Sunday 25 January 2015

Brain of Britain Reviews

Look, you’re all intelligent people, I know, and you all know that whatever I write in my reviews, it’s just my opinion. As I always say – this is just my opinion, and feel free to disagree. You know that it’s just my opinion, and it’s a matter of your opinion whether you feel mine is worth paying any attention to or not.

In previous reviews, I have used the word ‘starter’ for the first question each contender is asked in a round. I can see that this would give the impression that each contender has prearranged sets for each round, which is not the case. So the best thing is that I don’t use the word starter for the first question faced by each contender in any given round – which is purely a matter of blind luck depending on the order in which the questions come out. I will try very hard to avoid doing so.

I don’t write entries in my blog to upset people. I have upset readers on a few occasions, but never deliberately and never with malice aforethought. I have not been trying to say that there is some conspiracy on Brain of Britain when one contender seems to me to get first question after first question which seems to me to be harder than those faced by the others. Neither am I suggesting that adjudications are made deliberately to favour one contestant over another. However, when I have thought that the level of questions within a given show has been inconsistent, I have said so. When I have thought that a contestant was given an inconsistently lenient adjudication over an answer, or an inconsistently harsh one, I have said so. This is just my opinion. I don’t say for one moment that my opinion should have any more weight than anybody else’s just because I am a former finalist of the show. On the other hand though, I don’t think it should stop me from making a comment, or from making critical comments about the show, should I have any.

However, as I say, I hate the thought of upsetting people, and this is why I didn’t write a review of BoB last week. Having thought about it over the last few days, though, I decided to carry on, and see what the reaction is like. So here we go. 

2 comments:

Stephen Follows said...

Very fairly put (and I didn't mean to upset you either, or, Heaven forbid, stop you reviewing the show). Very happy to discuss this further on email - sorry not to have replied to your very long and eloquent email so far).

SF

Londinius said...

Hi Stephen,

No problem. Like I said, if you put things out there in the public domain it's there to be shot at.

What upsets me is thinking that what I write in the blog ends up upsetting other people, since the whole purpose is really just to share my own love of quizzes with others.

Thanks for taking trouble to leave this comment.

Dave