Sleb Mastermind Show 8

No, it’s not Jester Bolofski’s Medieval Torture Hour, it is in fact another edition of Sleb Mastermind. I think that there may be a couple still to go after this one.

First up was former Blue Peter presenter Gethin Jones. Poor old Gethin presented the awful 21 Questions last year, so at least it will have been nice for him to have got to participate in a proper quiz show for once. Miaow. He was answering on International Welsh rugby 2000 – 2010. As an Englishman who has been living in Wales since 1900 and frozen to death you’ll probably appreciate that this wasn’t necessarily my favourite subject of all time. For all that, though, I managed 9 points on this round, which was one more than Gethin’s 8.

Second up was Ben Bailey Smith. Ben is another of those actors whose face you’d have recognised immediately without necessarily having been able to put a name to it. He’s made appearences in many TV shows – some serious, others, like the Inbetweeners, less so. Ben was answering on The Films of the Marx Brothers, and shame though it is to admit it, my own knowledge of their oeuvre is somewhat limited. Ben too managed 8 points, and in the context of this sleb series that ain’t at all bad.

Aasmah Mir on the surface appeared to be this show’s sacrificial BBC radio presenter. I can’t say that I was very familiar with her work before the show. Aasmah was answering on the novels of Hanif Kureishi. I’m afraid that my own knowledge of these begins and ends with the BBC adaptation of The Buddha of Suburbia. Aasmah though wasn’t the least but shaken by what looked like some fairly complicated in depth questions, and only just missed out on double figures, scoring 9.

I’ll be honest, it must be quite a few years since I saw Mark Little on TV – in the interim he’s gone grey and grown a beard, although not necessarily in that order. As was highlighted by John in the half time chat, Mark was first known in the UK in his role of Joe Mangel in Neighbours, and I’m not entirely sure that he’s ever quite shaken it off – although a few years ago he was a pretty well known face on the celebrity panel game circuit. He was answering on Hunter S. Thompson – and he too faced his own barrage of what seemed to be quite complicated stuff. He didn’t do quite so well with these, and ended with 6.

No real pyrotechnics followed from any of the slebs on the GK rounds. Mark Little managed to double his score to 12. Gethin started quite well on his, but the gears ground to a halt some time before the halfway stage, and in the end he couldn’t do more than increase the bar to 13, with 5 points on general. After claiming not to have any general knowledge at all Ben Bailey- Smith gave the lie to this suggestion by picking off another 8 points to add to his own title. Yes, it’s not spectacular, but it’s a perfectly respectable sleb score. All of which left Aasmah requiring 8 points for an outright win. It never looked like she was going to smash this target over the boundary rope, but to be fair it never looked like she wouldn’t get there either. She duly did, with a couple of points daylight between herself and the chasing pack, finishing with 18. Well done.

The Details

Gethin Jones	Renewable World	Wales International Rugby 2000 – 2010	8 – 1	5 - 3	13 - 4
Ben Bailey Smith	St. Stephen’s Canonbury	The films of the Marx Brothers	8 - 2	8 - 3	16 - 5
Aasmah Mir	Carerslink East Dunbartonshire	The Novels of Hanif Jureishi	9 - 2	9 - 2	18 - 4
Mark Little	Haringey Foodbank at the Trussell Trust	Hunter S. Thompson	6 - 1	6 - 1	12 – 2

2015 New Years Quiz Resolutions

New Year’s Quiz Resolutions.

First let’s have a look at last year’s resolutions: -

I resolve to try to show more sportsmanship when John and I are beaten in Sunday evening quizzes.
I’m quite proud of myself on this one. There’s been a number of occasions when John and I have just sat there watching teams blatantly using their phones, and kept shtum, and not winged about it afterwards. The great shame of this is that on one Sunday night quiz it has brought us no credit whatsoever, and we’ve been told they still would rather see the back of us than the cheating teams. Such is life.

I resolve to keep vigilance against phone cheating in the quiz in Aberavon Rugby Club.
I think we can give ourselves a big pat on the back for keeping the phones out of the club again last year.

I resolve to try to remember that not everyone takes their quizzing as seriously as I do, and to try to avoid making unhelpful comments at the quiz in the club.

I think that this one will have to be what is euphemistically known as a ‘carry over’. If it makes things any better I do sometimes cringe when I get home and I think about some of the things I’ve said in the heat of the moment.

I resolve to apply to another TV quiz show if I see one I like the look or the sound of 
Well, the way things worked out I was on three shows in 10 days. As I’m sure you’ll appreciate, being on Gogglebox was never part of the Master plan, but there we are, no point whinging about it.  

I resolve to try to attend the annual Mastermind Club event

I’m afraid that for one reason or another this just didn’t happen. Still, I am glad that I’ve maintained some links by writing a few articles for the club magazine Pass.

I resolve to try my hardest not to irritate members of other teams in the Bridgend League, and if the consensus is that it would be for the good of the league, to bow out at the AGM with good grace and no hard feelings. 
Well, I attended the AGM, and this whole question wasn’t raised, so I left it there.

I resolve to keep working at my quizzing when time permits
I can’t say that I spent a huge amount of time specifically working for quizzes, but when you consider the time I spend on the blog it’s hardly surprising. Don’t thank me, it’s a labour of love that I’d be undertaking whether anybody read it or not.  

So how about 2015, then?

·         I resolve to try to bite my tongue, not take the Bridgend League matches quite so seriously, to give other teams the benefit of the doubt where applicable, and not to upset members of my own or other teams with unhelpful comments.

The current season began in October, and in the very first match I upset one of our team members with an unhelfpful comment. Then in our 3^rd match, we had the written question (written questions are given to both teams) – name the Irish rider who won the yellow jersey in the 1987 Tour de France. The other team wrote ‘Sean Roche’ – which I refused to give them a point for. Now, strictly speaking, I had right on my side. The ruling is that if you just put the surname down, as long as the first name has not been specifically asked for, then that’s good enough. However if you choose to put down the christian name and get it wrong, then the whole answer is wrong. Now, I suppose my thinking was that maybe they were thinking of SEAN Kelly, the other great Irish cyclist of the mid 80s, multiple winner of the Green jersey. As I say, right was on my side, but it upset one member of the opposition team, and although I couldn’t know it at the time, it would have made no difference to the overall outcome of the match.

·         I resolve to keep applying to quiz shows that I like the look or sound of, regardless as to whether I think I have a cat in hell’s chance of getting an audition or not

That’s self explanatory. A couple of carry overs now: -

·         I resolve to try to remember that not everyone takes their quizzing as seriously as I do, and to try to avoid making unhelpful comments at the quiz in the club.

·         I resolve to keep working at my quizzing when time permits

·         I resolve to try to find time to attend at least one Mastermind Club Event this year.

Of course, the final resolution is the same as always : - 

 I resolve above all else to enjoy my quizzing throughout the next year as much as I have enjoyed it this year.

I hope that you all manage to do the same. Best wishes, thanks for your support throughout last year, and a belated Happy New Year to you all. 

The Better Late Than Never 2014 LAMMY Awards

I did promise that I would try to restage the LAMMY awards as soon as I could, and so here are the awards for 2014.

1) Award for the Best New Quiz Show of 2014

Its interesting to look back and see just how well some of the past recipients of this award have done  - they include Only Connect – The Chase – Breakaway – Perfection – and there have even been a couple of years when no new show has been deemed worthy of winning the award.

In 2014 we saw quite a bumper crop of new shows. In February BBC2 brought us Revenge of the Egghead. This brought CJ back into the Egghead fold. In some ways this seemed a little bit of a hybrid of the original Eggheads and The Chase. The reviews weren’t generally kind, and since CJ is back among the Eggheads fold I have my doubts over whether we’ll see this show again.

Strictly speaking Fifteen to One is not really eligible for the award since it’s not a new show. We can argue about whether revivals should be eligible, but the fact is that I took part in the second series before the end of the year, and this takes it out of the running anyway.

April also brought us Challenge TV’s own original quiz, Timeline. This was all about putting things into a sequence. Now, go back 15 or 20 years, and host Brian Conley was a very big TV name. Somehow though this show contrived to be rather less than the sum of its parts. Meanwhile on Saturday nights in April Rob Brydon brought us a new celebrity panel quiz game called The Guess List. I wasn’t the only one to draw attention to its great similarity to Blankety Blank.

In May ITV unveiled Ejector Seat, presented by Andi Peters. You have to hand it to ITV, they will keep trying out new formats which they can use when The Chase and/or Tipping Point are off the air. This wasn’t the hardest quiz in the world, and the Ejector seat gimmick wore fairly thin fairly quickly. However it wasn’t the worst new quiz show that ITV came up with all year, not by some distance.

Now, in a way, I suppose that you could say I also have a connection with The Link. This was created by the creators of the game Linkee, and I was sub contracted to provide some of the questions for the second edition of the game which is now available. The Link does pretty much what it says on the tin – basically asks you questions, and you have to find the links between the answers. It certainly wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I did think that it had several things going for it. Unlike many, if not most daytime quizzes, this one at least offered a game which had play along at home value for both non quizzers and quizzers alike. Alright, it’s not Pointless, and it’s not Only Connect, but it had something. And what’s not to like about Mark Williams as question master for that matter?

In August, several quizzes came along at once. Poor old Gethin Jones, who presented the awful Sell Me The Answer a few years ago, was given another grade A oven ready turkey in the shape of the 21^st question. No better than this was Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford’s rather self indulgent Gift Wrapped. This show suffered from the Holmes-Langsford love in which was rather nauseating, from having some embarrassingly poor contestants, and from being extremely ‘bitty’.

Over on BBC2, though, we had a show which has to be considered for this year’s award. I speak of Richard Osman’s Two Tribes. The gimmick behind this show was that it was a contest between two teams, yet the teams’ membership would change according to answers the contestants had given before the start of the quiz. So for example in the first round cat lovers might play dog lovers, while in the second round those who could read music would play those who couldn’t – and so on. A player was out in each round, until just two remained to play a head to head. I would say that for many viewers the biggest selling point was probably Richard Osman as host.

So basically, it’s a two horse race for me – The Link v. Two Tribes. Now, I will admit that I’m torn here. I can’t help remembering that I plumped for The Chase over Pointless back in 2009, while Pointless would have romped home in any other year since. And when you get right down to it, although I still rate The Chase, I would always opt to watch Pointless now myself. So if I do it again to another Richard Osman show this time, then it’s going to start to look personal. But it isn’t personal. The fact is that while Two Tribes is a perfectly decent little show, the level of the questions means that it doesn’t have the same play at home potential for anyone above a certain level of ability at GK quizzes. At the end of the day it’s purely a matter of personal preference, and while it’s been fair to say that the Link never enjoyed better than strictly lukewarm reviews, I liked it, and therefore the LAMMY Award for the best new quiz show of 2014 goes to

The Link

2) The Award for Best Performance in a Broadcast Quiz of 2014

Nominees: -

Mastermind 2014 – Clive Dunning

University Challenge 2014 – Trinity, Cambridge

Brain of Britain 2014, Brain of Brains – Mark Grant

Only Connect – Europhiles

This one is tricky. My friend Clive won a nailbiting Mastermind final, beating Brian Chesney by 3 passes, having looked like one of the favourites ever since his first round performance. In University Challenge Trinity, Cambridge had to defeat double champions Manchester in their semi final. To be fair to them they were pretty much carrying the mantle of favourites after comprehensively beating a very good Christ Church team in the first round. In the final BBC4 series of Only Connect, the Europhiles demonstrated that if you have a terrific missing vowels player on your team, then you’ll always have a chance of winning.

This year’s overall winner, though, is a name that will be familiar to regular LAM readers. Mark Grant is a member of the Crossworders, the finest Only Connect team ever. As a coincidence, Crossworders skipper David Stainer also took part in the Brain of Brains competition that Mark won, and the third member of the trio, Ian Bayley, is a past recipient of this very award. It was a highly competitive series of BOB this year, and Mark was a very worthy winner of the Grand Final. So the winner of the best performance in a broadcast quiz of 2014 goes to : -

Mark Grant

3) The Award for Best Performance in a Non Broadcast Quiz

As has become customary, I must pay tribute to my teammates in the Bridgend Quiz League. UP to the end of the 2014  season in April we played out of the Llangewydd Arms. During the season we completed our fourth consecutive League Championship and Cup Double, and in fact it was triple winning season considering that we had already won the traditional Muriel Williams Cup curtain raiser back in September 2013. All of which would have made the guys eligible for the award, were it not for the fact that I was playing with them. Such is life.

Despite this, though, we did lose one match during the season. Altogether we lost 4 times in my first 4 seasons playing in the League. On only one of those occasions would I have said that we weren’t a little unlucky in the way that the questions fell out. That happened to be last season. Back in January 2014 we played the Lemurs, the strongest team in the league back when I started. We’ve had some close matches in the past, and some not so close matches, but they’d never beaten us while I’d been playing until this match. The simple fact of the matter is that on that night, they were just much better than we were. It wouldn’t have mattered in what combination the questions had come out, they would still have won – they were that much better than we were. For that reason, they are worthy recipients of the first nomination for this award.

How can you ignore the claims of Ashford Road A from Swindon, who added the 2014 title to their 2012 CIU National title? I certainly can’t ignore them, and they are duly nominated for the award.

Last year’s award winners, the Lemurs from the Aberavon Rugby Club, are again a decent nomination. This year we were managing to duke it out with them on pretty much even terms until June, but since then it’s been pretty much one way traffic, barring the odd win for ourselves here and there.

All of the above are worthy nominees, and all would be front runners in another year. However 2014 was the first time that I’ve played in the Brain of Mensa competition. Now, I know when you mention you’re a member of Mensa you open up a whole can of worms either with people who never have been members, or people who have been members but left after becoming disillusioned with the organization. It really isn’t my purpose here to open a debate on the rightness or wrongness of the organization. What I will say, though, is I got to play in the semi final and final against Les Hurst, and in the final against Stephen Cooke. I don’t play in many individual as opposed to team quiz competitions, but I have to say that this was the toughest I can remember playing in, and the performances of both these gentlemen were outstanding. Stephen won the competition, and therefore I have no hesitation in awarding him this year’s LAMMY.  So the winner is : -

Stephen Cooke.

4) The Award for the Most Enjoyable Event in Quizzing

Well, sadly I wasn’t invited to a GetConnected Charity quiz event this year. It’s a shame, but let’s be fair, it’s a great charity, and it’s been a hell of a lot of fun while it lasted.

Seeing that we arrived early this year, the CIU finals in Derby in September were a lot of fun again, although rather bittersweet considering the uncertainty of the event, and the fact that Dave Cornish, who sadly passed away soon after, was too ill to attend.

If you’ve read my post about the Birmingham Mega Quiz in November, then you’ll know that we were well beaten into third this year. Nonetheless, even despite the fact that there was a round specifically on Birmingham it was an extremely well run event again, and if you can’t enjoy a big quiz event like that even when you don’t win, then you’re probably going off quizzes full stop.

There’s nothing quite like finding a new pub quiz you haven’t been to before, where the quiz is home made – the locals are friendly – there’s no prize so nobody gets too upset if you win. Step forward the Ogmore Junction/ Fox and Hounds Sunday evening quiz – an utter joy.

As I mentioned in the preamble to the previous award, 2014 saw me taking part in three rounds of Brain of Mensa for the first time. I certainly clocked up the mileage, as each round involved several hours driving to get to the venue and back. Each of them was great fun though, and involved meeting some delightful people, and some very good quizzers. Coming third overall was the icing on the cake.

Yet for all that, well, for all that my most enjoyable quizzing event of 2014 has to be my appearance on Fifteen to One. It’s a good 4 years since my previous TV appearance in the final of series 4 of Only Connect, and I have to say that the whole experience was a lot of fun from start to finish, and I only hope this came across in my blog account of it. Therefore the winner of the award is: -

Appearing on Fifteen to One

5) The Host With the Most Award

Former winners of this are – 2013: Russell Davies – 2012: Nick Hancock – 2011: Alexander Armstrong. You could go for any of the biggies here, but instead, and I’m sorry if this is seen as a sop, or a consolation prize for not giving the main award to Two Tribes, but the award this year goes to someone who is one half of the best presenting double whammy on TV, and who on his own raises a rather ordinary quiz into something a lot more watchable. Step forward: -

Richard Osman

That was 2014 then. I’m sorry if you don’t agree with any or all of the awards, but hey, it’s my blog. Apologies for the fact that we couldn’t hold this in December – thankfully I’m starting to feel just a little more perky now. 

Christmas University Challenge

Just a quick note about this one. I'm only just starting to recover from a horrible virus which took hold of me on the last day of term (19th December) and has worked its way through my stomach, chest, head and so on, and I'll be honest, I've been struggling to find the energey to even write the few blog posts I've managed in the interim. In case you're wondering, this has been the reason why I never wrote my traditional letter to Santa, or the LAMMY Awards, or my New Year's Quiz Resolutions. I am sorry if you missed any of them. I'll certainly think about restaging the LAMMYs over the next few days if I can manage it.

Still, as I say I am recovering now and with my head clearing I find that I'm just about able to start thinking straight about a few things. One of them has been the great shame that the UC team dropped the idea of bringing in a quizzer with UC at Christmas teams - it's been a couple of years since they did that. Mind you it's probably just as well, since the teams with a quizzer in invariably wiped the floor with the teams which didn't have one. It is a shame, though, since my old college, Goldsmiths London, took part this year, and you know me, had there been a chance of getting on any version of UC I would have jumped at it. Well, it didn't happen, and that's just the way things go. I've been so lucky in getting onto my fair share of shows over the years that it would be extremely churlish of me to bemoan my fate.

And so to this year's series. After Goldies failed to make it through to the semis I was firmly in the Trinity Hall camp. For two reasons mainly. Firstly, Emma Pooley. I was in Spain when I watched Emma Pooley, through sheer grit and determination drag Lizzie Armitstead away from the pack in the Commonwealth Games road race to ensure her team leader's gold medal, and then keep driving herself home in her last race to ensure a thoroughly deserved silver. Secondly, Dan Starkey. I'm a lover of most things Doctor Who, and his comedy turn as Strax the Sontaran in the last couple of years has provided some much needed light relief. So, having said all that you can imagine I was pretty pleased when their team romped home last night to win the series, making short work of the other finalists from Hull. Well played.

Sleb Mastermind - Show 7

I shan’t dwell too much on this particular show, mainly because last night saw the resumption of the regular series – my review of which has already been posted on LAM. Still, if we do nothing else, at least let’s pay tribute to the slebs who gave of their time to take part.

First of these was Jimmy McKenna. Apparently he has been a regular on Hollyoaks for a couple of decades. Well done! Never having been a viewer myself I feel slightly better about not recognising him. I wasn’t a fan of Frost either, and apparently this was another regular gig for him. His subject – Frank Sinatra – was very much to my taste – in fact had it not been for the very last question of the round I’d have had perfection. Didn’t know that the great man’s last gig was in Japan. Still, although Jimmy didn’t do quite as well on this relatively gentle set, he scored a perfectly respectable 8.

I was no more familiar with Gillian Joseph than I had been with Jimmy McKenna. Gillian Joseph, it transpires is a newsreader on Sky – and according to the chat she had between rounds with John, she is usually on either very early, or very late. Well, I prefer to get my news from the BBC, don’t you know, so that’s my excuse. Gillian was answering on the Parables of the New Testament. My immediate thought was – that’s actually a much tougher subject than it looks on the surface. Anyone studying English Literature, especially Medieval English Literature, which was my big thing when I was at Uni, really needs to get at the very least a decent knowledge of all of these, and there are a lot more than you might think. My score of 7 matched Gillian’s, although she had some I didn’t and vice versa.

Dallas Campbell is probably best known for the BBC popular Science show Bang Goes The Theory, to which he graduated after presenting Channel 4’s The Gadget show. His specialist subject, the films of Werner Herzog offered me nothing after the first question about the star of Fitzcarraldo – even I knew that this was Klaus Kinski. That was the end of the round for me, but just the beginning for Dallas. He was offered another 11 questions, and he had all of them right. This gave him a perfect round of 12 from 12, and frankly, if Russell Kane who was due to go next couldn’t come up with something a bit tasty, then this was another show that would be over by half time.

Comedian Russell Kane has serious sleb Mastermind previous form. In 2011 he took part in one of the Children in Need Comedians only specials – and what’s more, he won. He scored 18 on the Life and novels of Evelyn Waugh. Well, he wouldn’t do that on Ernest Hemingway – the rounds are much shorter now, for one thing. It wasn’t a great round either, and Russell, a self-confessed Hemingway fan, scored just 5. No second trophy for the mantelpiece this time.

Well, ok - such is life. To be honest, this had the effect of making the GK rounds feel a little like a formality. Russell Kane added seven more to his total to finish level on points with Dallas – who had yet to go – but some way behind on passes. Gillian Joseph indulged in a little game of I get up earlier than you to do my show with John, before having a bit of a mare on her own GK round. She fell into a pass spiral early doors, and once having fallen beyond the event horizon never really extracted herself from it. She finished with 10. Jimmy at least did a little bit better. He managed to slowly and steadily build up his own score to 15. Well, I’m not saying that Dallas must have been counting his chickens when he sat down to his GK round only needing 4 correct answers, but it would have been a massive upset had he not got therm. Of course he did, although you have to say that it was a very nervy, unconvincing round of 6 that took him to 18 and the win. Well, alright, not the greatest GK round, but it doesn’t matter. A win is a win is a win – all you need is to be slightly better than the rest on the same show – everything else is just window dressing.

The Details

Jimmy McKenna	Claire House Hospice	Frank Sinatra	8 - 1	7 – 0	15 - 1
Gillian Joseph	Plan UK	Parables of the New Testament	7 - 3	3 - 7	10 - 10
Dallas Campbell	King Henry’s Walk Garden	Werner Herzog	12 - 0	6 - 4	18 - 4
Russell Kane	Rethink Mental Illness	The Novels of Ernest Hemingway	5 - 4	7 - 3	12 – 7

Mastermind - Round One - Heat 19

Last night saw that strange occurrence which happens but once a year if at all – an edition of sleb Mastermind on BBC1, the same evening as an edition of the real thing on BBC2. Well, we’ll get to the sleb stuff all in good time, but for now it’s just nice to get back to writing about proper Mastermind.

3 of last night’s contenders were making their first appearance in the chair. The first of these to go was Phil O’Rourke. Maybe this was just in the eye of the beholder, but Phil seemed extremely nervous as he stared into the camera at the top of the show, and then was first to walk to the chair. He needn’t have been. He was answering on the band U2, and he very much knew his stuff, albeit that a couple of answers just refused to get beyond the tip of his tongue. By my reckoning you need 25 and less than 3 passes to have a chance of going into the repechage semi slots, so this wasn’t totally out of reach, but it certainly looked like his best bet was winning the heat to be certain.

Standing in his way, though was Mel Kinsey. Mel has been this way before. He was a finalist in 1995, the year in which Kevin Ashman carried all before him. Since then, Mel has made three previous attempts in the Humphrys era, bowing out in the first round in Shaun’s 2004 series, and Gary’s 2012 series, and reaching the semi in Nancy’s 2009 series. Mel is one of a number of stalwart members of the Mastermind club, and in fact an all-round good egg. I hoped that it wouldn’t mean me scuppering his chances, but I tipped him as the winner of this heat right from the start. His subject in 2012 had been the Watergate scandal and the fall of Nixon, and in a way US politics featured in his round last night, as he answered on first ladies of the USA. Very well too, as he accrued 10 points. If he remained only a point behind the leader at the halfway stage, then he looked good to take the outright win.

Neville Twitchell offered us the Films of Stanley Kubrick. I must admit, while I’m by no means a great film buff, I’m quite partial to Kubrick’s films myself. To be perfectly fair this round did tend to stick to the biggies too – 2001 – Dr. Strangelove – The Shining – Full Metal Jacket etc. So without wishing to be mean and kick a man while he’s down, I found Neville’s round to be a little disappointing. I may well be wrong, but to me it did seem as if the nerves kicked in about halfway through the round, and answers which Neville probably knew just refused to pop into his head. As a result, what had started quite promisingly petered out to 7 points. Perfectly respectable, but leaving him too far behind at the halfway stage.

The final contender of the show was Fiona Somerville. Now of all of last night’s subject, hers really was Mastermind old-stylee. Athens in the Age of Pericles could have come from any edition of any era of the show. I think, judging by her responses, that Fiona may have had a narrower conception of the parameters of the subject than the setters. The things she knew she answered exceptionally quickly and sharply, but some questions seemed to provoke an expression that suggested the question – why are you asking me that? – was crossing Fiona’s mind. Maybe I’m wrong there. Whatever the case she still managed a respectable 7.

Neville returned to the chair first for the GK round. I’m afraid that whatever had afflicted him during the second half of his specialist round continued to do so all the way through his GK round, and he didn’t find points at all easy to come by. He finished with a total of 11 – double figures at least. I hope that he still managed to enjoy the experience. Fiona put a little more attack into her own round than Neville had managed, and managed to add 7 points to take her own total to 14. To be fair she did smile at the end of the round, having guessed the correct answer to her last question, and she looked like she had enjoyed the experience. Good – that really is the point of doing it when you get right down to it.

The task for Mel, then, was a simple one. No real targets, other than setting the highest score he could possibly manage. John had made a point in his preamble to the show that while you can revise your specialist you can’t revise the general knowledge. Not strictly true – but it’s a much longer term job than learning a specialist, and no actual pay off from doing so is guaranteed. However, the fact is that you can learn to make the best out of a Mastermind round, and Mel has done this so many times that he knows how to do this. If the answer pops into your head at once then say it – it’s probably right. If the answer doesn’t pop into your head, then say something which COULD be the answer – which makes sense. Some of the time this will be right. If, and only if, your brain refuses to suggest anything, then pass before the pause becomes oppressive and start moving again. Above all else – concentrate entirely on the question in hand and ignore the last. Now, if you can do all that – as Mel did – then you can start to accrue a formidable score in a 2 and a half minute round. Mel finished with a fine 16, to take his score to 26. Even in event that Phil beat this total, Mel would still be in a repechage slot, at least for the time being.

That, though, would require a terrific round, and it was fairly clear from the first thirty seconds of so that Phil wasn’t going to quite produce on of those. He was thinking about his answers, and getting quite a few right, but it did mean that he never built up any kind of momentum over the first minute of the round. That’s more important than you might otherwise think in a 2 and a half minute round. The 8 points that he managed represented a perfectly respectable return, but meant that he was clearly beaten in the end.

Well played Mel! Good luck in the semis!

The Details

Phil O’Rourke	U2	11-3	8 - 4	19 - 7
Mel Kinsey	1st Ladies of the USA	10 - 2	16 - 1	26 - 3
Neville Twitchell	The Films of Stanley Kubrick	7 - 6	4 - 7	11 - 13
Fiona Somerville	Athens in the Age of Pericles	7 – 0	7 - 2	14 – 2

Highest scoring Runners Up

Gareth Kingston – 28 – 0 (qualified)

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Diane Hallagan – 28 – 3

Marianne Fairthorne – 27 – 2

Alice Meynell – 26 – 0

John Beynon – 25 – 1

Julia Hobbs / Jeremy Renals/ Susan Sworn – 25 - 3

Sleb Mastermind - Show 6

A quick check of last night’s roster of contenders – all actual celebrities? Check – well, by the standards of celebrity quiz shows, certainly. I mean I had heard of all of them before. Which meant that there were no poor old CBBC/CBeebies/BBC digital radio presenters who had been parachuted in to seemingly make up the numbers.

First up was Kate Thornton. You remember Kate Thornton? She used to present the X-Factor when it was popular. Oops, naughty boy. She’s also done stints chairing Loose Women, and was once upon a time the editor of Smash Hits. Not everyone’s cup of tea certainly, but nonetheless, still a celebrity. She was answering on George Michael, and she did a better job on the subject than I did. I managed 6 of these, while Kate took 8. I doubted that this would be enough to give her a real shout, but still a round worthy of some respect.

Tony Law is one of those comedians who is probably best known for appearances on panel shows such as 8 out of 10 Cats and that ilk. I’ll be honest, I can’t say that I’d go out of my way to watch him, but hey, humour is very much a matter of individual taste. I liked his subject, though. As an Airfix modeler in my youth (and Revell, and Tamiya, although Airfix were my favourite), Fighter Aircraft of World War 2 very much appealed. In almost a reversal of the previous round, Tony managed 5 on his questions, while I managed 7.

Steve Pemberton is best known as one of the talented quartet who conceived, created and performed The League of Gentlemen. (Alright – I think Jeremy Dyson had bowed out of performing by the time of the TV series, but you know what I mean). Steve was answering on Films of the Coen Brothers. I may be wrong, but I’m fairly sure that my Uncle, himself a bit of a quizzer, said that he would never apply to Mastermind, but if he did, then he would take this as his subject. After which total irrelevance I should record that Steve put on a good round, just missing out on double figures to turn round at half time with 9 and no passes.

You might not have recognized Harry Shearer’s face – although you would if you’re a fan of This Is Spinal Tap – but you’d surely recognize his voice from The Simpsons, or should I say, his voices. Harry was answering on the History of the NBA – that’s the big Basketball League in the USA – from 1976 – present. I only managed 2, although one of these, Larry Bird, was one of the couple that Harry didn’t get. As I say, there were only a couple of these, as he did manage to break through the barrier into double figures, finishing with 10.

This may seem like hindsight, but I honestly did say at half time that my money was on Steve Pemberton. First though we had Tony Law come back to the chair, chat a bit with John, answer a few questions, take his score up to 12, and then amble back and sit down again. Kate Thornton, who would say at the end of her round that she had feared this more than childhood, did perfectly reasonably to add another 8 points to finish with 16. That’s about the equivalent of 20 from 2 minutes, and as such is perfectly respectable. Steve Pemberton justified my faith, though, with a very good round of 16 – which by itself exceeded Tony’s combined total, and equaled Kate’s combined total. When added to the 9 he already had, this made 25. I couldn’t see Harry Shearer beating that. Actually that’s no reflection on Harry – the fact is that the nature of General Knowledge means that you’re at a disadvantage if you’re in a different country from that which you call home. Even if you’re only talking about a couple of points – and conkers was at least 1 – when you need 16 points anyway you’re going to be the underdog. Nothing wrong with Harry’s score of 11 for 21 – it would have won some of the shows in this series.

The Details

Kate Thornton	Sue Ryder	George Michael	8 - 0	8 - 4	16 - 4
Tony Law	Teenage Cancer Trust	Fighter Aircraft of the Second World War	5 - 1	7 - 1	12 - 2
Steve Pemberton	Derian House Children’s Hospice	Films of the Coen Brothers	9 – 0	16 - 0	25 – 0
Harry Shearer	Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research	The History of the NBA 1976 - Present	10 – 0	11 - 2	21 – 2