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The more I think about this the more spookier (albeit in a poetic way) it is. The final question on University Challenge last night was about Jilly Cooper. The question was left unfinished (and therefore unanswered) as the question master, Amol Rajan, was interrupted and halted by the stentorian chime of the ‘that’s your lot, game-over gong’ Unlike Mastermind there is no “I’ve started so I’ll finish” in UC it’s “that’s your lot game-over” Jilly Cooper’s death was announced earlier in the day. I’m assuming the show is actually filmed days if not weeks before. The questions compiled months before. An amazing co-incidence. This is the only TV programme I watch every week so I don’t know, did every TV show last night end with a Jilly Cooper tribute?
Ps: I’m not expecting a thread on University Challenge clairvoyance or Jilly Cooper (who I’ve never read) to compete with Charlie Kelman so consider it a starter for ten.
The Young One’s was not Fry’s first appearance on UC.
Fry wouldn’t have got away with that hesitation these days. Rajan would have passed it over to the other team (and no conferring). Bambi was great but a bit of a pushover.
The Signalman is a short ghost story of sorts by Charles Dickens, who you might have heard of. It’s thought to be partly inspired by a fatal train crash where a signalling mix up led to a collision between two trains inside the Clayton Tunnel near Brighton.
It’s also thought to be based on Dicken’s own experiences in the Staplehurst rail crash, where 10 people died and many were injured after a derailment near Maidstone in Kent. He and his two companions managed to escape the train wreck through a window before he set about tending the injured, some of whom died in front of him. The incident affected him greatly leaving him unable to speak for two weeks and he was very reluctant to use trains afterwards. He died 5 years to the day after the accident with his son saying that ‘he had never truly recovered’
When I teach students about patternicity I always refer to the Peter Kay sketch about people at a funeral getting emotional over an empty packet of the deceased's favorite crisps blowing across the graveyard. I've been doing this for about 10 years, and students long ago stopped knowing or caring who Peter Kay is, but I have a good time
For us, Monday night is quiz night on BBC2. Mastermind, Only Connect and UC. Sometimes/often I don't understand the questions. Usually manage 7 per contestant on Mastermind general knowledge; the occasional one on Connect; and 7+ over the 25 mins of UC.
"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the Earth all one's lifetime." (Mark Twain)
Find me on twitter @derbyhoop and now on Bluesky
I once saw Norman Rossington (Cupcake in the Army game if you go back that far) in a pub miles from where I live. The next day in the office I said "Guess who I saw in the pub yesterday". Back came the answer "Norman Rossington". My blood ran cold.
For sure, the brain is literally evolved to be a language-producing, pattern-recognition machine. One of the reasons you see faces everywhere on psychedelics. Also because the trees need to tell you something.
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