Happy New Year friends! Hope you all managed to see in the New Year safely and satisfactorily. Back to normal service with University Challenge tomorrow, but first, we have the Christmas series to review. In past years, I've done this in two parts, but this year, because I was busy last weekend, I'll do it all at once this year. Which also allows a slightly different format to past series too.
So, lets start with the teams competing in this year's contest; they were, in order of appearance:
Christ's College Cambridge: Steve Palmer, Sathnam Sanghera, Lachlan Goudie, Helen Mort
St John's College Oxford: Paul Franklin, Simon Jack, John Lanchester, Usha Goswami
Manchester: David Nott, Juliet Jacques, Ade Edmondson, Jeremy Edwards
Queen's University Belfast: Alan Jones, Miriam Gamble, Kate Devlin, Alan Finlayson
Courtauld Institute of Art: Tim Marlow, Lavinia Greenlaw, Jacky Klein, Jeremy Deller
Goldsmiths London: Rachel Cowgill, David Dibosa, Dave Myers, Helen Cross
Nottingham: Helen Roy, Melania Hopkins, Levison Wood, Colin Matthews
Sheffield: Michael Deacon, Claire McGourlay, Val Gibson, Kylie Pentelow
UCLAN: Mark Tattersall, Kate Pankhurst, Richard Frediani, Richard Askam
Loughborough: Monty Panesar, Caitlin McClatchey, Kate Fox, Naomi Dattani
Durham: Hugh Pearman, Ed Gamble, Sarah Keith-Lucas, Becky Smethurst
Downing College Cambridge: Louise Dean, John Pendry, Amol Rajan, Dharshini David
New College Oxford: Charlotte Mendelson, Michael Crick, Sarah Cooke, Christopher Hampton
Reading: Amoret Whitaker, Rhianna Dhillon, Stephen Smith, Paul Barnes
The series started with two very one sided matches. Firstly, St John's easily triumphed over Christ's, who took the first starter but faded very quickly afterwards, the final score in that match 180-50. It was a similar story in the second match between Manchester and Queen's; the latter took the first two starters, but Manchester took the rest afterwards and won 175-30.
The best match of the first round was probably Courtauld vs Goldsmiths, with both sides acquitting themselves well and the lead changing hands at first, before Courtauld eked out an advantage and ultimately winning 150-100, a better bonus rate proving the difference. In fact, this was the only match of the first round where both teams reached three figures.
A low scoring match between Nottingham and Sheffield saw the former win 145-70, having been largely comfortable for the most part. The same was true of the match between UCLAN and Loughborough; the latter won an entertaining contest 170-60, the highlights being Ms Fox's excellent haul of eight starters, the best individual performance of the series, and Mr Askam's amusing suggestion that Lassie fought Mothra and others instead of Godzilla!
Two low scoring but entertaining matches ended the round, firstly with Durham beating Downing 90-65, the second lowest winning score of all time (that we know of); highlight of that match was Mr Rajan's suggestion of 'tuna' for a fish generally kept in a tank as a pet! Final match of the round saw New College and Reading swap starters at first before the former ran away in the second half and won 110-60.
This thus gave us a semi-final line-up of St John's, Manchester, Loughborough and Courtauld.
The first semi between St John's and Courtauld was probably the best match of the series, with the teams closely matched at first, before Courtauld ran into a second half lead, and though St John's recovered late on, they couldn't catch up, Courtauld winning 180-135. The second semi was another low scoring but enjoyable match up, Manchester ultimately beating Loughborough 140-70.
The final thus pitted Courtauld against Manchester. The latter dominated at first and led at half-time, but Courtauld fought back in the second half, and ultimately ran away with it, winning 150-90. Congrats to them, worthy winners! And Manchester too, worthy runners-up.
Overall, this probably wasn't as good a series as last year, but it was still a perfectly enjoyable contest; thanks very much to all teams who took part, especially, as Paxo said, in these difficult times.
Only Connect also had its usual four festive specials: we had a pretty standard Christmas special between two family teams, namely the Edwards Family from Series 5 and the Wrights from Series 4, a 'North-South' special between the Scunthorpe Scholars from S12 (glad to see them again after they only got one match due to the experimental format used that series) and the Oxonians from S10, and a doctors specials, between the Medics, an all-star team comprising George Corfield from S14 winners the Dicers, Kip Heath from the Heath Family from S9 and Kyle Lam from S15 runners-up the Suits, and the Gallifreyans from S10.
The best match was probably the last one, a music special between the Festival Fans from S7 and the Choristers from S15, a match notable for the composers of the show's iconic theme tune providing incidental music between the rounds, and for the first occurrence of two music questions in the first round. After a very close contest, the Choristers just won 22-21.
But four good enjoyable contests, well done all who took part!
And that concludes our festive quizzes review; back to business as usual tomorrow with my usual UC review and summary of OC and Mastermind.
So, until then, sayonara.
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