Mastermind 2023: First Round heat 9

Well, after the Lord Mayor’s show. . . Is that a bit mean? Sorry if it comes across that way.

So let’s get down to brass tacks. Ben Farren kicked us off with the late journalist and columnist Christopher Hitchens. I have to say that I tended to go along with Christopher Hitchens’ views on the Elgin Marbles/Parthenon Frieze so I was glad to see that this was the basis of one of the questions. And yes, Ben is a teacher, and you know my views on providing support for my brethren and sistren. Thankfully, though the support from the Clark sofa didn’t seem to do him any harm, and he posted a highly competitive 12 points to set the standard.

Raminda Kaur was offering us the subject that I thought offered me the best chance of success tonight, the racing driver, the great Ayrton Senna. As it happened I did less well with this round than I did with Christopher Hitchens. Did that mean it was a particularly hard round? Maybe. I don’t claim to be enough of an expert on Senna’s life to really comment. Raminda herself managed 6. It’s by no means a disastrous score, but it did mean that to all intents and purposes she was not going to be challenging for the win in the GK round.

Our next round was another of those trickier – than – they – seem popular entertainment rounds. Quinn Holmes answered questions on the TV series Killing Eve. I’ve never watched the show myself and so in all honesty I couldn’t possibly say whether this was another difficult, fair or relatively easy set. Sadly Quinn didn’t score very highly on this set, ending with a total of 3.

Richard Holmes, then, brought the specialist round to a conclusion. Of all the specialist subjects tonight, Richard offered us the most traditional Mastermind subject in the shape of Field Marshal Montgomery. He did pretty well with it too. You couldn’t have blamed him for being a little daunted following what had happened to the two previous contenders, but he powered on, and for much of the round it looked as if he would achieve double figures. Well, he didn’t quite do that, but he managed 9 by the end of the round.

It cannot possibly be easy, to walk out to the chair again after you’ve had a disappointing specialist round. So I was pleased for Quinn Holmes that she managed to put that behind her, and posted a respectable 8 in order to take her total score to 11.Sadly this wasn’t quite enough to put her into the lead.

It’s maybe a little dangerous to speculate what exactly causes a particular round to go off the rails, but when it comes to Raminda’s GK round, it looked to me that one question early doors really tripped her up, and after this she fell into a spiral of wrong answers and passes from which she never really recovered. All I can say is that sitting in that chair can do funny things to you, and there but for the grace of God might have gone any of us. Raminda ended with a total of 10 points.

At the business end of the competition, Richard returned to the chair needing a high score in order to force Ben to walk through the corridor of doubt. As with his specialist round, Richard produced a perfectly respectable 9. Perfectly respectable, but not, I felt, really enough to give him a realistic chance of winning the show.

Nothing is certain in life – other than death or taxes, anyway – but you could probably have named your own odds if you wanted to bet against Ben achieving the 7 points that he needed in order to win outright. There were times during the round when he looked a little uncertain, but his score just kept mounting. In the same way that Ben clearly won the specialist round, he also was comfortably the best performer in the General Knowledge round. He added 13 points to take his total to 25. No, not the best we’ve seen all series, but certainly a competitive total. Well done to you sir, and best of luck for the semi-finals.

The Details

Ben Farren	Christopher Hitchens	12	0	13	0	25	0
Raminda Kaur	Ayrton Senna	6	0	4	3	10	3
Quinn Holmes	Killing Eve	3	4	8	2	11	6
Richard Taylor	Field Marshal Montgomery	9	1	9	3	18	4

New Show: Riddiculous

During the week I caught the new afternoon show, Riddiculous, on ITV for the first time. Is it a quiz? Well, yes, at least part of it is, and I certainly think it’s enough of a quiz to qualify for a review.

The idea behind the quiz is solving riddles of varying degrees of difficulty. In round one the host, Ranvir Singh, asks three pairs of contestants a set of General Knowledge questions, and for every one they answer correctly then money is added to their bank. Once one of the pairs has answered three questions correctly, they get to face a riddle from Riddlemaster Henry Lewis. In the first round, the riddles are not that difficult. At the end of the round the couple with the least amount of money in the bank are asked to bid a fond farewell. For the second round, the three correct answers for a try at a riddle applies, as it does for the whole show. The couples face a round where the questions are worth more money, and the riddles are visual riddles. Losing couple stays on, and then in the third round they face questions for even more money, and the riddles, this time even harder, are worth more money again, so much so that theoretically a huge lead could be overturned. At the end of round three the couple with the least money in the bank is eliminated.

As for the final, the GK questions are dumped. Instead the winning pair are faced with a set of rebus riddles – essentially dingbats really – which they have to solve in a given amount of time. If they solve 6, they keep the money they’ve banked. If they don’t, well they go away with a cup and saucer each. No, really, that’s it. However if they do succeed, then they are offered the choice to either take the money or gamble it to double it. If they gamble they get one last rebus riddle and 20 seconds to solve it. If they don't get it right they get nothing. Zippo. Zilch. Only the bloody teacup. 

In essence that’s it. You know, I’ve got to the age that whenever I watch a new quiz, or a new quiz game show I often think I’ve seen this before or seen bits of it before at least. The set up – host aided by intelligent, bearded guy sitting at a desk – is reminiscent of Pointless. The 'least amount banked goes home' makes me think of a couple of shows, particularly Tipping Point. The ‘I’m going to offer you a gamble’ at the end is also remnant of a couple of shows, “Tipping Point” and “Bullseye” coming to mind. Well, they do say that there’s nothing new under the sun, nd it doesn’t necessarily matter how new the elements that make up a new show are, only how well they are knitted together.

I don’t feel that the elements making up the mechanics, the gameplay of this show are bad at all. However, it does really rely on the strength of the riddles themselves. In one way I suppose you could say that riddles are the oldest form of quiz there is, certainly going back all the way to the Sphinx and his ever popular “What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon and three in the evening?” quiz. I remember translating some Old English riddles into modern English when I was at University. You know, I don’t mind you asking me a riddle where I can’t get the answer, as long as I think – yes, that’s fair, I see how that works – when you tell me the answer. I didn’t always feel that the show played fair in this way.

Now, in one of the harder, round three riddles, the riddle was along the lines of ‘what letter can you add to 1 to make it disappear?’ The answer given was G – which turns one into gone. Fair enough. However, one pair answered N for none. The reasons given why it was rejected was if you add N, by turning one into none it means it wasn’t there in the first place. While I do think gone links better to the idea of disappearing, I do think that turning one into none also makes the one disappear. Allowing for this, I don’t think that riddle was well chosen. It shouldn't have been asked.

Likewise for the gamble, the winning pair could have said no, and walked away with over £3000. They gambled and were faced with a dingbat which showed examples of the word street, written down the page , in a row. A curved arrow pointed from the second in the row arching over to the fifth. The answer? Streets ahead. Surely it should have clearly included all three of the streets to the right of the second? I didn’t have a Scooby, and nor did the poor pair who had just blown their wedge on it. It was a hell of a downer for the ending actually, because I didn’t feel that they’d been given a fair shot, compared with the rebus riddles they’d had before.

Other elements? Well, I liked Ranvir Singh when she was on Strictly Come Dancing a couple of years ago. She projects a bubbly and warm personality. However on the particular show I watched she seemed to have a couple of habits that were not that much to my liking. She had a tendency to say ‘how did you know that?’ when the contestants answered relatively straightforward questions. Likewise, telling a contestant who knows that Richard the Lionheart’s brother was King John “You really know your History” is just a tiny bit patronising, Ranvir. Well, unless you really don’t know yours, in which case I can understand it. I wouldn’t say that this was a major issue for me, but it’s the sort of thing which could really start to grate after a time. As for the Riddlemaster Henry Lewis, well, fine. It’s difficult to make judgements after seeing just one show, but yes, OK, looking at the job he had to do it’s fair to say he did it perfectly well. Whether you actually need someone other than the host to ask the riddles is open to question.

When you get right down to it, this was a perfectly inoffensive quiz game. For me, being the misanthrope that I am, I’m really not interested in the contenders themselves on shows like this, only in how well they can answer the questions. Bearing that in mind I think that there’s a bit of fat that could be cut from this joint. I don’t think that there’s quite enough actual quiz or game to justify the length of the show, and as a result Ranvir has to get chatty with the guests to fill in the gaps. You could quite easily trim this down and it would – in my opinion – be the better for it. Feel free to disagree. If anyone was to ask for my advice – unlikely, I know – I would say that it would be a good idea to make sure that all the riddles are absolutely tight and only permit one correct answer. I think that the endgame could be tweaked too. Something along the lines of – You could take your £3,600. On the other hand you could gamble. If you get one rebus right in 20 seconds, we’ll double your money. On the other hand if you get the answer wrong, you only get half. That’s the sort of thing that other shows have done, quite successfully in my opinion. After all, you want at least a little feelgood factor to remain at the end of the show, whatever happens.

That Lieutenant Pigeon Moment

I think I probably had more joy from one question in Thursday night’s quiz than I’ve had from any single question in the rugby club quiz since the end of my lost weekend, and I think it illustrates what I believe I shall now call ‘that Lieutenant Pigeon moment’. Allow me to explain.

The question went like this: - “Only one act has ever had a UK number 1 featuring a mother and son in the group. Which was the act?” As is my wont, I cudgelled my memory, but found, to my consternation that a) I have no recollection of ever being asked that question before, and b) I have no recollection of ever having heard or read that particular piece of information. All of which qualified it as a hit and hope question – that is one where you have to shove down any old answer in the hope that out of all the acts that have ever had a UK number 1 you just happen to pluck the right one out of thin air – fat chance.

I was fixated on the question though. First of all I tried to go through any ‘family’ type bands whom it might conceivably be. This didn’t work, since all the ones I could come up with who might conceivably have had a UK number 1were almost all of them siblings.

So then I started thinking about , how should I put it, older ladies on number 1 singles. Into my head popped up a memory of watching Top of the Pops in 1972. Now, you remember Lieutenant Pigeon? No? Honestly, you young people nowadays. Have a look at this video then, and get back to me when you’re done.

TOTP2 Lieutenant Pigeon Mouldy Old Dough

So that’s pretty much what I remembered – back to back pianos, one of which played by a very cheery looking lady of a certain age. Might she conceivably have been the mother of one of the other members of the group? It was a possibility, and certainly the most plausible answer on the menu. So I shoved it down, while rather bumptiously informing the rest of the team that if this one was right, then it would be hands down winner of the best answer of the night.

Well, it was right. The cheery lady, clearly having a whale of a time, was called Hilda Woodward, while the chap on the other piano was her son, Rob Woodward. Hilda was 58 at the time – which coincidentally is my age now. In the comments on the Youtube video her granddaughter commented that when she passed away her last words were ‘mouldy old dough’. I had thought that Lieutenant Pigeon were a one hit wonder, but I was wrong about that. They did have some other chart success, although nothing on the scale of “Mouldy Old Dough” though.

My dear old friend Allan Coombs, often mentioned in these witterings, used to say that the best type of question is the one where you fail to get the answer correct, then, when told the answer, you say that you really should have known that. Allan always knew what he was talking about and far be it from me to gainsay his opinion. However I do love question like this one where it seems like there is no way you are going to get the answer if you don’t already know it, yet somehow you do. Some flash of inspiration, some weird and convoluted chain of connection leads you to the correct answer. After all, while we all know that the capital of France is Paris, there’s not a great deal of pleasure in writing it down as the answer to a question because we jolly well should know it. Not an achievement. But when you get a question right which there’s no real reason you should get right, well I think that’s very pleasurable.Thanks Hilda and Rob.

University Challenge 2023 First Round: Balliol, Oxford v. Southampton

The Teams

Balliol, Oxford

Ben Falconer

Ella Higgs-Sharrock

Cal Hewitt (Capt)

Leoni Loughlin

Southampton

Ethan Lyon

Magda Steele

Dom Belcher (Capt)

Elliot Miles

Getting there, dearly beloved, we’re definitely getting there. So last night pitted Balliol College, Oxford against the University of Southampton. A trio of Stanleys kicked us off, and Ethan Lyon saw it from the director of Eyes Wide Shut, one Stanley Q. Brick apparently. Scientists and poets are a rather unusual mix, and this set of bonuses did nowt for Southampton. I guessed that the two word name given to stars of luminosity class D might be White Dwarf, and when Cal Hewitt of Balliol gave the same answer my hopes were up. When it was confirmed as correct I set off on my lap of honour around the sofa. A UC special on pairs of words that differed only by the addition of an x – code and codex for example – provided a useful full house. Lovely to see the hapax getting a nod. The hapax legomenon is the only linguistic term I’ve ever toasted when I was drunk, but that is an old story for another day. Nobody guessed Cape Horn was the geographical feature referred to in the next starter. I’ve never walked barefoot through a toroidal field – never even heard of one, but then nobody in either team had it for the next starter. Thankfully Ethan Lyon stopped the rot, knowing the term nihilist for the next starter. Novels with titles containing the word American provided just the one bonus. So to the picture round. We were shown a map of Italy with a region marked out in red. Alongside, in Italian, were the ingredients of a common type of pasta sauce. Ethan Lyon took his third starter, correctly identifying it as carbonara, or, as we called it when I tried to make it, Spaghetti Whatthehella. More sauce ingredient lists brought 2 correct answers, although Norma from Sicily successfully eluded all of us. (Supply your own jokes here, please). This meant that as we approached 10 minutes Southampton led by 45 – 25.

I was particularly quick to identify S in the SHU scale as standing for Scoville – look, nobody else is going to blow my trumpet for me. Bonuses on Supergiant games promised but little, yet although I didn’t know the games I did get Bastion, Transistor and Hades for a full house. So did Southampton although I fancy they were familiar with the games too. Leoni Loughlin knew that Gout has been described as rich man’s arthritis to keep Balliol running. Military paintings by Lady “I ‘ate you” Butler (ask your parents) brought a couple of bonuses. Dom Belcher knew that the Shakespeare play with the title character being a silly bugger wealthy Greek who gives his money away is “Timon of Athens”. Pumbaa of Athens was much less successful. – Your bonuses are on particle physics – announced JP. – Sod that for a game of soldiers- announced I, and mentally switched off. When I switched back on Southampton had added five points to their score. Dom Belcher answered correctly that the Limpopo is known in part as the crocodile river. Cinematic Easter eggs were very much grist to the Southampton mill, and they took a full house. For the music starter we heard the welcome sounds of Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On?” Three protest songs from the same era provided just the one correct answer. With the gap between the teams now standing at 80 points Balliol really needed to start slinging some buzzer. To be honest a hit and hope wouldn’t have been out of order. Yet the next starter went to Ethan Lyon who identified several texts in Japanese. One bonus on Scottish football teams widened the gap to a potentially decisive ninety five points. Ben Falconer struck for Balliol on the next starter, identifying Calais as the last English cathedral see on continental Europe. Geographical bonus yielded a timely full house. A trio of Browns were identified by Dom Belcher, and the Southampton juggernaut was steaming away again. Bonuses on equations equated to 2 correct answers, and this meant that the score at just past the 20 minute mark at 160 – 70 to Southampton.

Magda Steele identified various species of willow for the next starter. Factory and office equipment starting with the same letter seemed a particularly easy set and were dispatched over the boundary rope with the contempt they deserved. This brought us to the picture set, and Ethan Lyon identified the work of Edouard ‘Show me the’ Manet. Other paintings discussed by Marcel Foucault proved somewhat trickier, although the last one screamed Franz Hals to me. But even though they only got one of the bonuses, the fact was that Southampton were running down the clock, and Balliol were still some way short of even a repechage score. Leoni Loughlin knew the work of Susan Sontag for the next starter. Bonuses on creatures mentioned by Shakespeare pushed Balliol to 90 points, and just for a moment it looked as if a repechage score was not totally out of the question. Especially so when Ella Higgs-Sharrock knew that the Chartists was the answer to the next starter. The language bonuses didn’t help overly much since they only had one right. Dom Belcher won the buzzer race to identify Madama Butterfly as the opera with Lieutenant Pinkerton. London in popular music brought two more bonuses. Nobody knew what TED stands for, and I’ve forgotten. Cal Hewitt knew you can put ock on the end of several given words to make new ones. Only one bonus followed, but it put Balliol tantalisingly close to a repechage score. If they could only take the next starter. Nobody knew a suffragan bishop, and the gong ended the competition. The final score was 210 to 115 and a comfortable win for Southampton.

Both teams had a conversion rate higher than 50 percent, considerably so in Balliol’s case. But they only managed 6 starters between them – as many, incidentally as Ethan Lyons answered for Southampton. Well played Southampton, I shall watch your next performance with interest.

Interesting Fact That I Didn’t Already Know Of The Week.

The Toy Story films make some conscious nods to “The Shining”

Mastermind 2023: First Round Heat 8

Have you had enough of Quizzy Tuesdays yet? I’m finding it a bit difficult, what with part of it being up against Bake Off. Nonetheless I’d rather have this than a two or three week hiatus of the kind they’ve given us in Mastermind in years past.

So let’s talk about tonight’s show. First up was Hilary Burton. Hilary was answering on the Lord Peter Wimsey novels of Dorothy L. Sayers, a good old traditional Mastermind subject if ever I heard one. As we were watching both Dan and I made the same observation at exactly the sme time, namely that Hilary seemed incredibly nervous. It wasn’t just the pair of us who thought so – Clive, good egg that he is, made a point of asking her if she was alright as she sat back in her own chair. Mind you, I’m a bit surprised that this was left in and not edited out. She needn’t have been nervous, as it worked out. Hilary knew her stuff in detail, and scored 11 – and only one longish pause prevented her from getting an even dozen I’d say.

As the show started I thought I recognised the gentleman in the second seat, and I was right. This was none other than Michael McPartland. Last time we saw Michael in the Mastermind chair was in the grand final of 2014. Mugs don’t get to Grand Finals. I confidently said to Dan that he needed to watch this round – I didn’t want to put the mockers on Michael by telling Dan that he was definitely going to win (but I thought that he was). Michael didn’t disappoint. He was answering on Arnold Schwarzenegger and he produced a performance on a very wide ranging set of questions that was right out of the top drawer. Fourteen points, and heaven help those contenders yet to come.

Nonetheless, both of the remaining contenders were not so daunted that they didn’t manage perfectly good rounds of their own. Sam Bowdery was answering on the TV series “The Wire”. Sorry, but I’ve never watched it myself, so I can’t possibly say whether the questions were as difficult as Michael’s, for instance. Yeah, the questions largely concentrated on the plot details, but that’s par for the course these days. At least we’re showing some consistency between shows here. Sam was caught out once or twice in the earlier part of the round, but rallied well to post his own double figure score of 10.

Paddy Storrie brought the specialist round to a successful conclusion with his round on the Falklands Conflict. I found myself having conflicted loyalties, what with Paddy being a Deputy Headteacher. In all honesty I cannot conceive how he found the time to prepare for his appearance, but prepare he did, since he too managed a double figure score. It must have been daunting to have reached double figures and still find himself four points behind at half time, but nonetheless all of our contenders in this show were really giving us a top notch contest for a first round heat.

Which, it must be said, continued through the GK rounds. Sam was first to return, and it must be said that he made an excellent start to his round. For the first minute or so it looked distinctly possible that he might post a mid-teen score, which would certainly make things interesting. Well, sadly he stumbled and lost a little bit of momentum in mid round, but nonetheless he scored 11 to take his score to 21. If by any chance you ever read this, Sam, all I can say is that as disappointing as it must be to come fourth, few people come fourth with a performance or a score as good as yours. Bad luck.

Which pretty much already gives the game away that Paddy beat Sam’s score. If you can manage 12 in GK, which is what Paddy scored, then you’ll always be competitive. It seems strange for me to be writing about good GK performances in the same breath as writing that the contenders who posted them still ended up among the wines and spirits at the bottom of the bill, but then this just was not any ordinary contest.

I will confess that I was worried about Hilary coming back for her GK round. Or worried for her. I needn’t have been. She favoured Clive with a shy smile as he began, and then proceeded to batter seven shades of whatsaname out of her round. With a three point lead at half time Michael was always going to be the favourite, but as Hilary kept on dispatching each delivery over the boundary rope the contest became more and more interesting. In the end Hilary finished with a most excellent 16. Putting this into perspective, Michael needed 13 just to force a tie break. I knew he was more than capable of this, but it meant that he’d have to pass through the corridor of doubt in order to do it.

Of course, he managed it. In fact he put in exactly the kind of round you’d expect from a quizzer of his experience and stature. His 17 and no passes was the best GK round we’ve seen this series, and although there is a little wiggle room, it will take some beating. In the current era of Mastermind, 31 is a hell of a score, and that’s the score that Michael managed. Congratulations to you, sir. Let’s not go burdening anyone with the pressure of being favourite at this early stage. But you have to say that this was the performance of a class act who looks good to go far. Spare a thought also for Hilary Burton. It’s no consolation I’m sure, but come the end of the heats you will, I am sure, have scored more highly than a lot of the semi-finalists and but for the luck of the draw, you’d have been one of them.

The Details

Hilary Burton	The Lord Peter Wimsey Novels of Dorothy L. Sayers	11	0	16	0	27	0
Michael McPartland	Arnold Schwarzenegger	14	0	17	0	31	0
Sam Bowdery	The Wire	10	0	11	1	21	1
Paddy Storrie	The Falklands Conflict	10	0	12	2	22	2

Feel Free . . .

During the last week I was lucky enough to meet a reader who has only been reading LAM regularly since my lost weekend ended in August 2021. I was a little taken aback by one of her observations, which was and I quote, “You don’t like new shows a lot, do you?”

I’ll be honest, I was a little taken aback by this observation. I stammered out a self-justificatory response along the lines of – well, I do try to find positives as well as negatives in each review, but then I also feel that I have to be honest and say what I really feel, yuttah yuttah. I’ll be honest, I was trying to justify myself, and didn’t have the presence of mind to ask which, if any, new shows she felt I’d been unfair about, or if she’d read any of the reviews of new shows in the last 14 years or so that the blog has been running.

Still, it did make me question myself and although this can sometimes be a painful process, it can also be a salutary one. In the last 12 months I’ve reviewed 9 new quiz shows. These are:-

The Tournament

Moneybags

Sitting on a Fortune

Moneyball

Quizness

Unlimited Win

Bridge of Lies

The 1 Percent Club

A One and Six Zeroes

I’ve read the reviews of each of these shows and . . . okay, maybe she has a point. The only two of these 9 shows that I said that I liked without reservations are “Bridge of Lies” and “Quizness”. To be fair, the only ones that I really didn’t like at all were “The 1 Percent Club” “Unlimited Win” and “A One and Six Zeroes”. As for “Moneybags”, “Sitting on a Fortune”, “Moneyball”  and “The Tournament” I said that each of these had varying degrees of watchability for me.

Well, there we are. Like anyone else I have things that I like, and things that I don’t like. Objectivity only takes me so far, and all of this nonsense we’ve been sharing on the blog for the last fourteen years of so has just been me talking about things the way that I see them. I’d be prepared to admit that as I get older I probably get a lot more curmudgeonly and a lot less flexible and prepared to try new things and to change my opinion.

I do accept that any TV quiz or game show takes an awful lot of care and hard work to get onto the screen in the first place. So, for example, even though I and the majority of the audience who actually watched it didn’t like Robert Kilroy-Silk’s “Shafted” of years gone by, this doesn’t mean that a lot of people didn’t work very hard on it, and didn’t try to make it the best piece of television that they could make it. But sometimes shows don’t work, and I find it interesting to try to examine why they don’t work, or, thinking more subjectively, why I don’t like it. In the case of “Shafted”, which has become a byword for unsuccessful quiz shows, the answer is relatively simple. As the great Richard Osman once said, “Of course, absolutely nobody in the whole of Britain actually likes Robert Kilroy-Silk.” Harsh, but a fairly succinct summing up of what was wrong with the show.

TV is voracious in terms of the material that it uses up. New shows in all genres come, and the majority of them go. Trying to predict which new shows will click with an audience is at best an inexact science. Like anyone else all I can do is call it as I see it. As you know, this is all just my opinion. Feel free to disagree.

8 Bit Music Round

You can certainly count the number of Friday night quizzes I’ve ever been to on the fingers of two hands, and probably on just one when you get right down to it. Maybe it’s different in other places, but in my own small part of the world it’s just not a night when pub quizzes tend to happen. It’s hardly surprising when you think of it, after all, Friday night is one time when you don’t need to offer the seductive allure of a quiz to entice people into a pub.

I mention all of this because on Thursday evening just gone, something else was happening in the club. You never know, it may even have been a rugby match. Whatever he case it was necessary to either cancel the quiz, or move it to a different evening. On other occasions we’ve tried moving it to a Monday or Tuesday, with disappointing results. This time however a Friday was mooted.

Question master for Friday was my son in law Dan. Now you may recall that when I’ve posted about Dan’s quizzes in the past I’ve always paid special attention to the music round. Dan reintroduced the music round to the quiz, and I think it’s fair to say that it’s become so popular that it’s expected of him now. For me it will take a lot to top the previous music round where Dan used string quartet arrangement of well known popular tunes. This time Dan opted for something which was I would say pretty much the complete opposite – 8 bit versions of popular tunes.

The funniest part of the whole evening was the reaction when Dan announced he was going to play 10 8 bit versions of pop songs. You have to bear in mind that at the ripe old age of fifty eight and a bit, and some 27 years after I first started attending the quiz in the club I am still one of the young whippersnappers playing. So, many people’s reactions to the phrase ‘8 bit’ reminded me of a famous Not the 9 O’Clock News sketch where a High Court judge, a crusty old fossil from the Pompeii fallout, is perplexed by mentions of digital watches and video cassette recorders. Here’s a link

Not the Nine O'Clock News judge sketch

In case you’re not sure yourself, for our purposes 8 bit refers to early home computers and games consoles from the 80s. Here’s a couple of links to demonstrate the sort of thing.

Bohemian Rhapsody (8 Bit Remix Cover Version) [Tribute to Queen] - 8 Bit Universe - YouTube

Meat Loaf Bat Out Of Hell - 8 Bit - YouTube

All of which leads me to beg the question – what’s he going to think of next. I don’t know, but I’m looking forward to finding out.