Mastermind devalued!
Don't get me wrong I like 'Father Ted'.
Correction - I love 'Father Ted', but I still can't see how the hell you can be crowned 'Mastermind' with 'Father Ted' as your specialist subject!
There were 3 series of 'Father Ted' - a total of 24 episodes, and yet last night the BBC let Patrick Gibson, a software developer from Wigan, choose this as his specialist subject. With his fellow contestants choosing subjects including 'Icelandic Family Sagas' and the 'Life and work of Vermeer' is perhaps not surprising that Mr Gibson romped home with a total of 31 points.
The other contestants (all men naturally, the majority of whom were bearded and obviously lacked certain key social skills) couldn't do much more than sit there smiling through gritted teeth, no doubt mentally beating themselves up that they'd chosen 'The life and work of George Brassens' and not 'The Teletubbies: 1998-2001'.
Is this further evidence that Britain is dumbing down? Or am I just bitter because I only got 20 general knowledge questions right (out of a total of about 100)? Bit of both I think...
Can you think of a specialist subject (real or imagined), that could possibly be easier/more bizarre than this one?!
posted by Paul @ Wednesday, November 09, 2005
2 Comments:
Easier...
French Naval victories 1700-2005
I can still remember a cartoon from ages ago of a bloke wearing oily overalls sitting in The Chair and Magnus saying "and your chosen subject is catalogue numbers of spare parts for the Ford Cortina Mk3"
Father Ted was a good choice. If you want to win I always thought that choosing a very limited subject was necessary rather than something/someone where there is a wealth of, often conflicting, studies as well as any source material. Fawlty Towers would be even better, with only 12 episodes.
If you wanted to be higher-brow about it you could pick something like the novels of Tom Wolfe - as opposed to the life and works of Tom Wolfe.
Remember that earlier in the series (or maybe last series) someone chose 'The television programme Dinner Ladies', of which there are only 16 episodes, so could have been worse I suppose.
Not sure that I have enough specialist knowledge to pick any subject - though it'd be nice to spend a few months in front of the tellie, with my feet up and a few cans watching 'Monkey' or similar in the interests of research...doubt my partner would be all that supportive tho!
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