In the News

In the News

Who or what are following and why have they been in the news?

Writing’s on the wall

Chris Harper-Mercer

Brian Friel

Arnold Palmer

Kim Davis

Prue Leith

Shaker Aamer

Dismaland

Astro-Sat

Tom Brady

Mazher Mahmood

Sarah Sands

China Eden

Aidan Coleman

Lord Burns

Didymoon

Johanna Konta

Max Verstappen

Umpqua Community College, Oregon

The Road to Little Dribbling

In Other News

Which train company have announced that they will give instant refunds for delays in some circumstances?

The Royal Mail are to charge which fee for insufficient postage?

What caused the moon to turn red last week?

What happened to the Baital Futuh Mosque in Morden?

What was the Rugby World Cup score between Scotland and the USA?

– and Ireland and Romania?

– and Australia and Uruguay?

– and England and Wales? (sob)

– and England and Australia (waaahhhhh)

Which Brit won the cycling world road race championship?

What was the score between Spurs and Man City?

Who won the Japanese GP?

Which former great English bowler passed away?

Which book won the WH Smiths readers favourite book poll?

How much money did the Beatles’ original contract fetch at Sotherbys?

London announced it will not be hosting what?

What was the Champions League score between Chelsea and Porto?

And Arsenal and Olymiakos?

And Man Utd and Wolfsburg?

And Man City and Borussia Moenchengladbach?

Which team will Mark Cavendish be joining?

Jerry Adams will not face charges involved in the death of whom?

What have the BBC decided about the Eurovision Song Contest?

Which company announced an end to arctic oil drilling?

Whose fight with Tyson Fury has been postponed for a few weeks?

What was announced by the Girl Guide movement last week?

County Cricket championship – who had the highest batting average?

And the highest total runs?

And the best bowling average?

And the most wickets?

Which team won the cricket 2^nd division?

And which team are also promoted?

Who are to buy a controlling stake in the Lotus F1 team?

Whose flag was raised at the UN for the first time?

What did Jeremy Corbyn anger front bench colleagues by saying he wouldn’t do?

Channel Four got what last week?

Who are taking over coverage of the British Open a year early?

Alcohol sales are to be allowed in which famous village for the first time?

For what would David Cameron not apologise in Jamaica?

Rugby World Cup – score between Wales and Fiji?

Who was it announced will star in the latest Meerkat advert?

A case of which animal disease was reported in Wales?

Which became the 3^rd to legalise Marijuana?

In which town did a giant sinkhole appear?

The Australian cricket team postponed a tour to where over security concerns?

In the Europa League what was the score between Liverpool and Sion?

And Spurs and Monaco

And Celtic and Fehnerbahce?

Who has a new contract with McLaren

Who announced his engagement to Lance Black?

Only Connect : Series Eleven: Match Eight

Scientists v. Builders

Right, grab a quick cuppa, for OC is about to start. In this case we have the Scientists and the Builders. The Scientists were Innis Carson, Lorraine Murtagh and Ian Volante. Innis and Lorraine come up clean on the database, but Ian appeared in the Nancy’s 2009 series of Mastermind, where a good score in the first round wasn’t enough to win his heat. Their opposition were the Builders – Robin Whelan, Max Esperson, and captain Ian Orris. Again, it’s only the skipper who registers on my database, and he too is a Masterminder. In Jesse’s 2010 series, Ian beat my mate Les Morrell in the first round, but could only come runner up to Jesse in the semi final. Ironically Les had a repechage slot and made it through to the final, still, I digress. Not much to choose between the teams on paper then.

Round One – What’s The Connection?

Two Reeds showed the builds a photo of what looked like a statue of Alan Turing. Then we had Stephen Hawking. I thought that this was either going to be characters played by best actor nominated actors at the last Oscars – or – I did know that Benedict Cumberbatch has also played both. Sensibly the Builds took another clue – Julian Assange, which meant we were looking at the Benedict Cumberbatch connection. Sadly the Builds went barking up the film tree and the Tists couldn’t get it. Water gave the Tists music – didn’t know the first but recognized The Mighty Wah! Second, and Snap! Third. So exclamation marks, and the Tists knew it at the same time that I did. For Eye of Horus the BVuilds received intensity of cosmic microwave background radiation – no, me neither. Norwegian banknotes helped me not, nor did footballers’ gestures. I’ll be honest, I probably should have got it from Dick Cheney’s residence on Google Earth, but I didn’t and that’s that. Neither did the Builds. Nor the Tists for that matter. Pixelation is the connection. Lion gave the Tists a lovely set. Milan, and Your Party saw both Lorraine and I latching on to things which Right Said Fred were Too Sexy for. Matter of opinion. Good shout. Ian opted for a horned rather than horned viper – I feared for the Builds after this, I’ll be honest – and received Abaft the Mainmast. No idea yet. The second clue 4 of 5 bells in the Elizabeth Tower, the tower commonly referred to as Big Ben, shed no light either. Every 25^th Hunger Games, though, I knew had something to do with Quarter – Quarter Quell IIRC. If the first one was quarter deck, then I felt strongly enough that I might well have gone for it at this point. Sensibly the Builds took the last clue – 113.4g hamburger – the quarter pounder, and then have the correct answer for their first point of the competition. The Tists were left with the flax, and a very nice little set gave them The Raven, and then Little Weed. Now, anyone of my vintage knows Little Weed from Bill and Ben, and knows that it just said one word – weeeeeeeeeeed. Wel also know ‘quoth the raven ‘Eat my shorts’ – ‘Nevermore’.  So I came in with- they only said one word. The Tists took Seagulls in Finding Nemo – MINE! – and that was enough to give them the same answer. This completed a good first round for the Tists who led by 7 - 1

Round Two – What Comes Fourth?

The Builds, needing to get a wiggle on, started with the flax. 35^th Anniversary LP reissue: Universal didn’t spark much in my memory to be honest, although we were clearly dealing with 1977. 1977 in music shouted punk rock, which suggested the Sex Pistols. But in what way? The Builds took the second – After one week with A&M:Virgin. Now, that made it clearer. We were dealing with record labels, and I knew that Virgin did take the Pistols on after they were shown the door by another company. I also knew that they were on the EMI label to start – in the words of the Pistols – EMI – Unlimited supply. So the first would be something involving EMI. The third clue for the Builds was kicked out after Bill Grundy interview: A &M. Ah the Bill Grundy interview. I remember being about 12 years old, watching it with my grandmother who was in her late 60s, listening in wonder to the virtuoso display of 4 letter abuse, amongst which Bill Grundy was called a ‘F”*!ing rotter’. With a totally straight face my Nan turned to me afterwards and said, ‘do people still use the word rotter, then?’ She was a class act. Going back to the show the Builds just didn’t get a record label into their answer, and the Tists couldn’t either. The answer actually was First single: EMI. The Tists opted for Eye of Horus. Ras al-Kaimah gave me the chance of a 5 pointer. This was the United Arab Emirates, and probably going up in order of size. I was fairly sure that even though Dubai gets the headlines, Abu Dhabi is the largest. Sharjah looked good for my hypothesis and Dubai hammered it home. That was enough for the Tists who gave the right answer. I could have had a 5 pointer on 2 Reeds as well. The Only Thing We Have to fear is fear itself – is a quotation from FDR. I would never have gambled in the studio, but I reckoned it could be quotes from 4 successive presidents. Therefore a JFK one would do it – I went for Ask not what your country can do for you - . That would have done, I’m sure. The Builds went for ‘read my lips’ which was George H W Bush – and I’m sorry, and don’t want to be harsh, but a set like this is the kind of thing you really should get if you’re going to make a realistic challenge for a win. The Tists offered Ich Bin Ein Berliner – correctly – which incidentally actually could be translated as I am a donut, I think.  Ian V chose a conventionally stressed horned viper, but he didn’t care, they were way ahead. RM in two different fonts followed by DM didn’t mean anything to them, but the Builds had a terrific bonus shout with Euro sign. These were rentenmark, reichsmark, deutschmark . I hadn’t had a Scooby. That made things slightly better as they went into water. We had Now Get Out of That. Sorry guys , but this was another 5 pointer chance. I knew that this was a BBC series of the 80s, and also a theme tune of Top of the Pops. If the next was The Wizard, then the answer would be Whole Lotta Love. It was. At this point the team worked it between them, and took much needed points. The Tists finished off with Lion, and set of pictures of 2 bars of music. No good for me, but they worked it out impressively off two, and Innis actually answered in the correct notes for the last one. Good shout – this was Frere Jacques apparently. All of which meant that at the end of the round the Tists led by 13 – 5.

Round Three – The Connecting Walls

A good Water wall and the Tists could be home and dry, I reckoned. This was an interesting wall because I could see a completely rogue set of Star Trek characters. The Tists didn’t fall for it – maybe they knew that Christine Chappell had double letters. So Chapel – Temple – Kirk and Church all went for places of worship. Then they started barking up the Star Trek tree for a minute, before seeing famous Bens – Britten – Disraeli – Zephaniah – Spock. They could see eponymous TV crime series – eg – Castle – and also words which are homonyms for nationalities eg deign. These resolved into Castle – Bones – Luther and Lewis, then Deign – Fin – Scott – Poll. 10 points thank you very much, and to all intents and purposes, game over.

Lion gave the Builds the 4 Cs of gemstones – cut – carat – clarity – colour. I could see a set of words the first syllables of which were the names of mammals – Category – Molesley – Pigment and Bates – but the Builds missed it. This would leave shade – tincture – tint and hue as colour variations. Again they missed these. I didn’t know that the last set – Carson – Hughes – Patmore and Barrow were all in Downton Abbey. Neither did the Builds. Receiving 3 put the scores at 23 – 8 to the Tists.

Round Four – Missing Vowels

The first set – afflictions of the ear nose and throat fell 3 – 1to the Tists, but the Builds lost a point for a wrong buzz. Things abbreviated to three letters fell 3 – 1. Shakespeare play suicides went 3 – 1to the Builds. That was that.

The final score was 30 – 12. A very good night’s work for the Scientists, who look to be a rather useful outfit. As for the Builders, well, it was one of those nights when nothing goes right and be honest, we’ve all had them in our time. They still have the chance to make amends in their next game.

A Salutary Lesson

I give you fair warning that this post is only tangentially about quizzing. Now, if you are a long term regular reader you'll know that one of my guilty pleasures is Strictly Come Dancing. Well, I do have another. Since last series, I have very much enjoyed The Great British Bake Off. Well, the twitterati among you will surely be aware of the furore over what has been dubbed 'Bingate'.

For the uninitiated, here is the one minute guide to the Bake Off. This is a knockout competition. Each week a group of amateur bakers are given three baking tasks. These are judged by Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood. Every week the baker adjudged to have performed best this week is crowned star baker, and the one adjudged to have performed least well leaves the competition.

In yesterday's heat, the final (and probably most important) baking challenge was to produce a baked alaska - for which the bakers had to make everything they needed, including the ice cream. The epsiode showed one of the bakers, Diana Beard, removing the ice cream of another baker, Iain Watters  (nickname - the russet Gandalf), from the freezer to place her own in there. What we, the viewers, were shown then was Iain, in frustration, after his icecream was shown to be melted, crying out in anguish, then a little melodramatically throwing all he had made into the bin, and storming off set. In the climax of the show we saw Iain, like a naughty schoolboy, bringing his bin to the judging table to receive a lecture from Paul and Mary, reddening all the time with embarrassment, after which he was speedily ejected from the show.

The BBC received over 500 complaints after the show, and apparently Twitter exploded with indignation over Iain's treatment, with many sadly typically incendiary comments about Diana. Diana herself went on BBC Radio Shropshire this morning, tearfully saying that she feels she has been 'stitched up' by the programme makers. Judging by her remarks, and those left on Twitter by Paul Hollywood and Sue Perkins, she has a point. According to them, the ice cream was out of the freezer for about 40 seconds before Iain was called over to remove it to his own freezer, since space was limited. I haven't timed it, but it seemed to me that there was a darn sight more than 40 seconds between the programme showing Diana removing Iain's ice cream saying 'hasn't he got his own freezer?' or words to that effect, and Iain crying out in anguish over the state of his ice cream. What the programme also failed to do was to show any words of commiseration or remorse passing between the two, leaving people to draw the impression that even if this was not a deliberate act of sabotage, Diana couldn't have cared less about what had happened.

In my opinion - and as always - feel free to disagree - when you take the king's shilling by applying to go on a TV competition, then you know that you are in the hands of the production team, and if you don't quite come across as well as you'd like, well, sorry, that's part of the risk that you take. However, surely the production team must have realised that they had edited this particular show in such a way as to give people the impression that this perfectly nice lady in her late 60s is actually a heartless cheat, exposing her to abuse and vitriol from the more vocal sectors of the interweb. I am serious about this. Unless the production team actually did think that Diana was totally responsible for Iain's elimination, and heartlessly glad about it, they had a duty towards her not to allow her to come across in this way. I can only think that the team couldn't resist the furore that they must have known this would whip up. However the show doesn't need it - it has a huge and loyal audience anyway. It comes across  to me as a cynical move, which shows no regard for the people taking part in the competition - without whom there would be no show in the first place.

Now, you might say, well if there is anything positive about this, it's that it shows something about our innate British sense of fair play. Well, maybe. How many of those people foaming at the keyboard over this, demanding the institution of the death penalty for wanton ice cream removal, I wonder, have ever cheated by using their phones in a pub quiz? Just a thought.

Actually, probably the only positive thing about this whole business was Iain's reaction when called up to face the music from Paul and Mary. He smiled sheepishly, took his verbal beating like a man, and at no point blamed Diana. Iain Watters, you, sir, are a man, and what is more, a gentleman. Sometimes you don't actually have to win to prove yourself a winner.