Mastermind Heat 17 Preview

Sorry, a bit late with today’s preview. I’ve been to breakfast with my two oldest grandsons and Santa and since then I’ve been working on commissions – 1 pen and ink drawing and 3 paintings. Still, I’m here now.

Tomorrow’s specialist subjects will be:-

Meat Loaf

Grinling Gibbons

England Women’s Cricket since 2000

The Life and Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins

Yeah, I’m not expecting a points bonanza on the aggregate for me in this show. Going through the subjects:-

Meat Loaf – well I was quite partial to a bit of Meat Loaf back in my early 80s headbanging days, so it’s not impossible that I might get one or two of these. On the other hand it’s just as likely I’ll get nowt.

Grinling Gibbons – or ‘funky Gibbons’ as I’d like to think that Sir Christopher Wren would call him in his more jocular moments. Maybe the kind of subject where general knowledge might enable one to blag a point or two

Egland Women’s Cricket since 2000. I’m sorry, but I’m not really a follower of any kind of cricket. For me this round has the potential for zero written all over it.

The Life and Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Right, are we sitting comfortably? Then I will begin. I did have to study Hopkins’ “The Wreck of the Deutschland” for A level Eng. Lit and it’s probably fair to say that I didn’t get either it or him. Then a couple of years later I was fortunate to attend a series of seminars on Hopkins run by one of the finest teachers I ever met, Stan Tottman, head of the English Faculty at Goldsmiths. Unlike other lecturers there was no way you could blag your way through Stan’s seminars. If you hadn’t done the pre-reading then you were sunk. If you were not prepared to offer an opinion, you were sunk. If you did offer an opinion and you wouldn’t or couldn’t defend it, then you were sunk. But if you managed to float, you got so much more out of these seminars than almost any others I ever attended. He was that good. The trouble was, though, that I ever thought I could write about Hopkins afterwards, because the process of getting what Stan had got out of us down into essay form was just too reductive. Well, that’s my excuse. I’d like to think I’ve retained enough in the last forty years to get one or two. We’ll see.

Prediction. Anything over five would be a triumph.