Sunday 30 December 2012

Sleb Mastermind - Show 4

Sleb Mastermind on a Sunday ? Whatever will they think of next ? Never mind, vigilant Dave still managed to catch it, and I’ll gladly share with you the dubious benefit of my opinion.

I have to be honest, all I know about the novels of P.G.Woodhouse has come from quizzes, never having read any of them, Still , when Ken Bruce announced that his specialist subject was going to be the Jeeves novels, I wondered immediately whether he was going to be asked Jeeves’ christian name. That question is part of Mastermind history, you see. Back in the day Magnus and the team received a very irate complaint that he had said that Jesus’ christian name was Reginald. The question that the viewer had misheard was of course – what was Jeeves’ christian name ? That brought me a point, and guesses of things I’ve heard in quizzes brought me another three. Ken managed 11, and we know from the past few shows that this is a great score for a 90 second round.

Comedienne Holly Walsh gave us a very different subject with badgers. In the normal course of events, in the regular I wouldn’t expect to get many points at all on this sort of subject. However this is celebrity Mastermind, and so I bagged myself a pretty decent 8. Holly got all the answers I got, and one more. Pretty decent performance I thought, and it would give her a chance in the last round.

Ah, the 1980s ! The early and mid 80s were a good time for me, so I was pleased to see Paul Young taking to the black chair tonight. He was answering on the films of Johnny Depp. Now, when it comes to films, I’ve seen what I’ve seen, and the rest, I haven’t. So I thought that I might be able to answer some. The stupid thing is, I watched “Edward Scissorhands” again earlier today, but I still got the question about the first hedge shape he cuts wrong. I scraped my way through to 5 points, which coincidentally is the score that Paul managed. I’d venture to say that he knos some of the films better than others, and got asked quite a few about the films he doesn’t know so well. That’s the way the cookie crumbles on the show, I’m afraid.

We hadn’t had a CBBC presenter yet, and to be fair we didn’t get one now. We did get Sid Sloan, though, and he’s a long serving CBeebies presenter, which isn’t exactly the same I suppose, but isn’t far off. Sid was answering on Liverpool FC under Bob Paisley – which was the most successful era of the club’s history. I’m not a Liverpool fan, but I thought that I should know enough to get a couple. I got a couple wrong which I should have known, but was happy enough with my 5 points . Sid did a little better with 6, but he too looked like he knew more than he scored, but just couldn’t quite dredge up the answers.

For the first time this series we really had a two horse race by the halfway point, and to be honest one of those horses looked a better bet than the other. First, though, we had Paul Young’s GK round. Paul was answering on behalf of Children with Cancer UK. I should imagine that when you’ve had a specialist round where things haven’t really gone as well as you’d hope, then it would be easy to lose focus on your GK round and let things go from bad to worse. Full marks to Paul for keeping focus, and managing to find himself a double figure score. I had a full house on this round. However my hopes of following yesterday’s grand slam with another one were to be dashed in Sid Sloan’s round. In one of the later questions in his round Sid was asked who had played the role originally played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in “Total Recall” in the remake. Sid knew it was Colin Farrell, and I didn’t. see – I told you that what I haven’t seen I haven’t. Like Paul, Sid added 10 to his score , and took the lead with 16. Not for very long, admittedly, but he had been in the lead nonetheless.

Holly’s round brought me another wrong answer to go with Colin Farrell. I had no idea how many foot positions there are in ballet. Neither did Holly. Her answer of 52 was a lot further away than mine of 3 , but they were both wrong since it was 5. Representing Kid’s Company Holly scored 12, and set the target at 22. John sounded very impressed with this, but frankly, bearing in mind the scores we’ve seen in the other heats of the series I rather feel that this was more to build up some tension for the audience than out of any real feeling that Ken Bruce would have any difficulty getting the 12 he needed to win. Ken certainly didn’t seem to be feeling at all bothered , and indeed he rattled off 15, clearly the best round of the night. I managed a clear round with this set . So Ken finished with 26 for a clear win.

The Details

Ken Bruce Thomley Activity Centre The Jeeves novels of PG Wodehouse 11 – 0 15 – 1 26 - 1
Holly Walsh Kids Company Badgers 9 – 0 13- 022 – 0
Paul Young Children with Cancer UKThe Films of Johnny Depp 5 – 0 10-0 15 – 0
Sid Sloane The Sickle Cell Society Liverpool FC under Bob Paisley 6 – 0 10 – 1 16 – 1

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