Mastermind - First Round Heat 13/24

Was it Shelley who once wrote - If Mastermind returns, can Spring be far behind ? No it wasn’t, but I’m sure that if the show, and indeed television had been around in the early 19th century its just the sort of thing he might have written. Still, on this bitter Friday evening, with nothing other than the prospect of more snow on Sunday to look forward to, the return of real Mastermind at least brings a warm glow to those parts that other quizzes cannot reach.

After the free scoring jamboree that was Celebrity Mastermind, tonight’s show represented a bit of a sudden return to Earth. Or perhaps a better way of putting it would be a return to reality. For it must be remembered that a set of celebrity questions are somewhat easier than a set of proper Mastermind questions. No that’s not just my opinion. John Humphrys actually said it to the studio audience in a break during filming of the 2007 final. So with that in mind, lets be about our business.

Beryl Maddison was the first person to take the short walk to the black chair tonight. She was answering questions on Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and there’s a great Mastermind subject if ever I heard one. In her filmed insert Beryl Maddison paid tribute to the engineering legacy Brunel left behind in the West Country, and Bristol in particular. Not that the questions she was asked didn’t cover a lot more ground than that, and considering the man had such a huge and varied career 11 points didn’t look that bad at all.

I felt for Mark Sutton who followed Beryl into the chair. You could tell from his filmed insert that he obviously knows his stuff about the islands of Micronesia. Yet his round really failed to ignite, and he looked more, rather than less nervous as the round went on. John Humphrys seemed as sympathetic to the poor chap as we were, accepting a partial answer to the last question rather than insisting on the full monty as it were.

Barry Ketchell , our third contender tonight, was answering questions on the Life and Career of Johnny Ray. If that subject elicits the response – Johnny Who ? – from you, well, I think that all I need say is that my mother, who is 70 years old, was in love with him when she was a teenager. Enough said there, I think. Barry Ketchell put it rather more positively when he described him as the singer who came between Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley. I think that perhaps he was expecting a little more on the music and a little less on the life, still he managed to answer 9 correctly.

Last but not least came regular LAM reader and one time Ealing resident Jesse Honey. Jesse’s round on The London Borough of Wandsworth has already been the subject of an article in a local paper, since it’s the first time that anyone has taken a London Borough for a specialist subject. I like to think that I know a bit about London, but I honestly had no idea that the borough had such a rich and varied history within its borders. Jesse did , though, and his 14 was easily the pick of the specialist rounds tonight.

I’d got used to having the inter round chats during the sleb shows, so it actually came as a real treat to go straight into the GK rounds and just get on with it. Poor Mark Sutton looked as if he was still a little shell shocked after his specialist round, and fell into a pass spiral. He managed to take his score to 14. Barry Ketchell had a hard round to negotiate, and found the points hard to come by. Like Mark Sutton before him, he also ended with 14 points. These Gk rounds all seemed to me a little on the tough side tonight, although that may be just in comparison with the sleb MM rounds. Beryl Maddison returned to the chair, and she too failed to get into double figures, although her 7 points took her safely clear, and for the time being at least she was into the lead with 18 points. Not enough for a runners up semi slot, though.

Jesse Honey is a great quizzer who was ranked in the top 3 in the UK at the end of 2009, so I have to say that I had no fears about his performance in the GK round. I was playing along from the comfort of the Clark sofa, with no pressure on me, but Jesse still scored one more than I did on quite a long winded and tricky set of questions. His 13 meant that he won by 9 points, and John Humphrys certainly seemed impressed. I’m not going to scupper Jesse’s chances by burdening him with the Clark tip at this stage, but I will say that this was a classy performance, and he looks well set to challenge in the semis. Good show, and well played.

The Details

Beryl Maddison	Isambard Kingdom Brunel	11 – 2	7 – 2	18 - 4
Mark Sutton	The Islands of Micronesia	7 – 2	7 – 6	14 - 8
Barry Ketchell	The Life and Career of Johnny Ray	9 – 2	5 - 4	14 - 6
Jesse Honey	The London Borough of Wandsworth	14 – 2	13 – 1	27 – 3

Current Highest Scoring Runners Up

John Cooper	29 – 3
Ian Scott Massie	26 – 2
Les Morrell	26 - 3
Colin Wilson	25 - 0
William de'Ath	25 - 4
Frances Gregory & Richie Venner	24 - 2

Sleb Mastermind - Overall results

Sleb Mastermind – Afterword

Well they do say comparisons are odious, but what the hell, here’s a comparison between the results of all the celebs who took part in this year’s series. The table has been ranked according to total score in the first place, then total passes in the second place.

Highest overall score was Stuart Maconie with 33. He also had the highest ever celebrity GK score, with 19. Gail Emms also managed a round of 19, and her specialist round on Gavin and Stacey was the highest of the series. She is actually rather unlucky not to have taken a trophy home, as she had the third highest score of the series.

No less than six celebrities scored 30 points or more, and I think its fair to say that scores as a rule were higher than last year in the majority of shows in this series.

Stuart Maconie	14- 1	19 -0	33-1
Loyd Grossman	14 - 0	18 - 0	32 - 0
Gail Emms	19 - 0	12 - 0	31 - 0
Nigel Planer	17 - 0	14 - 1	31 - 1
Tristan Gemmill	15 - 0	16 - 3	31 - 3
Tony Audenshaw	14 - 2	16 - 1	30 - 3
Roger Black	17 - 0	12 - 2	29 - 2
John Bird	15 - 0	14 - 3	29 - 3
Beverly Knight	16 - 2	13 - 2	29 - 4
Dom Joly	13 - 3	16 - 3	29 - 6
Paul Gambaccini	16 - 0	12 – 0	28 - 0
Anneka Rice	18 - 1	10 - 7	28 - 8
Andrew Lancel	11 - 2	16 - 0	27 - 2
Ed Byrne	13 - 4	14 - 2	27 - 6
John Suchet	15 - 0	11 - 2	26 - 2
Alastair Stewart	14 - 0	12 - 2	26 - 2
Linda Papadopoulos	16 - 2	10 - 3	26 - 5
Stewart Lee	17 - 0	9 - 7	26 - 7
Alex Deakin	14 - 0	11 - 0	25 - 0
John Thompson	14 - 0	11 - 4	25 - 4
Mishal Husain	12 - 4	11 - 4	23 - 8
Steve Backshall	11 - 0	11 - 2	22 - 2
Matthew Lewis	13 - 1	9 - 3	22 - 4
Russell Grant	13 - 3	9 - 1	22 - 4
Joe Pasquale	16 - 1	5 - 2	21 - 3
Tony Parsons	11 - 4	10 - 3	21 - 7
Paul O'Grady	13 - 2	6 - 4	19 - 6
John Bishop	9 – 5	9 - 3	18 - 8
John Higgins	13 - 3	4 - 1	17 - 4
Dave Vitty	6 - 5	11 - 2	17 - 7
Michael Howard	12 - 3	5 - 5	17 - 8
Goldie	10 - 4	7 - 8	17 - 12
Darren Bennett	10 - 2	6 - 3	16 - 5
Mark Foster	7 - 2	9 - 4	16 - 6
Saira Khan	10 - 4	6 - 5	16 - 9
Ching He Huang	12 - 3	4 6	16 - 9
Diane Louise Jordan	10 - 4	5 - 2	15 - 6
Sasha Kindred	10 - 3	4 - 7	14 - 10
Michael Winner	7 - 4	6 - 3	13 - 7
Diane Parish	5 - 9	6 - 5	11 - 14

Sleb Mastermind - Show 10

Celebrity Mastermind – show 10 – Thursday 7th January

Well, you wait all day for a Celebrity Mastermind show , then two come along at once. Well, not quite at once, but you know what I mean. Actually, I don’t know this for certain, but I guess that they’ve squeezed in two shows on the same night so as not to conflict with the return of proper Mastermind on Friday 8th. Which is rather an ironic twist, since in the past its always been the original show that’s been shoved from pillar to post to make way for the other versions.

Well before I go off on one of those rants again, I’d better stick to the events of the show in hand for now. So we’ll kick off with soul singer Beverly Knight. On behalf of the Terence Higgins Trust, she answered questions on the Life and Career of Prince. This was a very fine round, and only a bit of a hesitation and pass on the penultimate question provided a slight stumble. 16 points set the bar at an impressive height for our next three contenders to have to aspire to.

First of the remaining three to try was world snooker champion John Higgins, as casually dressed as Beverly Knight was elegantly attired. His chosen charity was the British Institute for Brain Injured Children, and his specialist subject was the American TV soap opera Dallas. Thus followed a round in which a couple of venerable Dallas chestnuts were thrown up, such as who really shot JR ? However most of these questions required a deeper knowledge of the show than this, and fair play to John Higgins, 13 looked like a good score to me.

Gorseinon born MP Michael Howard , representing Home-Start Shepway, offered us Liverpool FC in the 1980s. Following the performance of the last MP we had on sleb MM, poor David Lammy last year, he’s a brave man. Still, his love of Liverpool FC is actually quite well documented, and being that he picked only 10 years of their history, albeit 10 of the most eventful years, surely he would do well ? He didn’t do that badly, either. 12 points is certainly a respectable score, although it did put him at a 4 point disadvantage, with one player still to go in the first round.

That player was none other than weatherman Alex Deakin, who’d put on his best suit and tie for the occasion. His fee was donated to the Multiple Sclerosis Society, nd his specialist subject was the band The Stone Roses. Mad for it ! Actually, I think he probably is mad for it, since he scored a very good 14 points and no passes to put him just a couple of points behind Beverly Knight. Good effort.

Perhaps Anne Widdicombe was being very unfair when she suggested that there was something of the night about Michael Howard, but I must admit I found it difficult to warm to him as John Humphrys chatted to him between rounds. Not that he’d mind that, as he said himself that you ought not to put popularity on the top of your list as a politician. John told him it was anybody’s game, but as the round went on it became clearer that it wasn’t going to be Michael Howard’s. He scored 5. John Higgins engagingly admitted to John Humphrys that there are mornings when he wakes up and thinks – I’m the world champion ! Well, he’s never likely to be a quiz world champion, but he made the best answer of the night, when he suggested that the order of monks who gave their name to a black and white coffee the same colour as their robes was the Nescafe monks.

On to the serious competition, then, and Alex Deakin had to suffer John Humphrys berating him for the way that the last summer was predicted to be a ‘barbecue summer’ . One of the occupational hazards of working for the Met Office, I should say. A decent round this, for 11 points, but it could have been better if he had said that Ramadan was a month of fasting rather than feasting. Oh well, that’s the difference a letter can make.

So the last contender in this year’s Celebrity Mastermind was Beverly Knight. First of all she explained that a singer needs to look after her voice by boring things like getting lots of sleep and drinking lots of water. Well, I sleep as much as I can, and I drink gallons of H2O, yet my singing voice still resembles nothing so much as a castrated tomcat. Such is life. This was not the fastest general round I’ve ever seen, but then speed was not the be all and end all if she could keep getting them right, and the majority of questions she could. 13 was the best general knowledge round of the night, and although she just missed out on joining the 30 plus club, I’m sure that won’t worry her at all. So well played tonight, and thank you to all of the celebs who’ve taken part in the series. Just for fun I’ll be posting some of the stats from the series either today or tomorrow.

The Details

Beverley Knight	The Life and Career of Prince	16 – 2	13 - 2	29 - 4
John Higgins	Dallas	13 - 3	4 - 1	17 - 4
Michael Howard	Liverpool FC in the 1980s	12 - 3	5 - 5	17- 8
Alex Deakin	The Stone Roses	14 - 0	11- 0	25– 0

Sleb Mastermind - Show 9

Celebrity Mastermind – show 9 – Thursday 7th January

Another day, but this time another 2 shows. Yes, a double helping of Celebrity Mastermind to bring this series to a hopefully rousing climax. Who would win what John described as an elegant paperweight ? Tonight’s brave contenders were Mark Foster, Nigel Planer, Ching He Huang, and John Suchet.

Olympic swimmer Mark Foster for once kept his shirt on. He was representing the charity The Anaphylaxis Campaign and took the New Romantics as his subject. To be fair, Mark can’t have been more than a lad when the New Romantics were in their short lived early 80s heyday. This was a real trip down memory lane for anyone in their mid forties, though, and I actually scored not too badly on this. As I suggested I think Mark was a little too young for this round, and he scored 7.

Heavy , heavy, heavy – its Neil in the black chair being hassled by John Humphrys ! Apologies to anyone under 40 for that. Nigel Planer, whose fees were being donated to Families Need Fathers, gave us popular Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson. I’m sure that you already know that Stevenson came from a family of lighthouse builders, and believe me, they are a very interesting subject in their own right. Still, Nigel made short work of the black sheep of the family, scoring an extremely impressive 17 and no passes.

Celebrity chef Ching He Huang was representing the Worldwide Fund for Nature. Her specialist subject was the American TV show Entourage. I’m afraid that while I’ve seen trails for the show once or twice I know next to nothing about it, so I can’t tell you whether Ching’s performance was good or great. What I do know is that she scored 12.

John Suchet, aka Poirot’s brother, offered a popular composer in the shape of Beethoven. John Bird did well yesterday taking a composer, and going last in the first round, so the omens were good. Of course, omens can only get you so far, and if you don’t have the knowledge then you’re not going to do very well. I’m delighted to say that John did have the knowledge, and he scored 15 to be in a handy second place at the halfway stage.

Mark Foster was the first to return for the GK round. John Humprhys suggested that at 38 years of age he was possibly a little long in the tooth for competing in last year’s Olympic Games. Well, to paraphrase a well known saying, if you’re good enough, you’re young enough. It was ironic that he was asked about the tango, following his appearance in last year’s Strictly. Alas, he got it wrong. Still, he ploughed gamely on, to end with 16. Ching He Huang was greeted by “We all know you from your brilliant Chinese cooking !” Well, I’m sorry , John, but she was previously unfamiliar to me. Not that there’s anything to be ashamed of in that. Ching is actually 31, but looks a lot younger, and as we all know, youth is not actually an advantage in Mastermind. She scored a modest 4 for 16.

So, with the relative sideshow over, John Suchet returned to the chair and breathlessly explained his obsession with Beethoven, and the fact that fragments of his skull are being DNA tested. That’s Beethoven’s skull, and not John Suchet’s. He struggled a little, but made it into double figures, and 16 gave him a little bit of a chance, even if Nigel Planer was by this stage a short odds favourite. John Humphrys paid tribute to the huge variety of roles Nigel Planer has played since his beginnings in the Your Ones. Well, that’s the thing, see John. If you’re that good, then you’ll always work. He’s not just good at acting either. Nigel adopted the strategy of answering very slowly, even asking for a couple of repeats, but answering very correctly as well. He scored a praiseworthy 14 for a grand total of 31. so we have yet another member of the 30 plus club.

The Details

Mark Foster	The New Romantics	7 – 2	9 - 4	16 - 6
Nigel Planer	Robert Louis Stevenson	17 – 0	14 - 1	31 - 1
Ching He Huang	Entourage	12 - 3	4 - 6	16- 9
John Suchet	Beethoven	15 - 0	11- 2	26– 2

Sleb Mastermind - Show 8

Celebrity Mastermind – show 8 – Wednesday 6th January

Another day, another 4 celebrities. We are, according to John Humphrys, a nation obsessed with celebrities. Well, maybe so. I’m not going to lie, I’ve certainly enjoyed this series. Tonight’s contenders were Michael Winner, Mishal Husain, Dom Joly and John Bird. Michael Winner kicked off the specialist rounds. Answering on behalf of the Police Memorial Trust, he offered us British films of the 60s. Considering that he was responsible for some British film in the 60s himself, I was surprised that he didn’t do just a little bit better than this, since this was I thought a pretty gentle round in terms of the level of the questions that were asked. He scored 7 and 4 passes, and I’m afraid a certain amount of scorn from the Clark sofa for not knowing that Sid James played Sir Sidney Ruff-Diamond in Carry on Up The Khyber – where, incidentally the Llanberis Pass stood in for the Khyber.

Mishal Husain offered us something different in the way of a charity in the shape of the Burma Star Association. Good on you ! she offered something a little more traditional in her choice of specialist subject, namely, C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia.She put on a pretty decent showing as well . Last year 12 points would have given her a shout. This series, though, the scores have been higher. Still, a praiseworthy performance.

TV Prankster Dom Joly , whose fee was donated to the Friends of Paternoster School, was answering on the Presidency of Jimmy Carter. Yes, for all of us who mainly remember Carter for a grin so full of teeth that it could put an Osmond to shame, there was quite a bit more to the man than met the eye. So Dom Joly can be pleased with his score of 13. All together now – anything in the teens on specialist is a good performance.

John Bird brought the Specialist rounds to a close tonight. His chosen charity was the Blue Cross, and his chosen specialist subject was the Life and Works of Igor Stravinsky. I’m sorry, but I’m so used to John Bird’s brilliantly deadpan delivery in all of those sketches with John Fortune that I kept thinking that this must be a send up. It clearly wasn’t though, since John Bird really knew his stuff on Stravinsky. I’m afraid that all I really know about Stravinsky can be summed up as – Stravinsky – Rite of Spring – Riot on first performance – Dinosaurs sequence in Disney’s Fantasia. John Bird scored 15 and no passes, and looked a good bet at the halfway stage.

Twinkly wrinkly Michael Winner returned to the chair to explain that in a battle between the star and the director, the star always wins. He did give the example of Steve Macqueen, who himself was the subject of a specialist round in my Mastermind final ! Michael caused a generous round of laughter, since, when asked a question about the workings of a theatre, he replied “I don’t do theatre !” Would it be very rude of me to say that a couple of his films aren’t much to write home about either. Probably, so lets just say that he took his total to 13. Mishal Husain explained how she came to present the news really by accident, since there was no one else to do it at the time. I’m sure there was a little more to it than that. A pretty good round saw her get into double figures, and I’m sure that Jilly Cooper, if she was watching, was amused by the suggestion that her novel Riders may have been written by H. Rider Haggard !

The order for the GK round was the same as the specialist, so Dom Joly followed. He explained that Trigger Happy TV never worked in the USA, because people don’t have the same awkward reserve that we Brits do. He’s probably got a point. This was definitely the pick of the GK rounds tonight, as he scored a very impressive 16 and 3 passes. That’s what you have to do if you want to put pressure on the guy in the lead. At one stage, too, it looked as if the pressure was going to tell. This was not a comfortable round, as he struggled on some, passed a couple, but just about clawed his way there to the 14 he needed for 29 on the very last question. On countback, his three passes to Dom’s 6 was enough to do it. Well done guys – good show !


The Details

Michael Winner	British films of the 1960s	7 - 4	6 - 3	13 - 7
Mishal Husain	The Chronicles of Narnia	12 - 4	11 - 4	23 - 8
Dom Joly	The Presidency of Jimmy Carter	13 - 3	16 - 3	29 - 6
John Bird	The Life and Work of Igor Stravinsky	15 - 0	14- 3	29 – 3

Sleb Mastermind - Show 7

Celebrity Mastermind – Show 7 – Tuesday 5th January 2010

Show seven provided us with a typically wide cross-section of specialist subjects. First up was Tony Parsons, whose fee was being donated to Scope. Cards on the table, I like Tony Parsons’ novels a lot, so perhaps I didn’t do too much for his chances by supporting him from the infamous Clark sofa.Tony was answering questions on British Punk, which is hardly surprising since I believe that he cut his teeth as a young music journalist writing about the punk scene. I did know one of his passes myself, that it was the Boomtown rats who took their name from a phrase in Woody Guthrie’s autobiography. Still, a score of double figures is always pretty respectable. 11 points set the mark for the rest.

Russell Grant, supporting the Alzheimer’s Society, answered on the County of Middlesex. This was of particular interest to Yours Truly, since I was born in 1964, the year before Greater London came into being, and I was born in an area which was still a part of Middlesex until that time. My folks always insisted on writing Middlesex as part of their address, long after it had officially ceased to exist. However, since this is LAM and not All Our Yesterdays, I shall curtail this digression now. I loved the question Russell was asked about the Bruce Castle Museum. This is literally within walking distance of my Mum’s home in Tottenham ! Enough of the personal details. Suffice it to say that this was an extremely wide ranging round, and I thought that Russell Grant did well to score 13.

The actress Diane Parish, probably best known for being one of Lovejoy’s last sidekicks, and then for her current role in Eastenders, was representing the African Caribbean Leukaemia Trust. She offered us the TV series Frasier. She snapped up all the straightforward questions, but floundered somewhat on a set of questions which asked for what looked like a very detailed knowledge of the minutiae of specific episodes. I thought that this was a bit mean, especially when you consider that were no less than 264 episodes made ! The pass spiral has been pretty rare during this series, but unfortunately Diane fell into one, and scored 5.

Paul Gambaccini , who donated his fee to Stonewall, answered questions on DC comics. This was the pick of the rounds. I would venture to say that between 8 and 10 of these questions were relatively straightforward, since I’m not a DC comics fanatic myself, but managed to get 9 of them. However Mr. Gambaccini did considerably better, and scored a near perfect 16, only one answer getting way from him in the whole round.

Diane Parish explained how the fact that Eastenders is recorded anything up to 10 weeks in advance means that they sometimes use the artifice of sticking blossom to the trees. Unfortunately Diane fell into another pass spiral, in a set of GK questions that just didn’t seem to suit. She finished with 11. Tony Parsons apologetically explained to John Humphrys that his own books sold much better than John Humphrys’ because success always goes to the idiots who don’t deserve it. He’s being self deprecating. He mentioned his book “Man and Boy” and I can thoroughly recommend it. Fair play, he gave it a lash, and scored 10, although he’ll be kicking himself for not realising that Poly Vinyl Chloride is known by the abbreviation PVC.

Russell Grant boasted of his Welsh ancestry before his GK round, but whether this was an attempt to curry favour with Sion Bach, is not for me to say. This was a rather entertaining GK round, with Russell Grant identifying Ally McCoist as “Alex something or other “, and Ian Paisley as “Oh – T – T – T – Trimble. “ He didn’t quite manage double figures, but his nine was enough to give him the lead, with only Paul Gambaccini to go. John had hardly let Paul sit down before he said, “Paul, we have to talk about X Factor. “ Really ? Just because the man doesn’t like it ? I don’t like brussels sprouts, John, but you never forced me to talk about them when I was in the chair. Still, on the subject of the X Factor, Paul suggested that a Bob Dylan would never have taken part in the X Factor. Well, true, but then a Bob Dylan would never have won the X Factor either. Still, lets not go there for now. Paul’s score of 12 was unimpressive by the standards of this series, but it brought him a praiseworthy 28, and a comfortable win of 6 points.

As he picked up his trophy Paul Gambaccini paid tribute to the show, which he said he had always watched since he used to watch as a student back in the days of Magnus Magnusson. Without wishing to be harsh, it must have been in the very earliest days of Mastermind if he was still a student, since his radio 1 career began in 1973, I believe. Still, I’m all for paying tribute to the history and tradition of the show, so full marks for that. Well done, sir.


The Details

Tony Parsons	British Punk	11 - 4	10 - 3	21 - 7
Russell Grant	The County of Middlesex	13 - 3	9 - 1	22 - 4
Diane Parish	Frasier	5 – 9	6 - 5	11 – 14
Paul Gambaccini	DC Comics	16 - 0	12 - 0	28 – 0

TV Watch - Only Connect

OnlyConnect – Round One – The Archers v. The Music Lovers.

Ah, the return of the powerhouse University Challenge and Only Connect Monday Night Double Whammy ! Our cup runneth over ! I think I may have told you already that I did get as far as joining a team to apply for this series, but the filming date was, alas, a date which I absolutely could not manage due to Mum’s 70th birthday, and our team captain moving house on the same day. Such is life. Still, it means that I can watch this series with my usual neutral(ish) dispassionate eye, and enjoy it as much as ever.

Kicking off the series we had the Archers Admirers and The Music Lovers. The Archers admirers were a team I’m not familiar with , consisting of Paul Peters, Andrew Bull and captain Min Lacey. I have met two of the Music Lovers, however. Don Purdey I don’t know, but in this company he’ll be no mug, you can be sure of that. Steve Kidd has been on a large number of shows. He’s a dedicated quiz fanatic, who has appeared on many shows in his time, and is the man behind 2007’s prestigious Qu12 competition. Diane Hallagan is also a very well known quizzer. She was the Di of Di’s Diamonds, the first ever winners of the first series of Battle of the Brains. I believe she was also a member of the team that won the last running of Radio 4’s Masterteam competition.

Round One – what’s the connection ?

The Music Lovers surprisingly gave away a bonus on Blue Peter Pets in round one. They redeemed themselves with a very difficult connection on hybrids. Archers Admirers came close to getting their second clue – they could see they were postcodes in Belfast, Edinburgh, Cardiff etc. but picked out National Rugby stadia rather than parliaments. Still the Music Lovers failed to pick up the bonus, leaving the Archers in contention. Still, they failed to spot a music connection of all performed by married couples, which the Music Lovers were happy to snap up for a 5 – 2 lead. Pretty much as you might have expected.

Round Two – predict the 4th in the sequence

Music Lovers picked up their first connection as coming from the song – A, You’re Adorable, but both teams failed to remember that D would be – You’re a Darling. On two clues the Archers predicted that Member, and Officer would eventually lead to Knight, these being the successive ranks of the Order of the British Empire. However the music lovers then got their own on only two clues, predicting that D would be the third letter on the middle row of a typewriter. The Archers took their next for a single point. They also took a bonus by predicting that John Constable, Sergeant Wilson and The Hotel Inspector would be followed by a Chief Inspector when this stumped the Music Lovers. So at the end of the round it was all square on 8 points. The unfancied Archers were making a real fist of it.

Connections Wall

Last series we found that the connections wall were more fiendish than they had seemed to be in the first series. I personally found both walls gettable tonight, and before you start to think that this sounds arrogant I will freely admit that this is something of a personal record for me. Archers Admirers went first , and though there was a lot of faffing about they got all four sets before the time went out. They solved the connections as well, so whatever happened they were still going to be at least the joint leaders at the end of the round. To their credit the Music Lovers also managed this feat too.Full marks to the setters. I felt that both walls were of a very similar level of difficulty, and that’s not always easy to achieve. I will admit, I have never heard of the satirical magazine The Onion myself, but then that’s another good reason for tuning in – learning something you never knew before.

Missing Vowels

As so often, the last round was going to be decisive. The Archers Admirers took the first 8 points without reply. The first set were on French phrases commonly used in English. Déjà vu cropped up twice – geddit ! Actually I thought that was clever, and also pretty funny too, in a radio 4 sort of way. The Music Lovers fought a valiant rearguard action, but were clearly second best at this stage, and lost by 24 points to 35. So well done Archers ! You don’t get any mugs in Only Connect anyway, but the Music Lovers were a serious scalp to take.

Welcome back Only Connect. Its only been a few months, but I’ve missed you.