Monday night sees the final of the finest, toughest, unapologetically brutal quiz on the tellybox.
For those of you who have never seen Only Connect, it's a quiz about connections between seemingly unconnected things: a triceratops, Lisa Simpson, Captain Spock and Richard Gere are all vegans. An opponent, an egg, the clock and Michael Jackson's It can all be beaten. You get the idea.
No? Ok, well allow me to give you a more distinct flavour, with perhaps a little Tal thrown in for good measure...
[Posh music. Fade in. Camera to Mrs Double-EPT]
"Hello and welcome to Only Connect; a show so fiendish it has its own sudoku category, largely because it refuses to use real numbers. Have you ever tried fitting the square root of minus one into a three centimetre square on a moving train on the Bakerloo line at rush hour? You have? Well, let's begin the quiz...
On my right:
- Ian Turton, a maths graduate who once hit the Fifteenth Earl of Merton with a frying pan;
- Holly McCann, a civil engineer with a collection of 11,700 rolling pins; and
- Oscar Pembridge-Smyth, a historian who enjoys hill-walking and had a selfie with Barack Obama
They're all connected through a love of the works of Slipknot. They are, The Bleeders.
And on my left:
- Amundeep Chopra, a chartered surveyor with a passion for genealogy and who has traced his family tree back to 830BC;
- Todd Lowe, a tree surgeon who once beat Princess Beatrice in a game of Kerplunk; and
- Sarah O'Malley, a pilot who co-wrote an episode of the US Comedy Taxi!
They're all united through their mutual interest in all things butterfly and moth. They are The Lepidopterists."
[Round one: you're looking for the connection between four things. The teams get three sets each. The earlier you buzz and identify the connection, the more points you score.
The Bleeders get:
1. Imaginary
2. Old Man
3. Trumpet
4. Eminence
They buzz]
"Are they all types of mushroom?"
"They're not all types of mushroom. Lepidopterists?"
"We think they're the nicknames for eighteenth century Archbishops of York."
"An excellent steal, there. They are, of course the nicknames for eighteenth century Archbishops of York."
[The Lepidopterists get:
1. Arthritis
2. Abridgement
3. Alien invasion
4. Aesthetics
They buzz]
"We think these might be the names of episodes of QI."
"An excellent attempt...and a correct one!"
[Round two: the connected things are given in a sequence. Your job is not to name the connection, but what comes fourth in the sequence. Three each, as before.
The Bleeders get:
1. Skippedy Scak
2. Bippedy Boop
3. Zimmedy Zum
and correctly identify the fourth item as 'Scatman', these being the four biggest songs of the 90s musician Scatman John in ascending order.
The Lepidopterists fail to notice that Turtle Wax, Wholemeal Bread and Paracetamol should be followed by the Light Bulb, as they were successive inventions by Thomas Edison.
Round three is the connecting wall: four connecting things are mixed up with three other connecting things in a block of sixteen things. They get a wall each to solve. Points for the groups; points for the connections; bonus points for the lot.
The Lepidopterists spot four things based on Hamlet (including the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air of course), four things that can be worn and four things that are spelt the same forwards as backwards in French, but fail to notice that Andy Sinton, Sir Richard Branson, Will Carling and David Beckham all won Glovewearer of the Year.
The Bleeders have a 'mare, failing to spot anything, particularly embarrassed when they are informed that the four sporting venues they are shown all contain the names of capital cities.]
"With the scores close, we now have round four. We take some things that are connected, remove the vowels, squidge together the consonants and leave you to buzz in when you know what they are"
[The Lepidopterists rattle through the Leonard Cohen songs and the species of otter, but are trounced on characters in Ally McBeal and chess openings. They share the spoils on Simon Cowell putdowns]
"And so ends another episode. Join us next time for questions so markedly unfair, you'll be posting about them on a poker forum to an audience of people who have no idea what you're waffling about, while I kick back with a sharp glass or three of gin, being fanned by an army of hornèd vipers. Goodbye."
[Posh music. Fade out.]
It's worth half an hour of your life just to see whether anything I've said above bears even the most remote resemblance to what happens on Monday night. I'd suggest taping the second Corrie for half an hour. You can always watch it 9.
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