Monday 9 January 2012

Sleb Mastermind - Show 10

The last sleb Mastermind of this series has been and gone. So let’s round up what happened, then cast a quick glance over the series as a whole.

First up was Martin Lew-s – the one who knows about money, not the one who used to present “Today’s The Day”. He was answering on the Superman Films. Obviously he meant the Ilya and Alexander Salkind films of the 70s and 80s – there weren’t any questions about the 1940s film serial starring Kirk Alyn, I noticed. It was a round split between questions you needed to have seen the films for, and questions which were just about the whole Superman mythos. I found that 7 of them were easy enough to answer, which was not as good as Martyn, who managed 12 from 13 questions. His charity was the Citizen’s Advice Bureau.

DJ Nihal Arthanayake came next to the chair. I wasn’t all that amused by his ‘comic’ reluctance to take the chair, but I warmed to him when he announced that his specialist subject was Glen Hoddle. For those of us for whom the 1981 FA Cup winning team was ‘our’ team, this was guaranteed to get the blood pumpin . I was pleased with my 9 points, which was actually two points better than Nihal himself managed, although he did at least manage to avoid any passes. His two charities were SOS Children’s Villages International and Action for Children.

Champion Cyclist Sarah Storey was next to go. I have to say that I didn’t fancy my chances with her subject “Sex and The City – The Early Years”. So I was rather surprised that I did manage to get two of the questions right. Sarah outscored Nihal, although her 8 points left her some way behind Martin going into the GK round. She too represented a brace of charities – Boot out Breast Cancer, and The Childrens’ Adventure Farm Trust.

Lastly the man who wrote to Des Lynam telling him that he was after his job, and asking for advice how to get it. True to his nature, Des duly gave him good advice, and years later, he got it. Dan Walker offered us The Gunpowder Plot. History being one of my better subject areas I fancied I might get a few, and get a few I did – 5 to be precise. Dan improved upon Sarah’s score, making 9 with one pass. Decent effort, but at three points behind he’d left himself with some work to do on GK. His chosen good cause was Taste.

Nihal returned to the chair first of all, and he gave a good account of himself, earning 12 points for a total of 19 after a pretty shakey start. I had a good start too – a perfect round. Sarah returned after this. Once again, I had a perfect round with no incorrect answer or passes. Sarah never quite got the measure of the round, and her 8 left her anchored to the bottom. Dan followed, and served us up the best round of the night, and one of the best sleb GK rounds that we’ve seen. He ratrtled off 16 correct answers, which was only 1 point off being a perfect round. More importantly ( to me ) I had my third perfect in a row . Was it possible that I could achieve the personal milestone of getting all of the GK right in a sleb show ?

No.

I had two wrong in Martin’s round. Martin himself had quite a few more wrong. Was it me, or did John seem to have switched into top gear for this round, as he seemed to be rushing through the questions right from the word go. I made it that he got through about 20 questions altogether. Well, whatever the case, it was enough to allow Martin to score the 16 he needed to get his nose over the finishing line. So well done, and well done to all concerned, an enjoyable series as always.

The Details
Martin Lewis Superman FIlms12 - 014 - 326 – 3
Nihal ArthanayakeGlen Hoddle7 - 012 - 019 – 0
Sarah StoreySex and the City – The Early Years 8 - 08 - 316 – 3
Dan WalkerThe Gunpowder Plot9 - 116 - 025 – 1

1 comment:

Ewan M said...

A "perfect programme" on GK would have been mightily impressive, bad luck for just missing out. The GK questions do seem even easier than in previous series. I've watched up to Episode 7 on BBC iPlayer and, frustratingly, I've regularly fallen one short of a perfect round while playing along at home. Invariably there is one nugget of information, generally popular culture-related, per round that has bypassed me completely, but I'm glad to say that on Miles Jupp's round on show 7, which I've just watched, I finally recorded that elusive perfect round. I was feeling pretty chuffed with myself until I saw you'd almost registered a "perfect programme"!