Mastermind 2022 - Semi Final 4

Graeme Jackson	Grace Kelly	12	0	9	2	21	2
Anthony Fish	Alfred Hitchcock films of the 1950s	14	0	16	0	30	0
Ro Duns	The Alnwick Garden	10	0	12	1	22	2
Andrew Fanko	Great Britain at the Winter Olympics	13	0	13	0	26	0

In In every semi final, dearly beloved, there are questions to be answered, and not just those asked by Clive Myrie, either. There’s the perennial questions of whether contenders who have had a good specialist score in the heats can manage to do the same with a different specialist subject. Then there’s the question whether those who produced very good general knowledge rounds can do so again, or whether the score from the heat was just a flash in the pan.

I say this because last night’s heat featured Anthony Fish, highest scorer from the heats. Being highest scorer in the heats guarantees, nothing other than a place in the semi-final, but it’s not unreasonable to think that it’s an indication of a real contender.

First up, though, was Graeme Jackson. Graeme scored 12 in his specialist first time out, which wasn’t one of the highest specialist rounds of the heats, but was certainly good enough to give him enough of a cushion to win. Last night he was offering us one of my favourite poets, Wilfred Owen. He started brightly enough, but a few wrong answers began creeping in, and in the end he levelled out at 8. Perfectly respectable, but sadly it leaves room for other contenders to be out of range at the half way stage.

Such a contender was Anthony Fish. Now, in response to the question – could Anthony manage to produce another specialist round out of the top drawer, the answer was definitely yes. I loved his round – his subject was one I really fancied my chances with. Not without reason – I managed 11 correct answers. Anthony beat that, though. He scored 13. With two contenders still to go he had a lead of 5 points at this stage, and the prospect of a very good GK round to come.

Ro Duns had managed a double figure score in specialist in her heat, but with 10 then, and the target at 13, she needed to do quite a bit better on Frasier. Well, I don’t know how many episodes of Frasier there were, but I’m sure it was a lot, and sadly, Ro’s knowledge proved wanting on too many of the questions. In the end she managed to get 6, but to all intents and purposes this was the end of her challenge.

Now I did have the experience of being a stand in for the semi finals back in 2006, along with the Vixen herself, Jenny Ryan. Neither of us were used. But what I can tell you is that at least I was rung up by the production team very soon after the heats had all been filmed, and asked if I would be prepared to be a stand in, so at least I had a fair amount of time to prepare my specialist in case I was needed. It wasn’t wasted either, for I did use this specialist as my first subject in the 2007 series of Blessed Memory. So unless I hear anything to the contrary I have to assume that this is what happened in this series. Bearing in mind the world we’ve been living in for the last couple of years it’s hardly surprising that one of our semi finalists – Ashleigh Evans in this case – was unable to take part, and so the highest scoring runner up was called up, in the shape of Andrew Fanko. I was delighted, since I’ve banged on enough this series about how much I feel the highest scoring runners up should be given another chance somehow. As I said, I don’t actually know, but unless I’m told differently I have to believe that Andrew was given the same preparation time as the others. Sadly, his round on African World Heritage Sites just didn’t work out, and you could see how disappointed he was to score 7 in a close up just after he returned to his seat.

Ro was first to return to the chair for the General Knowledge. Let’s just remind ourselves that Ro scored a good 12 in the heat. I can’t say for certain that it was maybe a bit of shock at the way that her specialist round had gone that contribute to it, but last night I’m afraid the wheels well and truly came off for her. She scored . And before anyone says anything smart, let’s just remind ourselves that she is a Mastermind semi finalist, and many, many people would love to be able to say that for themselves.

It would be hard to find two more contrasting consecutive rounds than Ro’s GK, and Andrew’s that followed. Okay, it wasn’t quite a perfect round. It was bloody close, though. This was a GK round out of the top drawer. Andrew answered quickly, he answered confidently, and for almost all of the questions he answered correctly as well. The result of which was that in order to win outright, Anthony was going to have to get into double figures in GK.

Before that, though, we had Graeme. I hope that I’m not doing him a disservice when I say that the fact he scored 9 in the heats did mean that I doubted whether he was going to be able to get close to Andrew’s score. He scored 6 to finish on 1, but as I said with Ro, he is a Mastermind semi finalist, and a certain amount of respect is due.

So to Anthony. There were two questions really. Firstly, was he going to be able to get a double figure score, to bring him the win, and the place in the grand final. Secondly, was he going to be able to produce a GK round of the same kind of quality as his round in the heat? Well, it didn’t take too long to confirm that yes, Anthony was going to win, as he reeled off a string of answers. As for the quality of the round, well, it was a very good round again, even if it wasn’t the GK round of the night. Anthony scored 14, one behind Andrew’s fifteen.

So Anthony claims a very well earned place in the final. It was a fine performance, and the only drawback I can see is that it will make it very difficult not to make him favourite for the final, which as we all know has been the kiss of death to more than one contender’s chances.

Graeme Jackson	Wilfred Owen	8	0	6	3	14	3
Anthony Fish	20th century world heavyweight boxing championship fights	13	0	14	1	27	1
Ro Duns	Frasier	6	2	4	2	10	4
Andrew Fanko	African World Heritage Sites	7	0	15	0	22	0