Show 22
Sorry about last week. To try tomake amends we’ll
have a bumper double review of Mastermind. Last week, then, saw a very serious
returning contender in the shape of Graham Barker. Last time out in 2013 Graham
was unlucky to lose in the first round when he was narrowly defeated by a
circumstance over which none of us have any control – one of the other
contenders played out of his skin and had a blinding GK round. Still, we’ll
come back to Graham shortly.
In the meantime let’s cast an eye over Peter Spicer’s
round. Peter, I believe, took part in Brain of Britain a couple of years ago.
Peter was answering on the TV series Gavin and Stacey. Now, there’s all kind of
theories doing the rounds about how specialist rounds are put together. I do
know some people who firmly believe that if you take a popular TV series, for
example, then you will get harder questions than if you take, let’s say,
Shakespeare’s Tragedies. Personally, I think such speculation is pointless. If
you opt to take a subject, then ANYTHING within the subject is fair game, and
you must prepare accordingly. I know Gavin and Stacey well enough to say,
without wishing to be horrible, that there were questions Peter didn’t answer
which he probably should have been able to. That’s quizzing, it happens. Still,
it did look like he’d fall foul of my old adage that you can lose it on
specialist, and win it on GK.
Remember how I just said that you have to prepare for
anything about your subject in specialist? Well, Graham Barker’s round provided
us with a textbook example of just that. This was that relative rarity, a
perfect round of 14 questions and 14 correct answers. For the last few years a
score of 14 on Specialist is an exceptional performance. Bearing in mind Graham’s
GK pedigree as well, you could have been forgiven for thinking that the others
were playing for a repechage slot. Unless someone managed an exceptional GK
performance, that is . . .
Virgin number 2, Ian Protheroe, offered us an
excellent specialist round of his own, on baseball player Jackie Robinson. We’re
not great baseball fans here in the UK, as a rule, and so Jackie Robinson is
not the revered figure here that he rightly is in the US. Jackie Robinson was
the man who broke the colour bar in baseball, playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers
in the 1940s and 50s. A hugely talented player, and just as importantly, a man
of tremendous presence and dignity. Ian managed to do the man justice with a
fine round of 12 points.
Finally, then Theresa McWhirter gave us William
Morris. You should always be cautious if you’re trying to suggest why a
contender achieves only a relatively modest score on Specialist – in Theresa’s
case, 7. I don’t know enough about William Morris to be able to say whether her
set was harder than average, but as we’ve said, you have to prepare for
anything which might be asked on your subject. As a rule of thumb, if you’re
not sure whether it might possibly be asked or not, then learn it. Whether it
was nerves, well, who knows?
Even wearing the rosiest tinted of spectacles it was
fairly clear that this wasnow, at best, a two horse race. Peter came back,
though, and his GK round at least gave us a tantalising glimpse of what might
have been. 13 in a GK round, well, maybe not worlkd beating, but it ain’t bad
at all, and put that together with a double figure specialist round and you’re
at the kind of score which will give you a chance of winning an average heat.
Theresa herself didn’t quite manage double figures on GK. Her score of 9 pushed
her up to 16 – let’s be honest, it’s a modest total – but she looked as if she’d
enjoyed the experience, and that’s important.
Ian then had three targets, being realistic. The first
was to score the 9 points he needed to go into the outright lead. Well, he did
achieve that, but it took him the whole round to do so. The second target had
been to achieve a score which would be high enough to give him a chance of a
repechage slot. Well, that didn’t happen, sadly. The third target was to set
the kind of challenging total which would put Graham into the corridor of
doubt. I think we can safely say that a target of 8 was not enough to do this.
Not that Graham would be content with merely the 8 he
needed to progress to the semis. His round was a good demonstration of just how
to handle a GK round. He didn’t answer every question correctly, no, but he
didn’t pass, and he didn’t dwell on wrong answers, knowing that a correct
answer would be along in a moment or two. The overall score of 29 gave him one
of the most emphatic victories of the first round, and if we’re honest he has
to be counted amongst the most serious contenders for the overall title this
year. Well played, Graham!
Peter Spicer
|
Gavin and Stacey
|
7
|
4
|
13
|
3
|
20
|
7
|
Graham Barker
|
John Gielgud
|
14
|
0
|
15
|
0
|
29
|
0
|
Ian Protheroe
|
Jackie Robinson
|
12
|
0
|
9
|
3
|
21
|
3
|
Theresa McWhirter
|
William Morris
|
7
|
1
|
9
|
1
|
16
|
2
|
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