We’ve seen several remarkable and unusual shows in the first round of the current series, dearly beloved, and this show was another of them. Not, I have to say for the same reasons as the others. Allow me to elucidate.
Tonight’s first contender was Colin Rogers-Marsh. Colin was
answering on the films of Judy Garland. On a selfish level this wasn’t the best
choice for me, but somehow, I managed to blag a couple. Colin did do better
than that. He started quite brightly, but the first question he missed seemed
to make him stumble in his tracks, and I’m afraid at that point the malign
influence of the chair seemed to take over and rob him of any momentum. In the
end, he scored four, and yes, in betting parlance you could probably have named
your own odds on him winning.
Christopher McBride approached the chair with a smile on
his face, and like Colin, he began his round quite brightly. Christopher was
answering on The Cure. I was fortunate enough once to see Rob Newman doing his
Robert Smith impression, singing the Sun Has Got His Hat On many years ago in
the Grand Theatre, Swansea. Coming back to the round, Christopher did get a
little further into his round before the brakes started to be applied, in the
end levelling out at a respectable 7 points.
Leigh Hagger was answering on the TV series Hi de Hi.
Incredibly popular in its day, this was the one of the 3 most popular Perry and
Croft sitcoms which just didn’t quite do it for me. I managed 3 points, more by
luck than judgement. Amazingly, Leigh too had a few wobbly moments while she
accrued her score of 8. What this heat was really crying out for was someone to
grab their specialist round by the scruff of the neck and give it a damn good
thrashing.
Which is pretty much what teacher Fiona Templeton did with
her round on the French Wars of Religion. One of my great grandparents was
descended from a family of Huguenot silk weavers who first set up in
Spitalfields before becoming movers and shakers in the silk weaving industry in
Coventry. You don’t need to know that. What you do need to know is that Fiona
defied the odds and the evil influence of support from the Clark sofa and
racked up an impressive 12. She led by four at half time. Game over. Surely?
Well, no, actually. Colin returned to the chair, and he did
what you must do with a disappointing score from the first round. He set his
nose to the grindstone, and proceeded to answer all of the questions. Not all
of his answers were right, but a fair proportion of them were, and in the end
he scored a very good 13 to take his total to 17. I will be honest, I didn’t
think he’d win but at least he’d given the others something to think about.
Christopher started 3 points ahead of Colin. He did
perfectly well, too. However, his highly respectable 10 was 3 fewer points than
Colin. Which meant that they had both scored 17 and 1 pass. Surely we weren’t
going to have a tie break?
Well, I have to say that it looked a lot more likely when
Leigh could only manage 6 to take her own score to 14. Judging from her
reaction to a number of the questions, I’d say she zigged a few times when she
should have zagged, but them’s the breaks. That black chair can be cruel
sometimes.
I won’t lie, I feared for Fiona. Yes, she only needed 6
points for an outright win, and yes, in the normal run of things you’d expect
Mastermind contenders to be able to polish this off. But there was something in
the air in this show, on top of which the Curse of the Clark support has brought
many teachers low in the past. Which seemed to be the case with Fiona. She just
couldn’t get started, and in the end she could only post 4 for a total of 16.
So yes, we did have a tiebreak. Christopher was escorted
gently from the studio, which Colin tackled the 5 questions they had to answer.
Colin returned to his seat and Christopher faced the same. Sadly he didn’t add
to his score, and Colin had added one to his. So, amazingly, Colin had given us
the best comeback since Lazarus. I have seen people come from 4th at
half time to win the show, but don’t recall seeing any overturn an 8 point
deficit to do so. Very well done, sir.
The Details
|
Colin Rogers-Marsh |
Films of Judy Garland |
4 |
1 |
13 |
0 |
17 |
1 |
1 |
18 |
|
Christopher McBride |
The Cure |
7 |
1 |
10 |
0 |
17 |
0 |
0 |
17 |
|
Leigh Hagger |
Hi de Hi |
8 |
0 |
6 |
0 |
14 |
0 |
|
|
|
Fiona Templeton |
The French Wars of Religion |
12 |
1 |
4 |
4 |
16 |
5 |
|
|
5 comments:
Do we have any information on how it's decided which contestants will face one another? Is it purely random, or do they sometimes go for people with similar levels of general knowledge to make it a more exciting game?
It's interesting to think that last week, the contestant who came in fourth place had a higher score than the person who came in first this week! All of last week's runners-up must be feeling a little hard done by seeing this.
Hi George. I haven't spoken to any member of the production team for a long time. so I don't know if this is still the case. Back in my day though I was told that they only look at the combinations of subjects when putting together the who goes on which show in which heat. The aim is to try to put together a show with something for everyone. Besides, trying to judge the relative strengths of the contenders based on just the 20 GK questions you (at least used to be) get asked on the audition would be a very inexact science. But yes, it does throw up anomalies like this, and is an argument for highest scoring runners up slots. I can see both sides. Yes, it was very difficult being a highest scoring runner up in the 2006 heats and seeing people who hadn't scored as highly as I had who were in the semi finals. But then that is tournament knockout play for you. It helped crystallize my resolve to have another go asap, and the very next year, I won. So as I said, I can see both sides.
Here's an idea... how would it be if, rather than having heat winners progress, the semi-finalists were just the twenty-four highest scorers overall throughout the entire competition?
A bit of a strange suggestion, and I'm not sure it would work, but it's worth noting that they did do something similar on 2020's Very Hard Questions with Jon Snow. They had nine heats and then a Grand Final with the two highest-scoring teams, IRRESPECTIVE of whether or not those teams actually won their heat.
Hi George
I know where you're coming from with this suggestion. They used a similar idea on Sport Mastermind a few years ago, where only the highest scoring contenders went through. personally - and this is just my feeling - I think if you did this, then it wouldn't be Mastermind. I like to have a winner at the end of each show, and yes, I do appreciate that it is precisely this that creates the outrageous fortune that sees some one with 18 after tie break go through to the semis, and someone with 26 go out. Just my opinion and as always, feel free to disagree.
To be clear, I don't actually think that should happen, I just thought I'd throw that out there as a suggestion to see what other people think.
I'm all in favour of games being as fair as possible, but to make Mastermind totally fair you'd have to ask every contestant across the whole series the exact same questions. That would make for an extremely boring programme!
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