Quizlings

I don’t watch a lot of quiz programmes on TV but I do still enjoy University Challenge and Mastermind, hence Monday night is quiz night.

I always watched Mastermind when I was younger and rightly or wrongly assumed that the contestants were there to display and test the knowledge that they had gained in some particular field. Of course they would have brushed up on the subject before coming on the programme, but essentially it was about the knowledge that they had gained in the course of their lives.

Not so nowadays. Last week I was stunned to see one of our neighbours on the programme. ‘Look!’ I said excitedly. ‘It’s that woman from down the road!’ Turned out it wasn’t as she lived in Manchester and when I thought about it I realised that her hair was different too. So why did she look so familiar? Eventually I worked it out: she’d been on Mastermind before, and probably other programmes as well. Last year’s winner had not only been a contestant in previous years but had also appeared on other quiz shows. People are in quiz leagues and clubs: they go quizzing up and down the country. It’s almost a profession.

The only quiz that does seem to be a genuine test of knowledge is University Challenge.

Kirk out

The Joy of Malapropisms

Yesterday on Facebook I discovered what may possibly be the best malapropism of all time. Here it is:

I laughed all day at that (if you don’t get it, here’s an explanation.)

I’m having trouble with my fonts today. They started off small so I enlarged them but because WordPress views EVERY BLOCK AS A SEPARATE ENTITY!!!!! (GROWLING EMOJI) you have to reset the formatting for each new paragraph. I’m sure other users will weigh in with helpful hacks and I thank you in advance but be advised that all such comments are as water on sand; they appear in my mind for a moment before sinking without trace. There are certain types of information that I just can’t keep in my head, and this is never more obvious than when I’m watching a quiz. As you know, the only two quizzes I bother with are Mastermind and University Challenge (my paragraphs have gone all wide now) and what’s striking is the contrast between types of information I have at my fingertips and that which requires some digging. On UC there’s more chance for digging but on MM you have to produce an answer immediately, so I’d be very bad at that – it’s a test not only of what you know, but of your ability to bring that knowledge to the forefront of your mind, and that’s a separate skill. Not that I’d be any better at UC; whilst I do well on literature and have a smattering of other areas the questions are too deep and wide-ranging for me, especially since at the moment I have the memory span of Dory in Finding Nemo.

OH has a theory about this: (ah! I’ve managed to recover the font size now; it was on ‘default’ and I’ve changed it to ‘normal’ – though why ‘default’ isn’t the same thing as ‘normal’ is anyone’s guess.) Years ago I used to have a much better memory; then the menopause hit and knocked it for six like a strike-out at ten-pin bowling. All of a sudden my maps turned to fog; streets I’d known for decades became terra incognita and I could barely remember what I’d done yesterday. It’s a lot better now, but there are still vast swathes of the past which remain in gloom – and the other day OH came up with the suggestion that it’s because I’m writing full time. I think this is true – there’s always a trade-off when you start something new. Anyone with a small child will know they learn stories off by heart when they’re small but as soon as they learn to read, that ability goes. This is true in evolution too: with everything gained, something is lost.

Now look how far I’ve travelled from the original intention of this post. I was going to write about malapropisms but that’s gone now and I’m all out of ideas. So please send me your favourite malapropisms and maybe I’ll make them into a post.

Toodle pip

Kirk out

Was Petunia Dursley Grendel’s Mother?

I was packing up books yesterday and I came across an edition of Beowulf which I’d bought for Thing last Christmas.  It’s very hard to find presents for someone whose only hobbies are drinking coffee and listening to the radio and who already has more coffee-grinders, cafetieres and radios than any human being has a right to.  So what to get?  I ask.

Oh, don’t bother, he grumbles.  Don’t get me anything.

But I want to!  What shall I get you?

OK then a book.  If you must, he whines ungraciously.  Thanks darling….  But what book?  Aha! I thought when I came across Seamus Heaney’s translation of the Anglo-Saxon classic, Beowulf.  This’ll do.  And so I bore it home in triumph and proceeded to wrap it.  But wait!  First it must be inscribed.  ‘To my darling Thing on the occasion of Christmas 2015’?

No!  No, that won’t do at all.  So what I wrote was this:

‘What mysserable gyt was that

who nolde that his wyf

ne bochte hym no thynge for Christemasse?’

Which, translated roughly, means:

What miserable git was that who didn’t want his wife to buy him anything for Christmas?

But, since I know my Anglo-Saxon is basically a collection of half-remembered syllables; and since I also know that Thing can’t stop himself correcting other people’s linguistic mistakes, I also added:

‘If you would your fortunes waxen

don’t correct my Anglo-Saxon.’

You know the phrase, ‘you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone’?  Well, I also think you don’t know what you’ve got till you start to pack it up.  It’s only then that those long-lost tomes you spent hours looking for when you had time to read them, agree to manifest themselves so that they can be put in a box and left, only to disappear once more as soon as they are unpacked again.  But life goes on and since I can’t stop myself from buying books and since the lovely glossy chunky Oxford Companion to English Literature (1999, ed Margaret Drabble) practically jumped off the shelf and into my arms and since it was only £5: reader, I bought it.  And it is wonderful.  It not only has sections on writers and books but on characters from books too.  Harry Potter isn’t in there yet because the series wasn’t finished, but I’m sure it will be in future editions, if it isn’t already.  And in addition to all that it has sections on literary theory.  I read one yesterday which usefully reminded me of how much I hate post-modernism…

Talking of Harry Potter, that brings me to a strange phenomenon.  On last night’s Mastermind, the only woman (again!) answering questions on the musicals of Rodgers and Hammerstein, gave in answer to two questions the names Vernon Dursley and Petunia Dursley.  Now, I know that Rowling has used some classical names for characters: Argus (Filch) is Odysseus’s guard dog, for example; and Minerva (McGonagall) is the Roman goddess of wisdom – so I wondered if she’d taken the names of the Dursleys from characters in musicals.

But no – when I looked them up, I found only Harry Potter’s aunt and uncle.  Which made me wonder, why had she mentioned them?  And the best answer I’ve found is that instead of passing (in case the number of passes became an issue) she had a couple of names in readiness and used them instead.

Is that wrong?  Is it frowned upon?

I don’t know.  I’m not even sure it’s a good tactic as it has a time implication – but anyway, she won the round, though it was more for her outstanding general knowledge than the specialist subject.  29 points…

I was also surprised to discover that there have been as many female winners of Mastermind as male and that the first three winners were women.  So why aren’t there more women contenders?

I think we should be told.

Kirk out

Gone Blog: The Last Post

No, I’m not closing this blog: this is about my Mslexia residency.  My next blog post, called ‘Gone Boy,’ is up and you can read it here:

https://mslexia.co.uk/gone-boy/

and I can’t believe my residency is nearly up – it’s been more than three months and yet they’ve flown by.  It’s been a very successful residency though – according to my supervisor I have attracted the most comments she’s ever known!  So thanks to all who’ve taken the time to comment, and please keep it up.  My next post will be submitted shortly and then that will be it.  I shall miss it.

This blog, however, will continue – and while the Mslexia blog was commissioned to be on a particular theme, lizardyoga’s weblog will continue to cover an ever-expanding variety of subjects.  From gardening to wine-making (whose season is almost upon us), from politics to TV reviews, from thoughts about poetry to feelings about religion, there is nothing (or almost nothing!) I won’t cover.

Politically speaking, I have to report that I didn’t get elected as Principal Speaker for Left Unity, though once again the vote was close: I was neck and neck with another woman until they finally divvied up the votes (they use STV which sounds like a sexually-transmitted condition but means you can rank candidates in order of preference, rather than voting for just one.  I guess it’s more democratic but it is also quite cumbersome.)  I wasn’t too disappointed as I was not entirely sure how much I wanted the post…

Socially, I have been fairly busy; on Saturday along with half of Leicester we went to Anna’s 80th birthday party where I did a poem.  I can’t believe Anna is 80!  I’ve known her for about 28 years and she was one of the first people I met when I first came here and joined CND.  It was an enjoyable party and we saw loads of people we knew.  Then last night I was all set to trot into town for the hustings at the Secular Society when I looked out of the window.  Was that hail?  It was certainly windy – so I stayed indoors instead to watch my favourite contender – a down-to-earth sort of woman – win Mastermind.  The general knowledge questions were definitely harder at this level, so to make myself feel better I switched to Celebrity Mastermind, which sort of seems designed to make us feel superior to celebrities as they seem to know so little.  I answered all but one of the specialist subject questions on ‘Harry Potter’ as well.  Which set me off on a televisual journey with Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy) travelling the world to find out what drives obsessive fans; the kind of people who will wait for hours in the rain just for the chance of getting an autograph.

These people were more human and less creepy than he – or I – had expected: most of them seemed just to want some kind of contact with someone who had meant a great deal to them.  I was struck by his caring response to his fans, and to one in particular, a middle-aged woman called Tina, who follows him everywhere.

How do people have the time and money to do this?  It’s a mystery to me…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b05nxc43/mastermind-20142015-31-grand-final

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01pqg9z/celebrity-mastermind-20122013-episode-3

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b05nxgls/tom-felton-meets-the-superfans

Anyway, that’s all for today folks as I have to head off and write my last Mslexia post.

Kirk out

Ken Doddery

I never was much of a Ken Dodd fan, but you’ve got to take your hat off to the guy.  He’s in his eighties now and still performing, still touring and even giving Celebrity Mastermind a go.  He still has all that (electric) shock of hair, though it must be dyed: they’ve managed to catch him looking totally ga-ga here but he did quite well in the quiz.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04wtrs2/celebrity-mastermind-20142015-episode-2

The only woman contender (they always use the word ‘contender’ on MM, rather than ‘competitor’; I guess it gives the thing more gravitas) was a bobsleigh athlete who really should have stuck to her field (or slope) of expertise; instead she got baffled by the sheer vastness of Ambridge from 2002 onwards.  Here’s a question they should have asked:

Why the hell did the BBC appoint the editor from hell (sorry, Eastenders) to control The Archers?

She was also very slow in answering questions, which made me wonder whether people who practise super-fast sports make up for it by being super-slow in real life.

I always count the number of general knowledge questions I get right.  It’s usually between six and nine, though it does depend on how fast the competitor (or contender) answers.  Too fast, and I don’t get a look-in; too slow and I don’t get a shot at enough questions.  I really must write in and ask them to fix that.

Holly is due home today, so sanity will return to the house.  In the meantime, I shall be starting on the radio play I’m writing for the Beeb.  They have a drama window coming up in the autumn and so I’ll be working on something about Mark’s trans stuff.  I think I’ll call it ‘Lost in Transition’…

Kirk out

PS  I heard another noxious compound verb this morning: ‘to risk-assess’.

Ugh!

Still Funny After All These Years

Well, it’s Thursday and that means life on the i-player.  So what have I watched this week?  A lot of factual stuff, as it happens: firstly, I’ve been comparing and contrasting Mastermind and University Challenge, and then I’ve been finishing the two-part retrospective on Morecambe and Wise.

So, first the quiz-shows.  Well, the first thing I notice is that women are woefully under-represented in both but tend to do a lot better on Mastermind than they do on University Challenge.  This cannot be because fewer women go to University, so why is it?  Is it that by the time they get to Mastermind they are older and have more confidence?  I watched a Bangor team made up of 3/4 women get utterly slaughtered by a gang of four supremely confident men; you could see the women sagging every time they failed to buzz or got an answer wrong.  I can’t help wondering whether UC still favours the old-style Oxbridge culture, both in its style and in the type of questions, though that might not be fair.  It’s just that Oxbridge students seem to figure disproportionately in it.  Or is it the abrasive and often sneering style of Paxman?  His brusqueness is bad enough; what’s harder to stomach is the sneering way he corrects wrong answers, when we are only too well-aware that he only knows the correct answer because it’s written down in front of him.  I much prefer Humphrys.  Though a pit-bull when interviewing politicians on ‘Today’, he strikes exactly the right balance of rigour and sympathy when chairing Mastermind.  And the contestants are ordinary people: last night they numbered three men and one women, one of whom gave his occupation as ‘Enforcement Manager’.  This, when translated by Google, turned out to mean Traffic Warden.

LOL.

And the woman won…

I worry, too, about the under-representation of women in comedy.  Shows like QI, which I love, rarely have women on, but even the occasional appearance by Sandi Toksvig or Jo Brand (I met her once, you know) is an improvement on how things used to be, back in the day when Morecambe and Wise trod the floors of the Beeb.  The BBC’s two-part retrospective of the duo was really interesting; a sympathetic portrayal of them as human beings and performers; the ups and downs of their career, the writers who worked for them and the intense rehearsing that went in to making every sketch look totally spontaneous.  I could probably write reams about this: the guests they had on the show (people like Andre Previn, Penelope Keith, Glenda Jackson and Angela Rippon), how they were able to share a bed without suggesting they were gay; exactly why they were so funny (I still can’t put my finger on that) – but what occurred to me as I watched, more than anything, was that they were never sexist.  Now that I think about it, I don’t remember them being racist either – or homophobic.  Lots of comics were – it was an easy way to get a laugh – but they never went for easy laughs.  And perhaps that is why, because they were so inclusive – that they were, and are, so much loved.

So catch this before it disappears:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03kp3qt/Morecambe_and_Wise_the_Whole_Story_Episode_2/

Likewise the latest round of Mastermind:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03k1spm/Mastermind_2013_2014_Episode_14/

and if you must, here’s University Challenge:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03kwbw4/University_Challenge_2013_2014_Episode_21/

Kirk out

The Long Good-Evening: a life on i-player

Goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooood-morning-good-morning-good-morning-good-morning-good-morning-good-morning!  And yes!  it’s Stephen Fry here welcoming you to another edition of Lizardyoga’s Weblog!!!

And if you’re guessing that I watched QI last night, you’d be right!  In fact it was wall-to-wall quiz shows on an evening where both brain and body were semi-dormant: I had planned to go to a writing seminar at the University but alas! fatigue swept over me like a tsunami and soon an army of brain cells were laying down their arms and refusing to budge.  The sofa practically leapt up and grabbed me and, like the couch in ‘Black Books’, swallowed me whole.  (I’m sure it was in this episode but I can’t find it – still, watch it anyway as it’s good:)

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/black-books/4od#3106482

I also viewed Celebrity Mastermind.  I don’t like Celebrity Mastermind as much as regular Mastermind because apart from the so-called Celebs – who I’ve never heard of – being relaxed to the point of cocky, the questions seem so much easier.  Why?  Are celebrities really so much less intelligent than the rest of us?  Mastermind – proper Mastermind – is one of the few programmes which still features odd-looking people and treats them seriously; in other words, it values intelligence over looks.  So I think we can do without Celebrity versions of this, thank you very much.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01974zd/Celebrity_Mastermind_2011_2012_Episode_5/

And then interestingly – very interestingly – QI turned out to be on the subject of Intelligence!  Yes, they’re working their way through the alphabet – or at least, using letters of the alphabet – to choose different subjects:

Actually I can’t find that one now but here’s one on happiness:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00vhw4y/QI_Series_H_Happiness/

Alan Davies is an odd bloke; he’s likeable and seems to succeed in being funny through not being funny.  I can’t quite put my finger on the secret of his success, but he reminds me a little of another Alan I used to know.  This Alan also did magic (Alan Davies played a magician in Jonathan Creek) and told a few jokes as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Davies

In philosophy we did Locke and finished Hobbes, and I then cycled to the Ale Wagon to put up a poster for Drink and Think, only to discover that they are closed next Monday!  This is a bit of a bummer as we now have to find an alternative venue.

And finally, here’s today’s top spam comment:

Place just one particular heaping tablespoon connected with batter in each pan for each muffin.

An empathetic or sometimes curious child are going to lead of featuring questions.

I particularly like the ‘heaping tablespoon connected with batter’….

Kirk out

Nice dress, Doctor

When I was a kid I used to confuse Norman Hartnell with William of that ilk.  Norm was a designer of elegant (ie boring) ladies’ dresses and I seem to remember designed something for her Madge,

http://www.normanhartnell.com/welcome/

whereas Will was the first Time Lord and before my – er – time, since my first doctor was Patrick Troughton.  Hence the confusion.  As a child I was easily confused, as it never occurred to me that two people might have the same name; hence I worried for years about how my teacher, Lester Piggott, was able to pursue a career as a famous jockey as well as turning up for school every day. *

Had a brilliant day yesterday – and will probably have an even better one today.  There were loads of people at Tomatoes to hear my rendering of ‘The Ode to the Upperton Rd Bridge’ (see below) and I left with a commission to to a poem for ‘Sing for Water’ as well as an idea for a poetry pamphlet.  Then home to make tomato soup (we always get some left-over tomatoes) and potato-and-pea curry for dinner and an evening with the iplayer watching David Attenborough’s excellent retrospective

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00zsqsz/Attenborough_60_Years_in_the_Wild_Life_on_Camera/

(what a career that man’s had!) and an episode of ‘Mastermind’ where a blind woman wiped the floor with her three male, sighted opponents.  Great stuff.

Here’s a taste of the Upperton Rd poem: it’s a tribute to William McGonagall’s ‘Tay Bridge Disaster’ poem:

http://www.mcgonagall-online.org.uk/gems/the-tay-bridge-disaster

Ode to the Upperton Rd Bridge

Beautiful bridge of the Upperton Rd!

You have borne full many a load

of lorry, bus, van or car

– some of which were going very far –

The traffic flowed; except when it jammed:

your easy progress had been dammed

by the traffic lights on Narborough Rd

(which were operated in accordance with the Highway Code)

as you dipped towards the setting sun

you bore the cars bravely to the M1

while the other way in a graceful arc

you took us to Nelson Mandela Park.

Happy Sunday!

Kirk out

* he also had a career as Dave Fegent’s uncle and is apparently still alive, though not well

Are you Sam Sharman-Dunn?

Mark and I have known a lot of people in Leicester and one of them was called Sam Sharman-Dunn.  If that’s you we’d like to know who you are and what happened to you.  Are you still around?  We are.

To Steve’s last night for dinner and DVD.  Good chat with Faris, his Turkish lodger.  Watched a bit of TV including Mastermind which doesn’t seem to have changed much except to be at twice the speed and have 5 contestants instead of 4 – all, I was happy to see, remarkably un-telegenic, as is John Humphrys.  Then some out-takes of ‘Mock the Week’.  Mm.  I have to say – and this probably marks me down as an Old Fart – but I don’t like the way TV jumps around in that sort of programme.  You know – someone makes a joke and the camera does reaction shots – one, two, three – and then back to the original person.  It makes me dizzy, makes it harder to think.  Is that the point?  The out-takes were a bit disappointing as it was very blokey and consisted largely of knob jokes.

Anyway, a good evening.  On the way home I passed nine drunken people, eight couples courting, seven cars speeding, six people singing, five cold chips, four pubs closing, three police cars, two pools of vomit and a cordoned-off a-re-ah!

Did you see the moon last night?  It was a very large, clear crescent.

No further thoughts, m’lud.

Kirk out.