Mastermind 2027 Heat 4

Well, there we are then. In the week that the Beeb announced that they will be putting Celebrity Mastermind out of our misery, how did the latest set of contenders do?

First to go was Ria Drabble . She was answering on British Birds of Prey. Now, in my better late than never preview I suggested that it was possible that I might get some points on each of tonight’s rounds, and in the first half dozen questions or so I raced away to 3 points. I didn’t get any more for the rest of the round, though. Ria too started well but struggled more as the round went on and it was only with a late rally that she managed to post a total of 5.

Josh Duckmanton was answering on my banker subject for the night, the Roger Moore era of James Bond films. He too started very well. Like Ria before him he suffered a mid-round wobble but managed to keep going and lift his score to a respectable 8. As for me, well I did do slightly better than I did on the birds of prey, levelling out at a further 4 points.

I can do nothing more than extend my sympathy to poor Gurdas Singh Sually. He had the horrible experience of pushing his score nicely along to 4 and then not answering another question correctly until the end of the round, which was more than a minute away. I’ll be honest, my three points all came from within the first few questions and I did not get any right after that. Which is not to say that I think that this was a rogue set of questions, but it does go to show what can happen in a specialist round, especially in a show where there seemed to be something in the air, like tonight’s show.

After the previous three specialist rounds you maybe wouldn’t have blamed Bryony Richards if she’d made a run for it at this stage, but she didn’t. Bryony was answering on Sylvia Plath. This was the round where I doubted if I was going to get any points, but I managed the one and that was enough to take me to an aggregate of 12. Bryony always seemed calm and self-possessed throughout the round, but she did not find it notably easier than the rest of tonight’s contenders. With 6 points she’d have been out of contention in the average show, but in terms of what was happening this did not appear to be an average show.

First back was Gurdas. I thought that his round was marginally tougher than the other GK rounds in tonight’s show, and it’s fair to say that it turned out to be a bit of a grim old struggle. He scored 6 for a total of 10. Chalk it up as one of those nights, sir, and put it behind you.

Ria, then, had an outside chance of taking an unlikely win if she could produce a really good general knowledge round. Well, it didn’t happen. To be fair, she scored 7, one more than Gurdas had managed, but in all honesty it wasn’t a great round. Well, Ria, it’s a story you can tell to the kids that you teach. Thank you for playing – we’d have no show if people weren’t prepared to give it a go.

Bryony, as I said, was in with a shout, despite her modest GK score. She adopted the tactic of trying to get through as many questions as possible by passing anything where an answer didn’t occur to her straightaway. And who is to say that the tactic didn’t work? She scored 9 to take her total to 15. Normally this would not be a winning total. Tonight though it looked as if anything could happen. The number of passes she had incurred looked worrying, though.

Josh, then, needed an achievable 8 points to win. I say achievable, but only Bryony had beaten it all evening. Josh had scored 8 on specialist. As with so many rounds this evening, the pace slowed, and Josh seemed to be wading through treacle in the last 30 seconds. He had 15, but the 16^th point to make it certain just would not come. In the end though, Bryony’s pass total was just too high, and Josh won. Well done, sir, and good luck in the semis

Alright then, let me tackle the elephant in the room. In terms of quality, that was not a very good heat. It’s difficult to guarantee that you’re not going to have 4 modest scores in the same heat – combinations of subjects can throw this up. It happens. It’s not the sort of thing you would want to watch every week, I know. But no contender deliberately achieves a modest score and as I said earlier, if we don’t have contenders willing to put themselves into the firring line, then we don’t have a show.

Ria Drabble	British Birds of Prey	5	3	7	4	12	7
Josh Duckmanton	James Bond: The Roger Moore Years	8	1	7	3	15	4
Gurdas Singh Sually	King Charles I	4	2	6	3	10	5
Bryony Richards	Sylvia Plath	6	2	9	5	15	7