Hello, good morning and welcome. What, me? Fine, thanks for asking.
Now, looking at last night’s menu of specialists, I should
have done a lot better than I did, since on paper I knew something about three
of them. Nowt about the other one, mind you, but we’ll come to that. In the end
though I just about scraped an aggregate of 6, which all goes to show that you never
can tell. First up was Jeremy Hicks answering on the Manx Missile, Sir Mark
Cavendish. Now, I was in London to watch the Prologue of Sir Mark’s first Tour
de France, and I watch it every year, but even so I couldn’t do much with these
questions. I thought it was a tough round, and that puts Jeremy’s 8 into
perspective. We’ve already seen this series how 8 can be a competitive score in
the first round.
Back in the day I really used to like The Darkness, the
subject of Lucie Knight’s round. Lucie again really knew her subject. This was
a wide ranging set – and not all of them, I noted, were specifically to do with
the music despite the title of the round. Anything in double figures nowadays and
you know that you’ve done really well. Lucie came close with 9 and no passes.
It all depended on how our last two contenders would do, but it looked as if
she would be in contention by half time.
I thought I recognised Dom Tait, our third contender.
Indeed I did. For Dom Tait is an Only Connect champion, a member of the
Scribes. ‘Allo, thought I, expect fireworks. Dom was answering on The Day
Today. Not just the Day Today, either, but also its radio predecessor, On the
Hour. Again, it was a show that I enjoyed very much, but that didn’t seem to
help me in accruing many points. Still, at least I had the pleasure of watching
Dom put on a text book performance of how to answer Mastermind questions. It
wasn’t quite a full house, but by golly it was close. 11 points and no passes.
Having to follow Dom’s round renders Jeff Davies’ round on
Sylvia ‘Who’ Towsend Warner all the more praiseworthy, since you wouldn’t have
blamed him for being daunted by what had come before. Jeff treated us to a
perfect round of 11 correct answers from 11 questions. He wasn’t answering at
express pace which explains why he ended up with the same score as Dom, who
really was. But at least it guaranteed that he would be last to go in the GK
and would know the exact size of the task ahead of him.
Spare a moment of sympathy for Jeremy Hicks. He returned to
the chair first for the GK round and delivered a very good GK round indeed, a
round which might have been good enough to win another heat of the show. Well,
at least he set the bar at 21 and I’m sure it’s not much consolation, but
Jeremy, I appreciated your round and I’m sure many others will have as well.
Lucie Kight came back next. She had one of those rounds
where it seems like every time you narrow down your answer to a couple of
possibilities in your head you end up picking the wrong choice. Not that she
did badly. As it was she scored a respectable 8, but on this particular show it
was not going to be enough. She ended with a total of 17.
So to Dom, and if I was to tell you that I wasn’t expecting
something a bit special, then you know that I’d be lying. It wasn’t just the
fact that he answered so many of his questions correctly – 16 in total. No, it
was the way he did it. Concentrating intently until the last syllable of the
question issued from Clive’s mouth then leaping straight in with the answer.
For the second time this series I found myself applauding the telly. Relatively
few people have the level of GK you need in order to be able to deliver a round
like this, but it’s so gratifying when you see someone who can.
Jeff, then, had to follow that. He gave it a go, I give him
full credit for that. He started well, but a couple of wrong uns robbed him of
momentum and to be honest it was a bit of a grim old slog from that point. What
I liked was that when Clive announced that he had scored 8 for 19 points there
just seemed to be the tiniest nod and a look of satisfaction, as if for him this
had not so much been about winning, as about doing as well as he could. I can
run that up the flagpole and salute it.
Well done Dom, a really first class performance. No
predictions from me – they rarely come true anyway. But I wish you the very
best of luck in the semi final.
The Details
|
Jeremy Hicks |
Sir Mark Cavendish |
8 |
0 |
13 |
0 |
21 |
0 |
|
Lucie Knight |
The Music of The
Darkness |
9 |
0 |
8 |
2 |
17 |
2 |
|
Dom Tait |
The Day Today |
11 |
0 |
16 |
0 |
27 |
0 |
|
Jeff Davies |
Sylvia Townsend Warner |
11 |
0 |
8 |
0 |
19 |
0 |
No comments:
Post a Comment