid | Eaves | The Life of Christopher Marlowe | 11 - 0 | 18 - 1 | 29 – 1 |
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