Why am I back? For that matter, am I actually back in the first place?

Right, let’s start by saying one thing: we’d all have been a lot better off if covid 19 had never reared its ugly head. The deaths in the UK and abroad have been nothing less than tragedies. It has disrupted all of our lives, changed all of our lives, and even when this lockdown is over it’s very likely that what’s normal then, will be quite different from what was normal before. I am not in any way trying to trivialise this disaster.

Still, the lockdown has had some unexpected effects. As a teacher, I am not going to pretend that I haven’t had a lot more free time since the lockdown started. Yes, like all teachers I’m still conscientiously preparing resources, setting work, distributing it to all of my pupils, and marking it promptly then returning it to my pupils. But that doesn’t take all day and I’m not going to pretend that it does.

If you’ve been with LAM over the last few years, you might remember how there have been times when it has just abruptly stopped without warning. At times this has been due to my depression. I was first diagnosed in 2017, maybe 6 months after the school where I’d taught for 29 years was closed and amalgamated with two others. I was off work for 8 weeks, and with treatment I was able to return to work. It’s been a bumpy road since, with further bouts in 2018, and worst, in February 2019, which lasted until the Autumn. I went back onto medication, and the school paid for me to have counselling, for which I will always be grateful to them. Between starting in October, and finishing counselling in January something changed. Maybe it had just run its course naturally, and maybe it was totally due to counselling. Most likely it was a mixture of the two. But from the October half term right up until lockdown, I felt differently, which was most obvious at work. I wouldn’t say it’s easy there – it isn’t. It’s bloody difficult. But I was coping better, I was finding a better way to work with the more difficult kids, and glory be, I was actually enjoying some of my own lessons.

Concurrent with this, I’d pretty much stopped quizzing.

In one way this had been a gradual process, and in another it was a very abrupt process. It’s a couple of years now since I stopped going to quizzes on a Sunday night. Partly this was self preservation, having to work the next day, and partly because I didn’t need the grief from some of the knobheads you’d encounter when you won the quiz a couple of times in a row. I stopped playing in the Bridgend quiz league after the 2017 season. This was partly due to a relatively unpleasant 2016 AGM, and partly due to the fact that I’d got to the stage where I really didn’t like the kind of person I was when I was playing in the league. So essentially I was playing once a week in the rugby club, and in the annual Brain of Mensa competition.

This continued up until about the time I started counselling in October/November. I went to Vienna for a visit, and missed the quiz at the club. Then the next week I didn’t go because I was knackered. I’d hardly, if ever. Used that as an excuse not to go before. But the fact is that I’m not getting any younger, and if I’m going to be on my best the next day at school, then really and truly now I need to be in bed about an hour before the quiz ends sometimes. So I pretty much just sopped going back.

Do you know something? For the first time since 1988 I was not attending at least one quiz every week. Do you know something else? I didn’t miss it. Not at all.

I haven’t a problem filling my time at all. So much so that I started thinking – do I really need to write about UC and Mastermind in order to enjoy the shows? Well, I’m sure you can work out the answer to that one. So I stopped, and I’ve been concentrating on my drawing and painting more. Sadly the lockdown has done for my exhibition which was going to happen at Easter, but hey, there will be other opportunities in the future, hopefully.

Then about 10 days ago, my son asked me to do a video quiz for him and his sisters on Zoom. To be fair he gave me about 2 hours warning. I thoroughly enjoyed putting the questions together, and I thoroughly enjoyed being the quiz master. At the end they asked me to do a Mastermind quiz for them for the next weekend. I had to make specialist rounds for all of them on subjects about which I knew nothing in some cases, and again, I loved it. Then last night we had the Mastermind final. After watching, and enjoying Dave McBryan’s fine performance and win, I really, really wanted to talk about it with someone. So I bit the bullet, and wrote the review in the post before this one.

So that’s that. I’m not putting pressure on myself by saying that I’m going to be starting regular posting again. In fact I’m not even promising that this will not be the last ever post I make. But hey, just because you’ve fallen out of love with quizzing, it doesn’t mean that you can’t still be close friends, hopefully.

Mastermind 2020 Grand Final: Review

I have thought over a couple of hours about whether or not to post again on LAM. Maybe I’ll post about that in a day or two. But this isn’t about that. This is about last night’s Mastermind Grand Final, and about this series as a whole. For once, let’s start with the stats: -

Julie Bungey	The Wars of the Roses	10	0	9	0	19	0
Lewis Barn	The Ancient Universities of Scotland	6	0	6	0	12	0
Marga Scott-Johnson	The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency novels of Alexander McCall Smith	10	0	11	0	21	0
Dave McBryan	The ‘View Askewniverse’ films of Kevin Smith	10	0	14	0	24	0
Emma Laslett	The Stonewall Riots	10	0	11	0	21	0
Jethro Waldron	Johannes Vermeer	12	0	7	0	19	0

The first thing to point out here, unless I’ve made a highly possible mistake, is that there were no passes. None. That’s not unique, but it is rare, and kudos to all 6 finalists for achieving that.

So, what can we say? Well, not having made any kind of comment on the show – or any show – for months, I obviously didn’t make a preview. Prior to the start of last night’s show – and I apologise to the other finalists for saying this, but I’m being honest here, I really saw this as being a two horse race between Dave and Emma, with Dave a clear favourite. Is that harsh? Maybe. I’ll explain my reasoning. I haven’t been writing about the show for months, but I’ve watched every show this series. What struck me was that Julie, Marga and Jethro had all played pretty much to their best form in both heats and semis. They had prepared their specialist subjects extremely well, and vitally, kept their heads during their GK rounds, and achieved good enough scores in them. If you’re not a regular, competitive quizzer, then that’s pretty much all you can ask of yourself. Crucially, however, it does mean that there’s not another gear there for the final. You’re already hitting your max, and for this reason I discounted the chances of all 3. Apologies.

With Lewis it was a slightly different story. I remembered Lewis from University Challenge, and judging by his performances on that show, and his GK performances so far, I didn’t quite see him having the standard of GK needed yet to really challenge for the title. It was interesting in Lewis’ filmed insert that he met with Gavin Fuller. Gavin was the youngest ever Mastermind champion at the tender age of 24. I thought that Lewis was really tempting fate actually saying that he hoped he could beat Gavin’s record – think it, Lewis by all means, but don’t say it.

As for Emma and Dave, well, to start with Emma, her first TV appearance that I know of was as part of a great family team on Only Connect, which was referenced in her insert. Then there were her GK rounds. Although not perfect, to my mind you could see that on the right day she could throw in a barnstorming round which would give her a real shot. Maybe the final would be that occasion.

As for Dave, I’d seen him playing well on Only Connect in the past as well. As a professional quiz master, it was no surprise that he was for me comfortably the finest performer on GK in the whole series. A comfortable favourite, but then anyone can have a bad day.

Let’s talk about the final, then. Julie Bungey is a schoolteacher of a similar vintage to mine. It’s been a long time since a schoolteacher won Mastermind, 12 broadcast years (my final was filmed almost a year before it was broadcast in 2008.) I have held the distinction of being the last schoolteacher to win Mastermind for longer now than anyone else ever has – Dave Edwards held it for 11 years from 1990 – 2001. While I still get a wee bit of a glow from that fact, I’d be quite happy for someone else to assume the mantle now. So at least a part of me was rooting for Julie. She did well on her specialist, the Wars of the Roses, too, ending up with 10. After half time she used the same tactic which had stood her in good stead for her previous GK rounds, and added 9 to her score. A perfectly good respectable performance, but I couldn’t see her winning. Well, anyway, it was really nice to see her school treating her so well for getting through to the final. I never got so much as a letter of congratulation from the governors or the education dept. when I won. I did get a reception in the Mayor’s parlour, but that was purely on his own initiative, and nothing to do with the governors or the education authority. Only 8 years later the school closed. Coincidence? (yes.)

Lewis, and his contemporaries, are part of the future of quizzing. I don’t know how many other grizzled veterans felt the same as I did watching his filmed insert, but he came across as enthusiastic, and so up for it and into his quizzing that I saw something of the young me of more than 3 decades ago. Now, I wouldn’t have won Mastermind at the age of 24, and I didn’t think Lewis would. Judging by Lewis’ specialist round, I somehow feel that there must have been some misunderstanding between contender and question setters over the parameters of the subject. Put simply, Lewis in his filmed inset suggested he would have done up to 3000 questions in preparation. The largest amount of questions I prepared for any of my specialists was 1500. So it wasn’t lack of preparation on Lewis’ part which saw him accrue a total of 6. It’s never over until it’s over, but I’ve little doubt that this played on Lewis’ mind during the GK. Lewis – there’s little you can do when it’s just not your night. You know how hard you worked and prepared. Keep at it – a few more years at the quiz face and this can all change drastically.

Marga Scott-Johnson put on a fine specialist and a good GK performance. Of all of the contenders, she seemed least phased by the occasion, and I hope she enjoyed it as much as she seemed to be enjoying it. Marga is a stalwart member of the Mastermind Club, and I think she’s a great example of how the show can get under your skin. Obviously, when you’re in the final, then the first objective you have is to win. However, with the best will in the world, only one of the 6 contenders is going to be able to do that. So being able to say, I performed as well as I could, and produced my best, is important. Marga, you can certainly do that.

I’ll skip David for a moment if I may. I just made the observation that the show can get under your skin. Well, Emma Laslett is a good example of this. In her filmed insert she seemed to say that if she didn’t win this time, then she’ll be back, and she’ll be trying again. Right enough, too. Like Marga, she scored 11 on GK, as did Marga, and ended in joint second. From my outsider’s observation, I would say that the only thing which Emma needs in order to be holding the trophy at the end of her next grand final, is a few more years at the quiz face. In all honesty, in my opinion there’s no substitute for playing in other people’s and setting your own quizzes over a period of years. This gives you such a fund of GK stuff which you wouldn’t necessarily know otherwise, and which you wouldn’t expect to be such a quiz chestnut. Over a period of time you find that your guesses become so much more educated , and your knowledge gaps narrower.

Jethro produced the only perfect round of the show in his specialist, which was a brilliant performance, but I’d felt his GK in the heat and the semi was weaker than the other finalists. So it wasn’t a huge surprise that he ended in joint 3^rd with 19. Again, like Lewis and Emma he has years of quizzing ahead of him if he wants.

As for Dave, then, well, I felt he would be best of the lot on GK, and frankly that’s exactly how it panned out. In some ways, I felt that Dave had to do it the hard way as well. I tried each of the GK rounds while I was watching, and I had my lowest score of all on Dave’s questions. It’s all in the eye of the beholder, granted. Still, pulling out a round of 14 under the greatest pressure was a fine performance, a championship performance. The winning margin of 3 points isn’t the largest there’s ever been in a grand final – off the top of my head a certain Dr. Gary Grant may well hold that record – but it’s daylight, certainly.

While we’re talking about Dave’s GK, this does lead me to make one of the observations I’d make about the series. I think I understand why the questions have become so long and wordy. It’s another way of testing the contenders’ nerves a little more, and it also gives the people playing along at home a little bit more thinking time. But there’s a fine line with this sort of thing, and I think that line was crossed at times during the series. One of my lasting images of last night’s final is Dave’s frustration with John H chuntering on with what turned out to be the last question, when Dave had already worked out the answer seconds earlier, especially when the buzzer went.

On the whole though, I think it’s fair to say that Hindsight and Hat Trick have done a good job with the show this year. Going back to having all the contenders sitting in a row rather than forcing them through the portal of portent was a very sensible move. Likewise, not telling them each other’s scores last series was just daft, and I’m glad they’ve stopped that. It is a shame that we’ve lost the repechage places for highest scoring runners up. It’s also a shame that there were no reward visits for the filmed inserts as well. OK, for my insert I only got to go to London (I drove down myself, and stayed at my Mum’s, so the Beeb weren’t exactly splashing the cash then) but you can’t buy an experience like going into the Museum of London after closing time, and getting to see and handle artifacts which are not on display to the public.

Right, elephant in the room time. Last series I did make the point that I felt that some of the contenders should have been saved from themselves – that is they put in very low scoring performances which cannot have been very pleasant experiences at all. Yes, you can only tell so much from 20 general knowledge questions in an audition, I agree. But the number of contenders falling through the net just seemed to me to have increased significantly, and I have to say the same for this series.

Apologies if this sounds elitist. It isn’t meant to be. Everyone who is old enough has the right to apply to be a contender on Mastermind, and good luck to you for doing so. But if you do apply, then to my mind that gives you a right, but also a duty. You have a right to expect that the production team won’t put you in the position of really embarrassing yourself if there’s reasonable suspicion that you will perform badly on GK. Then you have a duty to prepare your specialist subject as well.

Overall then, thanks Hindsight and Hat Trick for the series. Well done, and well done for not fixing something which wasn’t broken. May this continue into the future.

Mastermind 2020 - Heat 11

Hello, good morning, and yes, I had a lovely time in Vienna, thanks for asking. I made sure I was back in time for Mastermind yesterday, mind you. Well, you can have too much of a good thing you know.

So to the show. First up was Hugh Ashton. I don’t normally comment on contenders’ appearance, for fear that they might well start commenting on mine, but I have to congratulate Hugh for his rather wonderful waistcoat and bow tie combination. This – I thought – is someone who has a bit of confidence. Mind you, he did miss his first question on that Mastermind hardy perennial, the “Mapp and Lucia” novels of E.F. Benson, who must have written them during the intervals between performances with her all-girl band. He soon shrugged that off, though to finish with 11 and no passes. Certainly, at the least that’s an in contention at half time score.

Jane Nelson who followed gave us Manchester City FC 1992 – present day. Hmm, not quite 30 years. I mean, I’m not trying to insinuate that this isn’t a long enough time period to make a set of sufficiently testing questions, but am I alone in having a nostalgic hankering for the days when a contender would have to take the whole history of a club, or a sporting event, rather than just a selected period? Oh, I am – okay then, moving on. Jane knew her subject very well, but a rather deliberate and steady way of answering meant that she was limited to an even ten points.

So to Muhammad Ali. Muhammad was answering on Greek Mythology. Now there’s a traditional Mastermind subject for you – a particularly wide traditional Mastermind subject. Muhammad scored 4. 3 of these were to the first three questions. He also got the last question right. Now, we can only judge from what we see on the screen, so I may be completely wrong about what I think happened. But for what it’s worth, it looked from his answers that Muhammad knew a bit about Greek mythology, and thought that it would be enough. Surely if he’d have prepared thoroughly he wouldn’t have missed some absolute sitters, like Ariadne. He didn’t look particularly nervous, but hey, only he could really say what went wrong in the round.

The life and written works of Harper Lee, offered to us by Poppy Bradshaw, brought the specialists to a conclusion. Apparently she did write other things than To Kill and Mockingbird, and the recently published Go Set a Watchman. That’s Harper Lee, by the way, not Poppy. A decent round followed, although I think Poppy had just undercooked her preparation a little on Harper Lee’s journalist career.

More light for me was thrown on Muhammad’s first round problems by his second round. He didn’t absolutely smash it, however he did score 9, which John called a respectful score – which it may well have been – although I’m pretty sure that he meant it was a respectable score. Which it certainly was. So was this a case of someone who knows he has a respectable general knowledge deciding to enter the show, as is his right, then deciding specialist subjects and taking it for granted his prior knowledge of the subject would see him through? Again, only Muhammad could tell us the answer to that one.

Poppy, sadly, did not get congratulated by John for reaching a respectful score, as she added just 5 to her total, and fell into a pass spiral. I always feel I want to be a bit careful when I write about low scoring GK rounds, because it may well come across that I’m criticising the contender. I’m really not. Posting a low score in a Mastermind GK round proves nothing  other than you didn’t know the answers to most of the questions you were asked. It suggests that you don’t perhaps at this time have the standard of General Knowledge that you really need to appear on the show, but that’s about it. It has nothing to do with your intelligence. However, that is the conclusion that many people often draw, and I do feel that the production team has a duty of care towards contenders. However much they want to appear on the show, I would imagine that sitting there on the chair while you’re enduring a round like Poppy’s cannot be a pleasant experience. To be honest, as a viewer I do find it uncomfortable as well. In the last 5 shows we’ve seen 5 GK scores of 5 or less. This is just how I feel, and feel free to disagree, but I do tend to feel that if you can’t score 6 or more on a GK round, then you should not be put in the position of having to endure one. Now, ok, I am sure that there have always been contenders who score decently in their auditions, and then have a ‘mare on the show, but 5 in 5 shows? Come on – and I said this last year as well – that’s the sort of batting average that suggests that quality control in the selection process is not all it could be.

Thankfully Jane and Hugh both avoided such traumatic rounds themselves. Jane was a point behind at the halfway stage, and the rather measured style of her answers in the first round suggested that in order to be able to set a challenging target she was going to have to answer pretty accurately. To be fair, she didn’t do at all badly either. Okay, 10 points for 20 wasn’t necessarily a huge target, but it meant that Hugh was going to have to have a good round to score enough points to beat it.

Which he did, and as often happens, for the first minute of his round he looked like he’d do it with a good couple of points to scare. However the wrong answers mid round took away a bit of momentum, but he made it, scoring his own ten in the process. That one point by which he’d beaten Jane in the Specialist rounds was enough to give him the win. Well played sir.

The Details

Hugh Ashton	The Mapp and Lucia Novels of E.F. Benson	11	0	10	0	21	0
Jane Nelson	The History of Manchester City FC 1992 - present	10	0	10	0	20	0
Muhammad Ali	Greek Mythology	4	1	9	1	13	2
Poppy Bradshaw	The Life and Written Works of Harper Lee	7	1	4	7	11	8

Mastermind 2020 - First Round - Heat 9

Good morning, dearly beloved. Let’s begin with last night’s Mastermind, then, shall we? First into the chair was retired English teacher – and how I would love to be able to describe myself as such – William Donnelly. He was answering on the “Pax Britannica” trilogy. Never having read them, I thought that I was going to struggle on this. However, apart from one question which focussed on one volume’s subtitle, this didn’t prove to be much of an obstacle, since what followed was largely a round on the history of the British Empire. In fact, I rattled off 9 answers, the same score as William did. 9, as we’ve seen, is usually enough to keep you in contention going into GK.

I raised a speculative eyebrow when our next contender, Ash Cattell, announced that he was taking The Musical “Les Miserables” as his specialist. However that was totally unjustified on my part, since the setters had managed to produce an admirably diverse and testing round of questions on all aspects of the musical itself, its creation and productions. This highlighted just how good Ash’s round of 12 really was.

One of the problems with having to follow such a good round, is that if you don’t hit the heights yourself, then this is thrown into stark relief by what has gone before. Such was the fate that befell Melissa Bookbinder’s round on Anne Rice’s “Vampire Chronicles”. There is always a danger with taking a series of books that you greatly love, which I would guess is what Melissa did. You love the books, and you may well have read them many times. However, that does not mean that your memory will dredge up some of the minutiae when you need it, not unless you have really prepared for your round in a way which goes much deeper than just reading the books again. Poor Melissa’s round seemed to unravel after a couple of wrong answers, and in the end she finished with 6.

Our final contender, Steve McMillan looked somewhat familiar, yet came up clean on my database. He was answering on UK number 1 singles of the 1960s, another subject which should come with a government health warning. Producers, writers, record labels, backing musicians – you can be asked for so much more than just the name of the song or the name of the artist. Judging by the expression on his face, Steve was a little taken aback by a couple of the questions, and he too scored 6, and in all honesty seemed none too happy with his round as he returned to his chair.

So, contest effectively over by half time? Well, no, not necessarily. If you have serious ambitions at winning a particular Mastermind show, be it heat, semi final, or final, you should be fairly confident of defending a 3 point lead. However we’ve seen in this particular season that nothing can be taken for granted with GK. So it was still at least a two horse race, even if the two back markers looked well out of it.

Melissa Bookbinder, to be fair, made a decent fist of her round to add 8 to her score. Her total of 14 was never going to win this – or any – heat, but at least it did give her a few minutes in the lead. Now, in the comments over my review of last week’s show, having made the point that I felt that a lot of the GK rounds this season had been rather on the gentle side, I did say that while consistency between shows was not such a huge issue if there are no repechage slots, it was still of paramount importance to achieve consistency within a show. Well, I did think that Steve McMillan was given one of the tougher GK rounds we’ve seen this series. I say this because it’s relatively rare for me to have two consecutive questions wrong in a GK round, and it happened twice during Steve’s round. Scores only tell you so much – my average GK score for this show was noticeably lower than on any other heat this series, but on the sae hand you can only go as fast as the contenders go, and nobody was answering particularly quickly on this show. By the end of the round Steve, poor chap, looked as if he’d been beaten with a blunt instrument for two and a half minutes. His overall total was 9.

So then, it fell to William to take his 9 from the first round, and add as many points as possible to mean that Ash would be starting his round from as far into the corridor of doubt as possible. To be fair to him too, he did have the highest GK score of the night. Looking at it in a glass half empty stylee though, it wasn’t a double figure score. He started very well, although rather slowly, but the wrong answers began to build up, so that while it looked for the first minute as if he would end with a 20+ total, in the end he levelled out at a score of 9 to take the target to 18.

I don’t want to be harsh about Ash, who, alone out of all 4 contenders in last night’s show actually seemed to be enjoying himself, but faced with a target of 7 for an outright win he should have managed to achieve this. As he just managed to squeeze out a 6^th correct answer at the end of the round, he at least guaranteed himself a tie break.

I’d like to say that the rarely seen tie break did at least inject a little more excitement into the proceedings, however, having witnessed Ash’s previous 180 seconds of GK I think we probably all knew what the outcome would be.

Fair play to William, his responses to the 5 tie break questions at least showed a good range of knowledge – although he missed out on Denali/Mount McKinley, a good old quiz chestnut which has been doing the rounds for quite a while now.

The Details

William Donnelly	The Pax Britannica Trilogy	9	2	9	0	18	2	4
Ash Cattell	The Musical “Les Miserables”	12	0	6	2	18	2	1
Melissa Bookbinder	“The Vampire Chronicles” by Anne Rice	6	0	8	0	14	0	/
Steve McMillan	UK number 1 singles of the 1960s	6	0	3	1	9	1	/

Mastermind 2020 - First Round Heat 9

Another Friday, another Mastermind heat. Well, not if you live in Wales, obviously, but then that is what the iplayer is for.

So, how did it all go? First up in the SS round was Magda Biran-Taylor. You may recall Magda either from her UC appearances with SOAS, or from her appearance in the first round of the 2018 series. She actually posted a pretty decent score of 25 then, even though she was some way behind the heat winner. From what we’ve seen so far this series, a score of 25 now would give you a very good chance indeed of winning your heat. Offering us Emily Temple, Viscountess Palmerston, it looked unlikely she would get close to that score, posting 8 and no passes. However, it is worth noting that while in previous series any score in the teens was a good performance, in this series we’ve seen that any score in double figures is a good score, so I somehow doubted that Magda would be completely out of contention come the half time interval.

The same could be said for Simon Dennis. Now, speaking of Simon Dennis, he has previous UC form himself. He skippered the godless institution of Gower Street, as Jeremy Paxman insists on calling UCL, to the grand final in 2013. Now, you don’t get to a UC grand final without having some serious general knowledge chops, and so I was interested to see whether Simon would post the kind of score to give him a realistic shot in the GK round. That he did, scoring 8 and 2 passes.

Last night’s schoolteacher was Luke Clement. He was answering on the Mabinogion, and I have to thank him for demonstrating that I know a lot less about the Mabinogion than I thought I did. In all honesty I thought I was in serious danger of posting a single figure aggregate for the specialists last night, but the three I scraped in this round, together with the 6 from the previous two rounds meant I needed just the one in the last. Luke managed the double figure score we had been looking for, with 10 and 2 passes.

All of which left Molly Ahmed to bring the specialists to a close with her round on The Life of Jaqueline du Pré. Two correct guesses left me with an aggregate of 11 for last night’s specialists, and I was quite happy to take the points and run. Molly, coincidentally, also posted 11 – although hers was only on this one round and therefore a lot more impressive than mine.

So at least in this show we had all 4 contenders still in contention by the time the half time oranges were being passed around. My gut feeling was that with Simon’s GK pedigree, and the two contenders ahead of him being unknown quantities, he would be the one to beat.

Magda was first back into the chair, though. Her round actually started really well, with her taking four out of the first 5 questions. However the breaks really came on after that, and half a dozen questions passed by without her troubling the scorer further.

So to Simon. Now, one of the disappointing things about the relatively modest average GK scores of this series so far is that the GK rounds themselves really haven’t been that difficult. Yes, I'm bragging again, but I only had 2 of the GK questions wrong all night, and that only ever used to happen during Celebrity Mastermind. So it was a real pleasure to see Simon demolishing his round. In fact, he only missed 2 questions in order to score 15. Now, okay, Luke was two points ahead of him at half time, and Molly three, but both of them were going to have to have great rounds in order to overhaul his total of 23.

Luke didn’t manage it. In fact, he rather struggled his way to 5. I don’t wish to add any more to a fellow teacher’s misfortune, and so I will move on to Molly. By my reckoning, Molly could have 4 wrong answers, and even one pass, and just about squeeze her way past Simon. She didn’t give it a bad go either, but the wrong answers started to mount up, and with a minute to go she was too far away from the target. In the end she finished with a respectable 20.

Well done Simon! I have no wish to curse you with the Clark tip, but it’s been weeks since I’ve seen anyone on the show whom I think could be a good finalist, so thank you for putting that to rights.

The Details

Magda Biran-Taylor	Emily Temple, Viscountess Palmerston	8	0	8	1	16	1
Simon Dennis	The Life and Works of William Gibson	8	2	15	0	23	0
Luke Clement	The Mabinogion	10	2	5	4	15	6
Molly Ahmed	The Life of Jaqueline du Pré	11	0	9	2	20	2

As a footnote - it was on the semi finals of the 2006 series of MM that I first met Jenny Ryan - The Vixen from The Chase. If you haven't yet seen Jenny singing in last week's Celebrity X Factor, can I suggest you check it out? A. Maze. Zing.