So Much for Nelson - now let's take on John Bull

I’m pretty sure that I’ve mentioned my love of Lewis Caroll’s Alice books, not the least part of which is my huge admiration for John Tenniel’s original illustrations for them. Tenniel was remarkable in many ways. His father was a fencing teacher, and in the course of instructing John once he caught him in the eye. John concealed the fact that he had been permanently injured and lost his sight in the eye over a period of time. To be able to draw as well as he did for as long as he did with only one eye is remarkable.

I also appreciate his political cartoons for Punch, although more for the incredible skill and facility of his drawing than through any sympathy with his politics. Tenniel was invited to become joint cartoonist for Punch in 1850, and he continued to produce what would amount to over 2000 cartoons for the magazine until his retirement over 50 years later in 1902. In terms of his political views, well, Tenniel was a man who was very much in sympathy with the urban, middle class readership of Punch and while he could be a trenchant critic of politicians and governments and their policies at home, his take on international relations could be pretty imperialistic.

I mention this because you may have read posts earlier this year when I discussed my collection of chocolate tins that Queen Victoria sent to troops serving in South Africa during the Boer War. Now, I think I’ve also mentioned how I love drawing before. Because of arthritis I’ve allowed two or three weeks to go by without producing any sketches, but I had a week’s leave from work this last week and so I took up my pens again. I made a copy of a Tenniel cartoon about the pollution of the Thames – here:-

I then thought to myself, I wonder what Tenniel made of the Boer War? Well, I say that I wondered, but really and truly I had a pretty good idea what I’d find. John Tenniel, by this time Sir John Tenniel, was, like the magazine’s readership, solidly in favour of the unjust war. Here’s my copies of a few of his cartoons from the weeks leading up to the start of the war and the first few weeks.

Now, Tenniel often used three allegorical figures to depict Britain – and for Tenniel Britain really meant England. When Tenniel wanted to depict Britain as a sympathetic figure, a figure of compassion and peace, he would use the figure of Britannia, like the figure from the 50p piece/old pre decimal one penny. When he wished to stress Britain’s might and power, he used the figure of the British Lion. When he used neither of these, he used the figure of John Bull.

Here’s a question for you. What nationality was the man who created the figure John Bull? Yes, that’s right. Scottish. In 1712, John Bull was created by Scottish satirist John Arbuthnot, in a pamphlet satirising the Whigs and their policies in the War of the Spanish Succession. In the succeeding decades Bull pretty much morphed into the archetypal representation of the free-born, corpulent, small c – conservative Englishman, hence his depiction even into late Victorian times as a, for want of a better word, corpulent English country squire from the 19^th century.

BRITANNIA CONSOLATRIX
BRITANNIA - :- ‘I will take care of you! Your man has gone to do his duty – and I will do mine!’

So, as for these cartoons, this one depicts a scene where a troopship in the distance is setting sail for South Africa, and Britannia is consoling a wife and children, whose husband, presumably, is on board the ship. The title is “Britannia Consolatrix” and the caption beneath reads:- ‘I will take care of you! Your man has gone to do his duty – and I will do mine!’ There’s a lot I don’t like about this. Firstly, the idea that it was anyone’s duty to go and fight in South Africa. Even judging by 19^th century standards this was an unjust and unnecessary war.

Then there’s the idea that Britain, represented by the allegorical figure Britannia, would do its duty, and take care of the casualties of war and their families. Now, I will admit that it was in 1901 that pensions were paid to war widows of NCOs and other ranks for the first time. But this had not been on the table in 1899 when the cartoon was made. Nor was it very generous when it was made, and it was subject to strict conditions regarding conduct and being of good character. Should a war widow remarry, for example, she would receive a very small sum and the pension would cease.

Even in the 21^st century we see British army veterans having to accept help from charities because of the injuries, mental and physical, that they received in the name of our country which are not catered for by the Ministry of Defence. So you can imagine just how little real help was available to veterans of the Boer War on their return to Britain.

 

“JOHN BULL (TO BOER) – “AS YOU WILL FIGHT, YOU SHALL HAVE IT.
THIS TIME IT’S A FIGHT TO A FINISH.”

This one appeared in October 1899, the year and month that the war broke out. The picture shows John Bull squaring up to a Boer farmer ( the word Boer itself means farmer).

The title is “Plain English” while beneath this there is the caption :-

“JOHN BULL (TO BOER) – “AS YOU WILL FIGHT, YOU SHALL HAVE IT. THIS TIME IT’S A FIGHT TO A FINISH.”

This needs some explanation. It’s probably best that I start with a slight digression. When I write of the Boer War as an unjust and unnecessary war, this is what I really feel about it. Which does not mean that I’m trying to paint the two Boer Republics as admirable nations. Their attitudes towards black native African nations was appalling, for example. But it is not as if the British were motivated to fight in order to ameliorate conditions for native Africans. No, they were motivated by Imperialistic shortsightedness and led on by the greed of men like Cecil Rhodes. Just my opinion and as always, feel free to disagree. 

So, as a background to the cartoon, Great Britain annexed the two Boer republics, The Transvaal Republic and the Orange Free State, in the 1870s. Despite repeated attempts at negotiating a peaceful solution, Boer representatives were rebuffed time after time, and this led to rebellion and the first Boer War in December 1880. Superior tactics, and a British army that was poorly led and equipped , along with Prime Minister William Gladstone’s sensible refusal to allow the war to escalate into a more costly and wasteful conflict led to the war concluding in March of 1881 and a treaty which led to the reestablishment and independence of the two Boer Republics. So that’s what Tenniel means when he says ‘THIS time’.

Had gold not been discovered in the Transvaal, then the conditions that led to the Second Boer War may never have arisen. In the 1890s, the Uitlanders – a Boer term for foreigners, that is, prospectors and gold miners lured by the gold rush,- chafed at what they saw as the exorbitant taxes they had to pay, bearing in mind that they were ineligible to vote until they had lived there for 14 years. The Boer governments were willing to enter into negotiation with the British government which took up the Uitlanders’ cause and proved willing to move on this. However, the inflexibility of the British convinced them that war was inevitable, even though Transvaal premier Paul Kruger would say that declaring war on the British Empire was like defending yourself against a lion with a pocket knife. So strictly speaking Tenniel was not incorrect to suggest that the Boer republics started the fight – they declared war – but they really were given no choice, despite knowing that their chances of success were limited. 

Should Nelson Come off his Pedestal?

You know, I don’t see my mother and stepfather more than a couple of times a year, They live in Worthing and with the best will in the world their days of long drives or train rides and staying in hotels are a thing of the past. So to use a phrase, Mohammed must go to the mountain. When I do, I have this mischievous streak that makes me introduce the topic of removing Edward Hodges Baily’s statue of Admiral Nelson from the top of Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square in London.

This is partly because I rather enjoy their reaction to it. The argument in favour goes – Horatio Nelson may not have owned saves, in fact he didn’t, but he was certainly in favour of continuing the slave trade and wrote in letters that he was considering speaking out against William Wilberforce in the House of Lords. Well, Trafalgar put paid to that and we’ll never know for sure if he would or not. But Nelson’s connections with the slave trade were brought into discussion in the furore following the pulling down of the statue of slave trader Edward Colson in Bristol in 2020 and there were articles in several of the dailies with people arguing for and against pulling Nelson off his pedestal.

My mum’s and step-dad’s reactions? To paraphrase – this is nonsense, it all happened over 200 years ago – you can’t change the past. Well, I certainly don’t agree that’s it’s ridiculous, but okay, it was over 200 years ago and you cannot change the past (although when I invent my time machine, watch this space). But it isn’t about that. It’s about changing your relationship with the past, if anything. It’s about asking the questions whether, with all we know now, we feel that this is an individual we should still regard as a national hero? And engaging in debate. Surely, if Nelson was as worthy of the honour as they thought he was in the 1840s when the column was erected, then a bit of honest discussion isn’t going to change that. But if he wasn’t, well, then burying our collective heads in the sand and ignoring it because it was more than 200 years ago surely is not morally justifiable.

Despite the way that I present my opinions to Mum and Tony, I do try to keep an open mind. If you can prove to me that Nelson is a good symbol of qualities that I value and respect, then I promise I’d be one of the protestors standing in front of the column to guard it from the bulldozers. But then, that would involve being prepared to have a discussion about it in the first place. And that probably ain’t happening any time soon.

Chariots of the Shaggy Dogs

Here’s a nice mythology question for you. What links Tata, Utnapishtim, Bergelmir and Deucalion? I’m sure you know or can work it out. Especially if I widen it out from mythology and include Japhet, Shem and Ham. And Noah. Yes, they all survived floods. Tata in the Aztec flood myth, Utnapishtim in the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, Bergelmir ( a giant) in the Norse flood myth and Deucalion in the Greek.

Now, probably ever since the discovery of the epic of Gilgamesh tablets by Austen Layard in the middle of the 19^th century and its translation over the following decades this has led to much speculation ever since on just why it is that catastrophic world-threatening floods proliferate in the mythology and/or religions of so many cultures, many of whom surely cannot have had any kind of contact with each other.  Some writers have used it to try to disprove the literal truth of the Old Testament, while some have used it to try to prove the literal truth of the Old Testament. Some have tried to prove that all the flood myths derive from a single catastrophic event in human history – the great thaw at the end of the (last) ice age for example.

An author I very much enjoy, so long as I’m allowed to digest his work along with a healthy dose of salt, is Graham Hancock. He suggests that the proliferation of flood myths may have their origin in the ending of the last Ice Age. Well, I’m certainly no expert, but it’s not totally impossible. However, being as that is far too sensible an idea, Graham Hancock beefed up the silliness by suggesting that the reason why it made such an impression on humanity was because it was responsible for the destruction of a great, technologically advanced civilisation, (based in Antarctica) the survivors of which spread their knowledge and skills throughout the world. Hence the growth of world civilizations in different parts of the world at the same time. As a piece of fiction it’s great. As a theory, it suffers from a huge drawback, namely that there is no real evidence of the lost civilisation. Ah, but that’s because of a conspiracy amongst historians and archaeologists to deliberately NOT search where such evidence might be found. Hancock doesn’t say this in those words, but that’s the gist.

Like I said, I exercise my right not to agree with his ideas, but I don’t half enjoy reading about them. His book about the supposed location of the Ark of the Covenant, called “The Sign and the Seal” is a particular favourite. I doubt very much that the conclusions he reaches are correct, but I enjoy the journey that takes us to those conclusions.

Which is more than I can say about the work of one of Mr. Hancock’s better-known predecessors, Swiss author Erich von Daniken. Which is really what prompted this post. You see, I can’t remember exactly where, but I heard his name mentioned the other day, and I googled him, and was astounded to find that he only passed away earlier this year. I haven’t really heard anything about him in years. Von Daniken wrote the hugely popular “Chariots of the Gods” which is, if you like, a seminal text in the field of pseudoscience which theorises that mythology is ‘evidence’ of technologically advanced aliens visiting Earth in pre-history. I read Chariots of the Gods. Once. Personally, I preferred the Goodies’ 1970s parody . Within their ‘Book of Criminal Records’ there was a short section entitled, if memory serves me right ‘Was God An English Astronaut?”, where a cartoon compared the front of a Gothic cathedral with a space rocket – and a peeled banana, just for good measure.

They were all a bit thick really

This whole Trojan thing from my last post is getting a bit out of hand. A little research reveals that not only can you have a trojan horse and a trojan mouse, but you can have trojan cows, trojan dogs and trojan animals in general. With the cows and dogs, a trojan cow would be one that is a carrier for a disease that while the cow itself shows no symptoms, it can infect a whole herd who will. The term trojan dog refers specifically to a stray that has been rehomed from mainland Europe, which bears a significantly high risk of carrying infections that are extremely rare in this country but much more common on mainland Europe. Cue a mental picture of politicians of a certain, more right-wing persuasion ranting about the evils of ‘ these bloody Trojans, coming over here, infecting our pets and stealing their winalot.”

It’s an altogether more negative use of the adjective Trojan, somewhat closer to the original horse itself. I’ll be honest, I’ve always had mixed feelings over the whole Trojan War myth. I mean, I’ve never been entirely clear whose side you’re meant to be on. Without wishing to be mean, the Trojans are, in some ways a bit thick. Hecuba, mother of Paris, dreams that she will give birth to a flaming torch. Whatever lights yer candle, pardon the pun. The dream is interpreted and Priam and Hecuba are told that the child she will give birth to will be responsible for the destruction of Troy. Priam, unable to bear the thought of killing the child gives him to a herdsman to dispatch. He can’t bear to do the deed and takes him and leaves him on a hillside. He comes back nine days later, the baby is still alive and well, having been suckled by a she bear. He takes the kid home to bring up, and what happens next is set in motion. Stupid.

As for the Greeks, well, again, somehow most of them come across as the kind of people you wouldn’t want to play in a quiz team with. Let’s start with the greatest of them. Achilles. Now, he was made mostly invulnerable by being dipped in the River Styx as a baby. Only the heel by which she held him was not touched by the water. Well, I’m not being funny (you can say that again, says the reader) but – what would have been wrong if she had gone for a double dip? Or failing that, at least given his heel some proper protection? No wonder his shade was so angry in the Underworld.

Agamemnon. What a pillock! Lesson 1 in commanding an army. If your secret weapon is a virtually invincible Myrmidon with a short temper, don’t piss him off by stealing one of the girls he has taken as spoils of war. Oh, and when you get home, keep an eye on the missus if she suggests you should have a bath.

Even Odysseus, the supposedly smart one, was perfectly capable of acting like a complete div. (ah, these charming old world phrases). Having escaped from the attention of Polyphemus the cyclops and blinded him in the process, why the hell would you taunt him and reveal your real name when you’re sailing away. On the sea. Ruled by Poseidon, God of the Sea, and father of Polyphemus. It was like he didn’t even want to get home.

The Romans, so I’m told had a phrase – to tell the whole story from egg to apple – meaning to tell the whole story of something from start to finish. This refers to the Trojan War story. The egg is the egg from which the children of Leda and Zeus were hatched – Helen being one – while the apple is that eaten at the banquet following Odysseus’ return home and his defeat of his wife Penelope’s suitors. Well, if you go through the whole story from apple to egg there aren’t many characters who manage not to put a foot wrong somehow or other. I’m drawn to Penelope. After 10 years of Odysseus’ absence a group of dastards (once again, check the spelling) pressure her to accept Odysseus’ death and take one of them for a husband and new King. Penelope says she can not make a choice until she has finished making a death shroud for Odysseus’ Dad. (Not making this up.)She spends all day weaving it and all night unpicking it. Not sure when she sleeps, but you still gotta admit it’s smart. I can’t help thinking that if she’d gone to the war rather than Odysseus, they’d all have been home before the postcard.

Remembering the Wooden Mouse of Troy

In my post about the Gavin and Stacey quiz, I used the word phrase ‘gift horse’. It occurred to me to look into the derivation of the saying ‘don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. I’ll be honest, the idea of a horse as a gift did make me think of the wooden one given to the good people of the city of Troy. But then that never quite made sense to me. I mean, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth - because you might get a Greek spear in your eye for your pains? Somehow that didn’t work. Nor does the idea that the Trojans should just have blindly accepted the gift without checking It out. That’s essentially what they did anyway and look how that worked out for them.

No, the saying really means, when you get given a horse – and I have to believe that the gifting of an equine was maybe more common in days of yore than it is today -  you should just accept it with gratitude and not yank its mouth open to have a look at the teeth. Apparently, that’s a good way of checking the age and condition of a horse. A real horse that is. With a wooden one you can just count the rings. The point of the saying is to be grateful when you receive a gift or a piece of good fortune and not insult the giver by checking it and looking for flaws and negatives.

So, when would you think that we have the first recorded use of the saying, or something very similar? Actually in the 4^th Century AD in St. Jerome’s Commentarium in Epistolam ad Ephesios (Commentary on the Letter to the Ephesians) and it went something like this – Noli equi dentes inspicere donati”. Ah, they don’t write them like that any more. Basically it means, don’t look at the teeth of a horse you’ve been given. Maybe not as big a hit as his Latin translation of The Bible, but sequels can be difficult to pull off at the best of times.

Speaking of the Trojan Horse, I wonder how well acquainted you are with the term – the Trojan Mouse? If you’ve never heard of it, well it can be used in different contexts, for example, a small-scale change in an organisation – maybe in policy, maybe in procedure, whatever – that is designed to have a large-scale effect. I first heard of it in terms of a tactic you can use to persuade someone in a higher position of authority than you are to do something you want them to. Basically it involves introducing an idea to said authority figure in such a way that they come to believe it’s their own idea, take ownership of it and see it through to fruition. I wouldn’t say that I’ve made a habit of doing this and I wouldn’t say it’s been a conspicuous success every time that I’ve tried. But I did have a notable success once.

I made a point of dropping it into the conversation with a former deputy headteacher of mine that a colleague in another school had just told me that their headteacher had just instituted a policy whereby when a member of staff reached 20 years with the school – or at least within the local authority – then a recommendation would automatically be sent to the powers that be that they should receive the discretionary £250 award for long service from the authority. The Monday afterwards at the weekly staff meeting, our Head announced to the staff that, as a sign of how much he valued his staff, he had come up with a policy whereby everyone reaching 20 years with the school would automatically be recommended to the Authority for the discretionary award for long service. How did I know that the deputy would mention the idea to the Head? Because the Deputy was in his 19^th year with the school

Oh, he wasn’t quite the first person to benefit. Who was? Well, come on, who do you think?!

Oh. What's Occurin'?

I rarely quiz at the weekends. In fact I rarely quiz on any days other than Thursday every week, and one Wednesday each month. But I did go to a quiz on Sunday. Last month three of my daughters, my son in law Dan and Mary all attended a Disney themed quiz. I didn’t, partly so that I could look after my grandson Ollie, and partly because I’m strictly a Disney generalist while the girls and Dan are all ultra fans. They won, and the prize was a very impressive £50 meal voucher and £50 in cash.

Now when they got back their comments regarding the question master were of the ‘arse’ and ‘elbow’ variety.  Bear that in mind.

I staked my claim to a place in the team for the venue’s next quiz, last Sunday’s quiz, on the subject of sitcom Gavin and Stacey. Now, I always enjoyed Gavin and Stacey, and in the couple of weeks leading up to the quiz I watched every episode and all 3 Christmas specials again. Then , on Sunday afternoon, I decided to test myself. I googled Gavin and Stacey quiz. The first one on top of the search results page had 50 questions. Most of them were easy, but the half dozen or so I didn’t know, I memorised. Okay.

We got to the quiz, and on the way I joked, wouldn’t it be funny if the question master was such a rookie that he had just downloaded that same quiz off the net? Well, when we were given the answer sheets it certainly looked as if the question master really was just such a rookie. Because the headings for the five rounds were exactly the same as the headings on the quiz I downloaded. Then the quiz started. And the first question was the same as the first question on the quiz I’d downloaded. So was the second. And the third. In fact all of them.

Look, I didn’t plan it that way. But who was I to look a gift horse in the mouth? As it turned out anyway the gift horse was nothing like the gift it had seemed to be. For after the break between rounds three and four, our question master announced that the quiz was proving too easy, and so he’d made up another round using Chat GPT between the rounds. I wasn’t unduly worried. Even when he announced that this last round would be a Who Says This ? round. Well, we got there having scored 50 out of 50. Then for the improvised round, rather than using full quotations, he used which character says these short phrases. And the trouble is that many of them are said by more than one character at different times. So we got 6 on the round and lost by a point. Gutted.

I have never used Chat GPT for quiz questions. In fact I have never used it at all and after that I certainly won’t be using it for quiz questions any time soon. Do I blame the question master? Interesting question. Well, on the one hand, making up a quiz round after you’ve already started asking the questions is a no-no. But then so is downloading a quiz wholesale off the net which any member of the public and potential player could download themselves for free. The latter worked in our favour, the former worked against us. C’est la vie. We applauded the winners, thanked the question master, stayed until other teams started leaving then said our goodbyes without a word of complaint. I’ll leave it to you to decide how many of those were to be heard in the care on the way home, though.

Who's Afraid of the acute accent?

You may have noticed that that I’ve become rather interested in the history of chocolate in the UK over the last few weeks, following my acquisition of chocolate tins made for gifts to the troops from Queen Victoria in 1899 by Cadbury, Rowntree and Fry. I’ve been looking more specifically at Rowntree this weekend and it’s led me to ask a question that I haven’t been able to answer definitively. Namely, Nestlé acquired ownership of Rowntree Mackintosh in 1988. Was a conscious policy of insisting on the correct name Nestlé instead of the anglicised Nestles adopted, and in particular, was it adopted at this time and for this reason?

If you’re an old codger or codgess like me, I’ll bet you remember adverts from the 60s and 70s for Nestlé Milky Bar. Except you don’t. Because what you remember were adverts for Nestles Milky Bar. You remember how they went –a little skit in which a fresh faced, spectacle-wearing young shaver dressed as a wild west sheriff foils some dastards (check the spelling) in the course of their dastardly deeds accompanied by the jingle

“The Milky Bar Kid is strong and tough

And only the best is good enough

The creamiest milk, the whitest bar

The goodness that’s in Milky Bar”

Cut to aforementioned kid yelling “The Milky Bars are on me!” and the singers hit us with a final musical sting

“NESTLES Milky Bar!”

Watch very similar adverts from the late 80s onwards, and this sting has been replaced by “Nestlé Milky Bar!”

Don’t get me wrong, I happen to think that this is no bad thing. When you think of it, it was always a bit insulting to suggest that anglophones could not handle the complexities of the acute accent. I mean, for heaven’s sake, we Brits have 9 different ways of pronouncing the -ough – letter combination and most of us cope pretty well with that without incurring permanent injury.

Of course, it’s just as likely that advertisers of the time felt that British punters were more likely to go for a brand that at least sounds a bit British. Milky Bar dates back to 1936, and the very first Milky Bar Kid advert hit our screens as long ago as 1961. You’ve doubtless been asked the question – which screen character was first played by Terry Brooks in 1961 ?– I certainly have both asked it and answered it before now.

For what it’s worth, I’m kind of glad that we go the whole hog pronouncing the accent in Nestlé now. If nothing else it makes sense of their punning bird feeding chicks trademark. Just a thought.

A bit of a blow for Cadbury, I'll warrant.

When you get right down to it, it’s very difficult to know what members of the Royal Family really feel about things. It seems to me that the higher position they hold on the royal pyramid, the less scope that they have to show partiality. So I don’t actually know if His Majesty the King really doesn’t like chocolate. But obtaining a set of Queen Victoria Boer War chocolate tins has made me do a little bit of light research about the connection between the royal family and chocolate. What do you know, I found out that King Charles has withdrawn the Royal Warrant from Cadbury’s chocolate, and if I’m correct this is the first time they haven’t had one for over 170 years.

Queen Victoria first granted the Royal Warrant in 1854. We can be pretty certain that she was a bit of a fan from the way that Cadbury’s were her first port of call when she wanted to send a present of the finest British chocolate to soldiers fighting in the Boer War and it was in the course of finding out more about this that I discovered that Cadbury have lost their royal warrant.

The Royal household doesn’t go into details about why companies lose their warrant, but since 2010 Cadbury’s have been owned by US based Mondelez International. It’s believed that the King faced calls to withdraw warrants from companies still operating in Russia, as does Mondelez. Has it made a material difference to Cadbury’s? I’m sure that they would have rather kept it, given the choice, but I doubt it will have made much of a difference in terms of cold, hard cash. All it means is a certain loss of caché, no invitation to warrant holder shindigs and having to remove the crown logo from packaging.

I am coming to the point now. I’ve looked into royal warrants of appointment and would like to ask you this. Which monarch do you think was the first in the UK to grant a royal warrant? Yes, go through all the usual suspects – Victoria – Georges IV and III – Elizabeth I. Answer – Henry II in 1155.

Sort of.

I say sort of because, like a depressingly large number of quiz ‘facts’, the answer isn’t quite as simple as that. In 1155 Henry II gave a Royal charter to the Weavers’ Company in London. Royal charters were the predecessors to Royal Warrants of Appointment. But that doesn’t mean it was actually the first, it means that it was the first we have documentary evidence for, which is not quite the same thing. In the 1400s the Royal Warrant of Appointment replaced the royal charter, but I have been unable to find out who actually received the first. William Caxton was an early recipient, receiving the warrant from Edward IV in 1476. But was he the actual first? I don’t know.

It’s interesting to see who can grant warrants too. The only Royal Warrants out there at the moment were granted by King Charles and Queen Camilla. However, from the end of this year, I believe, the Prince and Princess of Wales will also be able to do so. Should King Charles predecease Queen Camilla, then she would continue to issue warrants.

There you go.

Mastermind 2026 End of Season Report

Now that there’s been just a couple of days for the dust to settle, let’s have a look at the 2026 series, the well-dones and the could-do-betters. Yes, this is all just my opinion and please feel free to disagree.

Let us begin with the well-dones. Up to and including the 2025 season we’ve noticed that when it gets to the semi finals you tend to get at least one ‘top-heavy’ and at least one ‘bottom-heavy’ semifinal. To put it another way, at least one of the semis would be overloaded with top scorers from the heats, and at least one overloaded with lowest scorers. It arose, I believe, from an emphasis on putting the ‘right’ specialists with each other in each show. Maybe I’m wrong about this but it certainly seemed to me that there was a far better spread in this year’s semis. Yes, there were a couple of contenders whose scores in their runner up slots in their semis would have been enough to win several of the other semis, but this wasn’t because they’d been placed in unfairly loaded semis, but because they were beaten by a truly outstanding performance. You can’t legislate against that.

Likewise, we saw a very exciting final. It seems that the days of jetting off far and wide for the filmed inserts won’t be coming up any time soon, but there were still some famous faces to surprise our finalists, which is always nice to see.

The could-do-betters, then. I think you know what is coming. Now, the format of the series as stands assigns 96 contenders to 24 heats. As far as I know, this is done by placing the right variety of specialist subjects with each other in each show. If this happens to throw two top contenders together by coincidence, well, that’s just the way it is and bad luck. Yes, the runner up can be a stand in for the semis but there’s no guarantee they will be used. Now, okay, you might say, well, sorry, but if you want to win the series you have to be prepared to face anyone and to beat them. Harsh, but true. You might also say, well, Dave, this happened to you in 2006. You were a stand in for the semifinal, you weren’t used, so you tried again the next year and look what happened. Again, true. But, oh, I don’t know, some years I just feel that real quiz talent is too thinly spread to sustain 24 heats and I feel that someone who had a top 5 score in the heats but didn’t qualify deserves another chance.

But of course, it is a question how you can actually deliver that. If I could wave a magic wand I would shorten the series by 2 shows and give 2 semifinal wild cards to the highest scoring runners up. If the makers are contractually obliged to provide 31 shows, then I would want 23 heats, and a repechage pitting the top 4 runners up. Yes, it would mean that they would have to learn an extra specialist round, but then you can’t expect something for nothing. I don’t know that I would condone going back to 5 contender semi finals though.

The other could-do-better is not actually the fault of the show itself. But just as happened in 2025, the first round was killed stone dead by having such a long hiatus for Celebrity Mastermind. Look, the Celebrity show really isn’t my cup of tea now, but I understand that there’s an audience for it. I don’t want to be mean about the celebrities who appear on it since they are doing it buckshee to support a charity. But I’m afraid that by now, too many of the celebs aren’t so much from Who’s Who as from Who The Hell’s That? Mastermind isn’t a great fit for a celebrity show, I’m afraid. Yeah, there’s a place for it, but not where it’s being shown at the moment.

Well, there we are. Just my opinions.

University Challenge 2026 Grand Final (Spoilers)

The Teams

Edinburgh

Parthav Easwar

Johnny Richards

Alice Leonard (capt)

Rayhana Amjad

Manchester 

Ray Power

Kirsty Dickson

Kai Madgwick

Rob Faulkner

No Grand Final is ever settled in the opening exchanges, but the opening exchanges of this Grand Final were going to tell us a lot about how the match might unfold. For the first starter neither team knew Mary Wollstonecraft was writing to Talleyrand in the quotation given. Nerves? No. Kai Madgwick buzzed in extremely fast to identify the border between China and Afghanistan as the border with the largest difference in time zones in the world. The works of my great, great, great, great uncle’s mate, Pushkin (honestly, Pushkin wrote a poem to him and about him) brought two bonuses. No panic from Edinburgh. Rayhana Amjad, their own star buzzer from the semi, recognised the description of Bose for the next starter. They in turn took two bonuses on foreign football clubs founded by British ex pats. Nobody knew sachlichkeit – which surely only exists as part of the lyric of the song Let’s Go Sachlichkeit from Mary Poppins. Johnny Richards knew that the creature in a film mentioned was a donkey. (The film wasn’t Shrek). Poisonous plants brought a full house, and the lead. The picture starter showed us the flag of Turkmenistan and that sort of thing is meat and drink to Kai Madgwick. More flags in the bad category of the 2001 pamphlet Good Flag Bad Flag proved considerably harder and brought nowt to any of us. Edinburgh lost five with an interruption of the next starter. Given a little more Kai Madgwick was able to identify the Nestorians (whose planet was saved from the Daleks by the Doctor in the 1968 Doctor Who Serial “It’s them Bleedin’ Daleks Again”) Non-narrative film makers brought two bonuses and the lead. The score was 50-40 at the ten.

Amol did not get to the end of the next starter when the Manchester skipper buzzed in with degenerate. Places and characters from Greek mythology sharing a name element – hippo – brought two bonuses. The Madgwick surge looked to be irresistible as he buzzed with the name of poet Rainer Maria Rilke. For those of us counting, this was his fifth starter. That was as many as he managed in the whole contest last time Manchester played Edinburgh and more than half of the contest remained to be played. This was ominous. 2 bonuses followed on the Second Crusade. The gap was widening. Edinburgh really needed to find a starter. For the music starter nobody recognised a little bit of Wagner – that’s Richard, not Robert. Rayhana Amjad was first in with the name Thule for the next starter. More pieces of classical music about fire did not, sadly, include the timeless work of the Crazy World of Arthur Brown. They didn’t add to the Edinburgh score either. Nobody knew a video game widely praised for its realistic depiction of psychosis – sounds a whole load of fun, does that. Kai Madgwick took another starter linking the name Bokassa with CAR – Central African Republic – or Empire as he would later have it for a while. Even if he hadn’t been playing so well, I would still have applauded Kai Madgwick for his comment “This is too mathsy for me!” about the bonuses. You and me both kid, you and me both. The Continuum Hypothesis – a prog rock group from the 70s, surely, yielded one bonus. Kirsty Dickson was unlucky to give Argyll and Bute for the next starter thus allowing Rayhana Amjad to tap just Bute into the open goal. Sociological terms beginning with A brought one bonus. It helped, but they really needed to be winning more on the buzzer. So Rayhana Amjad took the next starter with various clues to the word corner. Zimbabwe stubbornly refused to yield up bonus points. Still, at the 20 minute mark the gap stood at only 20 points, 100 – 80 in Manchester’s favour. Both teams were still in it.

For the second picture starter Kai Madgwick identified a photo of Werner ‘Du, du, lichts mir in’ Herzog. Stills from three documentaries directed by Herzog brought one bonus but stretched the lead to 35. Again, Edinburgh cut into it as Parthav Easwar recognised words for pomegranate syrup. (another prog rock band?) German chemist Ida Noddack brought them one bonus and the gap was back down to 20. Gawd knows about enantiomers. Neither team did for the next starter. An incorrect Manchester interruption narrowed the gap to 15. The lightning fast buzzing of Kai Madgwick struck again for the next starter to identify poems contained in the Exeter Book. Two world heritage sites only yielded one bonus, but that bonus meant that Edinburgh would need two unanswered visits to the table. And there was not a lot of time left. It’s almost needless to say that it was Kai Madgwick who turned the likelihood of a Manchester win into a certainty by buzzing in with the correct answer of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk for the next starter. Paintings by Basquiat brought ten points to stretch the lead to 50. Johnny Richards knew that the German word for cathedral is Dom, taking Edinburgh into triple figures. But that was it. The contest was bonged after one incorrect answer on international borders and Manchester had won by 145 to 105.

And let’s be clear. Although Kai Madgwick was the undoubted star of the final, and the series, it was won by Manchester, the team and the whole team. Kai knew this, saying ‘I’m pleased with every single member of this team’. Right enough.

Analysis – well, should you need such a thing, then Edinburgh achieved a BCR of 42.1% while Manchester had 48.1%. But the story of the day was not about bonuses, but about starters. Manchester got more of them than Edinburgh and yes, Kai Madgwick got all of his team’s starters, 9 to be precise. I said in my preview that if Kai Madgwick hit top form then my tentative prediction of an Edinburgh win wouldn’t be worth a damn. Well, he did and it wasn’t. At the end of the day, like every other team that Manchester have played in this series (except themselves in the quarter final) Edinburgh were Madgwicked.

I enjoyed the fact that the Beeb had asked Miriam Margolyes to present the trophy. This was a cue for her story of using the F word when playing in a series in the 60s when she got one wrong. I think I did once read that her episode no longer exists in the archives, so that’s one we just have to imagine. Miriam M is a popular, yet somewhat high-risk speaker. Miriam is going to say what Miriam wants to say, not what someone else wants her to say. In this case, no expletives, but the usual thing is for the luminary presenting the trophy to pay a tribute to both teams, commiserate with the runners up, congratulate the champions and not single out any one player. Not our Miriam. All she wanted to do was concentrate on Kai Madgwick. “You’re extraordinary. You’re a genius.” Even when pushed by Amol to pay tribute to Edinburgh she hardly gave them a word. When presenting the trophy she said to the Manchester team “You were brilliant,” and then looked at the skipper and said “especially you!” Well, if we’re honest, it’s probably what we were all thinking.

Amol Watch

Another good season, Mr. Rajan, so take a well earned bow, please. I think we can safely say that you’ve made the show your own now.

Interesting Fact That I Didn’t Already Know Of The Week

The largest time zone difference over a land border between two countries is that between China and Afghanistan. With its huge area yet single time zone, it had to be China, but I didn’t know if it would be a Western or Eastern border.

Baby Elephant Walk Moment

First advanced by Georg Cantor in 1878, what name is given to the hypothesis that posits there is no set whose cardinality is an intermediate value between the cardinality of the integers and that of the real numbers?

Yeah, you had me at cardinality. Dum de dumdum dum dum dum dum dumdum.

Mastermind Grand Final 2026 (Spoilers)

Well, I’m just starting to come down from all the excitement of the double bubble of Quizzy Mondays Grand Final evening. My first thought is – thank goodness I didn’t try to predict that final! Well, we’ll say a bit more about that later. Meanwhile, on with the show.

Kicking off the final was Lorna Frankel. In both previous rounds Lorna had been rock solid on her specialist rounds and I expected her to be so again. She certainly did well, scoring 11. However, she did drop a couple of points, and her score was slightly lower than she had managed in her two previous specialists. No disaster at all, though and game on.

Ross Taylor was answering on the films of Danny Boyle. His solid 10 in the heat was trumped by his excellent 12 in the semi. Which was not actually the highest specialist score in that particular match. Ross’ upward trend continued as he whacked in a near perfect 13. I had no doubt that this would put Ross in the shakeup when we got into the business end of the competition.

There was a kind of symmetry about Danielle’s specialist round. She had scored 11 in the heat and 11 in the semi so we can’t claim it was a surprise when she also scored 11 in tonight’s round on Beatrix Potter. Yes, she was a couple of points behind, but if she could match her GK round from the heat then she would have a very competitive score.

David Ford started his round on Robert Burns extremely well. He’d scored 11 in the heat and he looked on course to at least repeat that. However a couple of stoppers in mid round seemed to put him off his stride a bit, but in the end he recovered to get into double figures with 10. 3 points behind the lead is not an unbridgeable gap, especially if he could produce a GK round like the one he’d had in the heats.

Miles Searle did point out in his filmed insert that if he won, then he would be the youngest ever winner, being a remarkable 21 years old. I don’t know if this makes him the youngest finalist since Susan Reynolds in 1974, but I wouldn’t be surprised. Oh, you know, I do sometimes wish that they wouldn’t ask contenders to talk about this sort of thing in their films for the start of the specialist rounds. I always think it’s tempting fate. I remember for my film for the 2008(7) SOBM Grand Final I was asked about my chances of winning, and I stonewalled it with ‘1 in 6, same as everyone else.’ Miles’ round of 8 points on Notre Dame Cathedral was a perfectly satisfactory one. But in the final, the banker only pays double figures.

Finally Diane Howe. Answering on Jim Lovell she scored a fine 12. This was on a par with the score from her the specialist round in her heat, and notably better than the 9 points she had scored in the semi final. At just one point behind in second she was handily placed on the leader’s shoulder at the canal turn.

For the record, I scored 5 on Jim Lovell, 4 on Julie Andrews, one each on Danny Boyle, Beatrix Potter and Robert Burns and precisely zero on Notre Dame.

First to return to the chair was Miles Searle. Miles had scored a brilliant 15 on GK in his semi and if he could repeat or improve upon this then it would certainly put the cat among the pigeons. Well, it didn’t quite work out that way this time and he finished with 17. But a Mastermind finalist at 21! All that he is missing from his armoury is a few good years at the quiz face and, should he desire, he could easily pass this way again.

David Ford, as with his specialist round, at first looked like he was on for a very fine performance. But a wrong answer in the middle of the round robbed him of all momentum. Oh, as we know any score in double figures in the modern era of Mastermind is a good one. But when you’re 3 points behind, 10 just isn’t going to be enough. Not in the Grand Final.

Now, I did mention in my preview that what you hope to do in the Grand Final is to find your very best form and pull out a better round than you managed in either heat or semi. In the heat and semi Lorna Frankel managed GK scores of 12 and 10. Tonight she got to 10 and kept answering. She got to 12 and kept answering. She got to 13 and finally ended the round with 14 and no passes. 25 and no passes overall. That could, just could, be a winning score, I thought.

Danielle Connolly’s best GK score so far of 13 in the heat would not quite be enough. Like Lorna before her she was going to have to improve on her best form in GK. Well, she gave it a good go. But before the white line of time started to run out it was clear she wasn’t going to get there. Nonetheless a good 10 for 21 gave her 2^nd place with 2 contenders still to go.

The first of whom was Diane Howe. Diane’s best GK form from the heat, where she scored 14, was required to take the outright lead. She looked calm and was answering well. As the round went on there were perhaps just signs of fatigue as she closed in on the 13 and no passes that she needed for a share of the lead. It was close, but she got there. Also 25 and no passes.

Finally Ross Taylor. Alone of all the contenders, Ross returned to the chair knowing exactly what he needed to do. 12 points and no passes for a share of the lead and a three way tie break. 13 for an outright win. Make no doubt, Ross could do this. He’d produced the joint best GK round of the whole series in the semi, where he’d scored 15. Of all of the finalists he has played in the most high-powered and pressured quizzes. All he needed was for the questions to run for him. It was close, desperately so. However, Ross, in an attempt to maintain momentum I believe, passed during the round which meant that 12 would not be enough. As it was, he just fell a wee bit short. It happens. He finished with 24.

Which meant that we had a tie break, between Lorna and Diane. In one way it is a shame that one of these fine competitors would have to lose, but that’s Mastermind. Lorna was the first to answer the five questions in the tie break. I was fairly sure that she had two of them. Diane was brought back and she, I believed, answered 3 of them correctly. I was right. Diane, the self confessed adrenaline junkie, is our new Mastermind champion. Huge congratulations.

I offer my heartfelt commiserations to Lorna. And my thanks to all 6 finalists for a great hour’s entertainment. It was nice to see Clive paying a fulsome tribute to them and to all of the contenders, without whom we would not have a show. Thanks to the team who make the show too. Cheers Mastermind – I look forward to the next time we meet in the 2027 series.

The Details

Lorna Frankel	Julie Andrew	11	0	14	0	25	0	28
Ross Taylor	The Films of Danny Boyle	13	0	11	2	24	2
Danielle Connolly	Beatrix Potter	11	1	10	1	21	1
David Ford	Robert Burns	10	0	10	0	20	0
Miles Searle	Notre Dame Cathedral - Paris	8	0	9	0	17	0
Diane Howe	Jim Lovell	12	0	13	0	25	0	3

Mastermind 2026 Grand Final Specialist SUbjects

Silly me.  All of that guff in the preview and I haven’t even mentioned the specialist subjects for tomorrow’s Grand Final. They are:-

Dame Julie Andrews,

The Films of Danny Boyle,

Beatrix Potter,

Robert Burns,

Notre-Dame Cathedral

Jim Lovell.

Actually, as a set I really rather like them. I mean, there’s none of them which I’d pick as an absolute banker, but with a bit of luck and a following wind I might be able to score a point or two on all of them. There’s none of them that seem to carry a government health warning with them. Yes, there’s over 800 years worth of history to consider for Notre Dame, but it can be done. There were over 1900 years of History for London Bridge in my final and like I said, it can be done. I always think biographical subjects are a good fit for Mastermind, having definite limits to what you can be asked, and we have four of them. Beatrix Potter might prove problematical as there’s all of the books, and all of the pictures and all of the life. I read a biography of her a couple of years ago and there is a lot to deal with. Likewise, Julie Andrews is 90, and her career started as a child star, so even if you just concentrated on her stage and screen career there is a hell of a lot to learn. Robbie Burns wrote over 500 poems, without even touching his life and career. Jim Lovell, well there’s all of his career as an astronaut which is pretty well documented but that only accounts for about 12 years of his life. He was 97 when he passed away last August. That’s a lot of non-astronaut years to learn about. Finally, the films of Danny Boyle. I believe he has thus far had 16 films released. Sounds manageable? Well, when you consider that film and TV rounds do tend to concentrate on the events of the film/TV show, that’s a lot of films to watch, make notes on and learn.

Well, however our six finalists do in the show, I hope that you’ll join me in thanking them for giving it a go. Whatever happens, take satisfaction that you are a Mastermind finalist and nobody can ever take it away from you.

University Challenge 2026 Grand Final Preview

 The Tale of the Tape

	1st rd F	1st rd A	2nd rd F	2nd rd A	QF1 F	QF1 A	QF2 F	QF2 A	QF3 F	QF3 A	SF F	SF A
Edinburgh	200	105	180	150	195	80	105	85	/	/	155	110
Manchester	170	150	160	135	80	195	150	120	185	135	250	70

 

	For - Average	Against - Average	Margin - Average
Edinburgh	167	106	61
Manchester	166	115	51

 

Well, before we think about my comparative performance tables, let’s consider the fact that these teams met in the first set of quarter finals. Back then, it wasn’t really close. Edinburgh won by 195-80.

So are we looking at a foregone conclusion in the final? No. I’ve read my review of that quarter final match, and everything comes back to the starters. It usually does. In that match Manchester skipper Kai Madgwick answered 5 starters correctly. Now compared with his 10 in the semi final that looks as if it’s famine rations, while actually it’s a good performance. But nobody else in the Manchester team managed to answer a starter correctly. In a match where the skipper was getting beaten on the buzzer more than usual it really needed another member of the team to help ease the pressure just a little. As it was Johnny Richards of Edinburgh scored 7 starters which was more than Manchester scored all evening.

Alright, then, now let’s look at the comparative performances. There is only a 1 point difference in the teams’ average scores. When you factor in that on average Edinburgh’s average points difference is +61, while Manchester’s is+51, and that is affected by the match between the teams, then this suggests that they are a lot closer than their quarter final match suggests. There was no other team that faced both of our finalists so we don’t have that to compare.

Bearing this in mind, we have to speculate on why the score wasn’t closer when the teams met in the quarters. Maybe Edinburgh are just that tad faster on the buzzer and we’ll see a similar result in the final. That’s certainly possible. But there are other possible explanations. Maybe that particular set of starters happened to be more closely aligned to Edinburgh’s knowledge than Manchester, though the sheer blind luck of the draw. Maybe Johnny Richards was having an especially good night while Kai Madgwick was having an off night. That’s possible.

I always like a team which has people who can answer a wide enough range of starters in up to three of their seats. Edinburgh look stronger to me on this score than Manchester look. Now I grant you that a player who can answer you 10 starters in an evening has the ability to carry you to a win if they are on song. However the other side of that particular coin is that you are reliant on them not having a bad night. Last week we saw one of this series’ finest buzzers, Oscar O’Flanagan, having such a night. It can happen.

Mind you, that was largely because Kai Madgwick and his team started the contest at such a tremendous pace and it meant that Oscar and Imperial were forced to gamble and come in a little bit too early. What might happen, I wonder, if Manchester manage to get off to a similar start against Edinburgh? By the end of the quarters Edinburgh were the only unbeaten team left in the series. How will they cope if they find themselves under real pressure for the first time in this series?

Twist my arm behind my back and I’ll say Edinburgh to win, but if Kai Madgwick has another blinder that prediction won’t matter a damn.

Can’t wait.