Pointless Will Gompertz music howler

[jean]

I have never watched this programme, but it's just occurred to me - if you are supposed to aim for as few points as possible, wouldn't you be giving wrong answers on purpose?

Anyway I did send it to Private Eye. We'll see.

[Richard Tarleton]

I have never watched this programme, but it's just occurred to me - if you are supposed to aim for as few points as possible, wouldn't you be giving wrong answers on purpose?

As I understand it, jean (I don't watch it either, just sometimes the last couple of minutes before the news ) , the idea normally is, out of a range of possible answers, for the contestant to pick the one which the fewest members (or preferably none) of the audience will have suggested? If you come up with one that nobody has thought of, that's a "point-less", i.e. winning, answer? In other words you win by having the most obscure knowledge. It sounds as if this was a different sort of question.

[Richard Tarleton]

That’s the one that Georgia Mann played on Breakfast on Monday, when she announced that the extract was sung by Violetta Valery and Placido Domingo (actually Cotrubas and Milnes).

Good grief It's strictly Today for me before 9.00

[antongould]

I have never watched this programme, but it's just occurred to me - if you are supposed to aim for as few points as possible, wouldn't you be giving wrong answers on purpose?

Anyway I did send it to Private Eye. We'll see.

If you give a wrong answer you get 100 points ...... I don't know if it has been mentioned in this growing thread but Wor Katie got the lowest score of the whole round - 6 .... Sadly she had to leave thanks to the shoddy performance of her partner ....

[french frank]

The days when "Classical Music" was somehow the "norm" and knowldge of it was a badge of "being educated" are largely gone.

It's certainly no longer the 'norm' that people know and listen to classical music (nor was it when the Proms began in 1895, since the aim was to 'create a new audience' for the music); though it's still, on balance, more likely to be an indication of education than knowing the well-known popular performers, especially those from the generation of one's youth . I'd say the 'norm' now is in any case to prefer entertainment to education, but I am biased. Very biased. And narrowly focused, in a number of fields, on the subjects that attract my interest

[Richard Tarleton]

BUT it simply illustrates that "Classical Music" no longer enjoys the special cultural status it used to.
I'm often "shocked" (but not really) that people who claim to be "music lovers" have no knowledge of music outside the narrow genres they listen to.

Here, we are talking about the Arts Editor of the BBC - who earns more than the Prime Minister - who ought to know quite a lot about a lot. He does know a lot about David Bowie, it seems.

I frequently get "cross" (bit not really) when people talk about the "Theremin" on Good Vibrations BUT that's just my own niche pedantry

I get cross when people refer to birdwatchers, and birders, as twitchers .

[LMcD]

Just a couple more 'Pointless' howlers that other Forum members might enjoy.
Name a British Labour Prime Minister - Harold Wilkinson
Name a post-WW2 US President - James Callaghan
I promise to stop now!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

As I understand it, jean (I don't watch it either, just sometimes the last couple of minutes before the news ) , the idea normally is, out of a range of possible answers, for the contestant to pick the one which the fewest members (or preferably none) of the audience will have suggested? If you come up with one that nobody has thought of, that's a "point-less", i.e. winning, answer? In other words you win by having the most obscure knowledge.

Yes - so if the task was to name a composer who wrote a "Pastoral Symphony", you'd avoid Beethoven, (unless you didn't know of any others) because that's too obvious - so you might go for Vaughan Williams (in the hope that your opponents only knew of Beethoven and RVW, so they'd be scuppered with having to say Beethoven) but better still would be Handel, Rawsthorne, or Glazunov. If someone offered "Tallis", they'd get 100 points, because it's an incorrect answer.

The questions are put to 100 members of the general public who are given 100 seconds to name (for example) "as many operas by Verdi" as they can. Answers like La Boheme or The Ride of the Valkyries (or, ahem, The Four Seasons) are weeded out, and if the contestants offer Il Due Foscari they'd win zero points, and an extra £250 is put in the "kitty".

[Bryn]

... I get cross when people refer to birdwatchers, and birders, as twitchers .

Are you happier with "Electro-twitchers"?

[Richard Tarleton]

don't know the term.....

[Bryn]

don't know the term.....

A touch esoteric, I admit. It was a back reference to the use of the Tanner/Whitsell 'electro-Theremin' in Good Vibrations earlier in the tread.

[Serial_Apologist]

A touch esoteric, I admit. It was a back reference to the use of the Tanner/Whitsell 'electro-Theremin' in Good Vibrations earlier in the tread.

I thought it was people who sit nervously outside polling stations with clipboards on election days, waiting to trip unwary voters to ask which way they voted...

[LMcD]

Good grief It's strictly Today for me before 9.00

Same here! (The items on 'Today' are of about the same average length as those on 'Breakfast' - apart from the major 20- to 25-minute interview at 0810) but more nourishing!

[eighthobstruction]

....lets hope Simon Gompertz (same bald head but hair under control) the cousin of Will and BBC Economic wotsit often on Today knows his stuff on Brexit etc

[jean]

Was it really not dumb enough for the latest Dumb Britain I wondered, on opening the new Private Eye.

But turn instead to p.13...he's got a whole paragraph to himself, with an equally egregious (though unbroadcast) story about his asking Kazuo Ishiguro about his love of Flaubert - having apparently confused Ishiguro with Julian Barnes.