Mastermind 2026 - First Round Heat 14

Good morning, dearly beloved. I’m just starting to emerge from my head cold which mucked me up last week, and so if I sound a bit curmudgeonly in this review I hope that you’ll accept my apologies. For the fact is that I found last night’s episode a bit of a slog. You know me, I love the show and I have empathy for all of the competitors, but for me last night’s show never caught fire.

Not that the specialists didn’t show endeavour and knowledge, for the most part. The first of them, Jonathan Bartley’s round on Richard Nixon certainly did. Jonathan had prepared thoroughly and this brought him just desserts in the form of a double figure round of 10. I had 2 and frankly that was all I was ever going to get on this set, but I know enough about the subject to think that this was a testing set.

Matthew Patenall offered us the first of last night’s subjects on which I would fail to score, Nirvana. Incidentally I saw a newspaper feature the other day about the baby on the cover of Nevermind. He’s a grandfather now (slight exaggeration). Matthew was well up to the size of the challenge and his deep knowledge of the subject took him past Jonathan’s score to set the target at 11.

Jane Kendrick offered us a subject I knew nothing about , the architect George Skipper. I’ve never listened to any of his albums either. Normally I’m not bad on architecture, but my Skipper’s career had certainly skipped past me. Jane did respectably well, but ah, in just not quite getting an answer or two for not quite remembering them correctly she missed out on double figures, scoring 8.

What have we said so often in the past about rounds on TV series? They should come with a government health warning. In all honesty, you had to feel for Savannah Phillips. I would imagine that you’d only opt to take a TV show as a specialist subject because you absolutely love it, so then to find out that you don’t know as much about it as you probably thought you did, that’s tough. There’s no sugar coating this, Savannah scored 5.

Off the top of my head I’m not sure if 2 is my lowest aggregate of the series on specialist so far – come to think of it I believe there might have been a 1 in there somewhere. Still, that was behind me as we began the GK. Savannah did a bit better with her GK questions, and scored 7 to end with 12. All I can say, Savannah, is that you gave it a lash which few enough people have ever done. Stuff the begrudgers.

Jane Kendrick sat down, composed herself, and delivered a double figure round of 10. Normally ‘d say that 18 was never going to be enough to win a heat, but, I don’t know, there seemed to be something in the air during this particular heat and so at this stage I wasn’t ruling anything out.

Jonathan couldn’t beat it. He matched Savannah’s round, but having incurred a pass in round 1 he needed to beat Jane’s total – he couldn’t force a tie break, and in the end he just couldn’t summon up enough correct answers to make his way through the corridor of doubt and emerge victorious the other side.

Finally, then, Matthew Patenall. He would incur no passes, just as Jane had done before him. So a tie break was certainly a possibility, and with only a couple of questions to go that seemed to be where we were heading. Matthew managed an 8^th correct answer to take him to a winning score of 19, though. Well done.

So, as I said, this wasn’t the greatest heat we’ve seen all series. It didn't blow my socks off but then it wasn’t totally without interest. And what you have to acknowledge is that I think that for all the contestants, in a first round heat you’re honestly not thinking about the Grand Final and the glass bowl. You’re thinking about doing your best and, if possible, winning the heat. End of. And that’s exactly what Matthew managed to do. Well done! Best of luck in the semis.

The Details

Jonathan Bartley	Richard Nixon	10	1	7	1	17	2
Matthew Patenall	Nirvana	11	0	8	0	19	0
Jane Kendrick	The Architect George Skipper	8	0	10	0	18	0
Savannah Phillips	Derry Girls	5	1	7	2	12	3