I don’t know if it was planned because the BBC knew that a pretty underwhelming edition of Mastermind was showing earlier in the evening and they wanted to give the fan something more meaty by way of apology, but after UC last night, over on BBC4 we had Sally Magnusson giving us her memories of the show during her much missed Dad’s 25 year stint as question master. I really rather enjoyed this 15 minute show – although even if I hadn’t I would have forgiven her anyway because when I met her in person she was handing me my Mastermind bowl.
This was followed by the 1972 Mastermind final. I found
this really interesting as I’m pretty sure I have never seen it before. Although
much of what we remember about the show during the Magnus years was in evidence,
there were some quite unusual aspects. Firstly there were only 3 contenders –
Nancy Wilkinson, Beryl Leatham Thomas and Joan Taylor. Secondly, these rounds
were long – 2 and a half minutes on specialist and 3 minutes on GK. Much of
this has been written about in Magnus’ own “I’ve Started So I’ll Finish”, his
history of the first 25 years of the show. But to continue – the specialist
categories were extremely broad, and I can guarantee that they’d be a lot more
narrowly defined if taken today. As it was, I got double figures on Nancy’s
round on the History of Music just from my general knowledge.
There was no mention of passes being counted in the event
of a tie, and indeed all three contenders showed no hesitation and passed a lot
more than you would have expected.
Anothr thing that intrigued me was that Joan Taylor, the
last contender to go in the GK round, had reached 35 in response to Nancy’s 37,
and immediately after Magnus asked the question, the buzzer went. AT which the
audience burst into applause, and she never answered. Under the established
rules, Magnus would have said that she could answer at this stage, but she didn’t
even try. It wouldn’t have made any difference, but I found it a bit
surprising.
You knew that this was recorded in the early 70s when
Magnus came across just a little bit patronising when he made the point that
all 3 finalists had to beat male opposition to get to the final.
One thing you didn’t see is a story that Magnus tells in
the book, where he explains that with the GK rounds being 3 minutes long, Nancy
went so quickly that he ran out of questions! Bosworth Taylor had to get a copy
of the World Book and make up some more while Nancy waited. You couldn’t tell
from watching the show, though.
Do you know what? I wouldn’t mind watching a few more like
this.
2 comments:
Very interesting to see this. It seemed that Magnus was a lot more lenient on questions being interrupted than in later series. And many of the questions were a lot simpler (if not necessarily easier) and less precisely worded than I think they'd allow nowadays - e.g. "Where is the island of Hokkaido?" or "Who is considered to be the only great French Romantic composer?".
According to the book it was in Nancy's *specialist* round where they ran out of questions with about 15 seconds to go: I think this must coincide with the change of camera angle at about 4 minutes in. As you say, it's not obvious unless you know what to look for.
I think Joan Taylor said "Pass" to the last question as the buzzer went (before the applause).
Hi Andrew. Thanks for this - I stand corrected. I didn't re-read the book before I wrote this, and my hearing is getting worse as I get older, so that's my excuses and I'll stick with it. I have just checked and it's an edition from the 1977 series being shown next week and I'm already looking forward to it.
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