Top of the morning to you all. Let’s talk about last night’s penultimate first round heat, shall we?
To begin at the beginning, Max Wright kicked us off with
Arsene ‘I did not see it’ Wenger. Sadly, this unofficial catchphrase which he
often used when asked to comment upon controversial on-field incidents
involving his players did not feature in the questions. I say sadly because it
might have brought me more than just the single point I did manage. Max knew
his stuff alright, but there were just enough tricky ones, and a couple where
it looked as if he zigged when he should’ve zagged to prevent him from reaching
double figures. Still, as we’ve seen this series 8 is a competitive score in
specialist.
Nicola Robertson was answering on the Comedies of Oscar
Wilde. I didn’t expect any points on this round but got one through knowing
Victoria station from The Importance of Being Earnest. I do not know the other
comedies at all, really, so I can’t comment on how fair or otherwise this set
of questions was. I will say that when I have known quite a bit about
specialist subjects over the years the setters have done a good job ensuring
that they have been pretty consistent in the level of difficulty. So I don’t really
know what happened with Nicola’s round, but she scored 3.
I don’t know whether I ought to boast about getting 3 points
on Heather O’Hagan’s round on Donny Osmond. Basically I remembered the Osmonds
were from Ogden, Utah because when I first learned this from a Saturday morning
cartoon series on their fictionalised adventures because it made me think of
Stan and Hilda Ogden from Corrie. Two other points came from knowing “On the
Shelf” and also from memories of having to endure the bloody awful Donny and
Marie TV show from time to time. It was a bit of a uncertain start from Heather
– she missed two of the three that I got right. However as she became more
accustomed to the chair she grew in confidence and built her total up to a
competitive 8.
As Rashid Mumtaz approached the chair I thought to myself –
please don’t let Donny Osmond be my most successful specialist of the evening
-Rashid was answering on the Godfather trilogy of films and crikey, did he know
his stuff! I reckoned that I was well informed about the first two films, but I
still didn’t get all of those. I had 3 correct answers as we moved to the last
question. No, I didn’t know that Sofia Coppola as a baby had played the same
part in the first film that she played in the third. But then, I couldn’t have
named any other actress from the third movie anyway, and so by default she gave
me the fourth correct answer I needed to make it my best subject of the night
and spare me my blushes. Rashid, as I said, really knew his stuff. 11 points
gave him a very nice cushion going into general knowledge.
Let’s be honest, if you have a lower score than you would
have liked in your specialist you return to the chair knowing that you’re not
going to win and in the past we’ve see how this has adversely affected some
contenders. On the other had we’ve also seen some contenders pick themselves up
and dust themselves down metaphorically and give the GK round a really good
lash. Such a contender is Nicola Robertson. She produced a good GK round, and
with just the tiniest little rub of the green she’d have had double figures. As
it was her fighting 9 put her in the lead with 12.
Max Wright snapped out his answers quickly which is a
useful thing to do if you can keep your accuracy as you do so. Starting only
four behind Nicola meant that he was surely going to take the lead. However being
three points behind Rashid meat that he was going to need a double figure round
to have any chance of keeping it. Like Nicola before him Max gave it his best
shot and like Nicola before him he fell one short of double figures on 9. A
good round. However I felt that he’d needed a great round.
Still, it was good enough for him to keep the lead for a
while longer, if only just. Heather O’Hagan followed the example given by Nicola
and Max as she too produced a good 9 point round. She fell just short of the
lead by dint of having a pass from the specialist round and adding another in
the GK.
Given the choice I’d always prefer to see a contender winning
the show through a great round rather than losing it through a disastrous
collapse. So I hoped as Rashid returned to the chair that this would not be the
outcome. And it wasn’t. Only Rashid could tell us what was going through his
mind at the time, but he looked to be the epitome of calm as he racked up five.
Yes, he had a bit of a wobble after that, but still kept his cool enough to add
a further 6. This gave him the aesthetically pleasing double of top scores of
11 in both rounds and a comfortable win with 22 points.
Well done, sir! A good performance. Best of luck to you in
the semi finals.
The Details
|
Max Wright |
Arsene Wenger |
8 |
0 |
9 |
0 |
17 |
0 |
|
Nicola Robertson |
The Comedies of Oscar
Wilde |
3 |
1 |
9 |
0 |
12 |
1 |
|
Heather O’Hagan |
Donny Osmond |
8 |
1 |
9 |
1 |
17 |
2 |
|
Rashid Mumtaz |
The Godfather Film
Trilogy |
11 |
0 |
11 |
0 |
22 |
0 |
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