c4countdown

Whoo.

Taresh and Raj were great players - it was one of those rare situations where I was willing them to do well but also slightly hoping they wouldn't get to the final so we could see them again today.

I found the pointless answers to the final question quite surprising; I'd thought of quite a few (The First Casualty, High Society and Chart Throb among them) that turned out to be pointless but which I discounted because I thought they'd be popular. I settled for This Other Eden and Blind Faith (which weren't pointless) and Maybe Baby which was a wrong answer - it's the name of the film version apparently (the novel is called Inconceivable, which would have been pointless).

That's all I have to say about that.

Phil Reynolds wrote:Taresh and Raj were great players

I agree. I don't often watch Pointless but the banter between those two and the presenters was great. Very entertaining show.

Ugh my god this show is painful to watch from the start - can't believe people find the all fluff and padding entertaining. Monumental stupidity in the first round, the fairly common ones are low scoring answers so they take the risk anyway...

Good to see Matt Morrison and two of the Inbetweeners on yesterday's show.

Fun fact. The jackpot question today was used in a practice game they had us play in the green room when we went to record (over 18 months ago). It was a topic we'd revised and we got a Pointles answer, which was actually a bit embarrassing because the production people 'hosting' were all "OH WOW CHER FANS IN THE HOUSE" (this is genuinely what they said), which we aren't.

Michael Wallace wrote:"OH WOW CHER FANS IN THE HOUSE" (this is genuinely what they said), which we aren't.

Hehe sure. Embarrassingly though I managed to pointles that one too. My excuse being I bought Cher's "Believe" album for my mum when I was like 10 and remembered one of the more obscure singles off the back. In fact I would have jizzed pointless answers all over that show. "Little Children" in the Kate Winslet round and obvs I knew Antimony was Sb. One of those situations where you really wish you'd been in the contestants' shoes. Will probably have to send in another app sooner or later.

Only just caught up so only just seen thread - I am not sure which contestant you were saying I was Phil but to be honest Heather double-takes and pretends I'm on TV everytime someone a bit fat and bald is on, it happens at least three times per evening of televisual viewing so all the fat bald men kind of blur into one. INTO ONE SEXY MOTHERFUCKER YO!

Taresh and Raj were indeed great, I remember them. There have been quite a few likeable couples recently, at the end of series 4 too.

At the end of series 3 there was an "Asterix" option on the final 3 choices for about 6 shows in a row before they got rid of it which annoyed me as I expected it to be 'Asterix characters' and I really wanted to have a go at it. When "Comic strip books" came up there's no way I ever would have chosen it, so was quite surprised it was Asterix books. I do wonder now if the previous "Asterix" question was always going to be books then rather than characters. Anyway I blanked massively and despite knowing and having read every single Pointless answer all I could do was come up with sensible guesses - "Asterix and The Gauls", "Asterix and The Visigoths" and "Asterix and The Vikings", the latter of which was one of many to win it. Pretty easy round if you've ever heard of Asterix and know the sort of themes covered, but as it turned out we got without doubt the worst 3 answers that have ever been offered in a jackpot round. They completely ignored what Richard said and just went straight back to naming newspaper cartoon strips, awful.

That must be quite annoying what with the number of Holiday Inn adverts on these days.

I always hate the people on the final round who they think of an answer and they're not sure of the wording, so they don't bother and go with a 'safe' answer which will never in a million years be pointless. Or they go for a 'safe' answer and one wording when they're stuck between two options it could be... go for both ffs.

Matt Morrison wrote:I am not sure which contestant you were saying I was Phil

Oh for goodness' sake:

Haha. Love it.

I hope someone else knows who I mean when I mention "the camp Scott Gillies" who was on at the end of Series 4. Truly perfect as he was Scottish and also called Scott, just like our Gillies.

Matt Morrison wrote:I hope someone else knows who I mean when I mention "the camp Scott Gillies" who was on at the end of Series 4. Truly perfect as he was Scottish and also called Scott, just like our Gillies.

Yeah, absolute dead ringer. Shame he was just about the show's worst contestant, up there with those teachers who said that Mexico is a US state with a coastline.

I've gotten far more annoyed than I probably should over that idiot who claims to be a Psychic who can't tell the future but can tell the past and present. That shit drives me bananas. Your man with her didn't seem to contribute anything either. Are they possibly the worst contestants to ever reach the head to head?

Also if I had said Ritchie Blackmore was the guitarist in Rainbow (which he was) would that have been classed as a wrong answer or would it have a separate points value?

Mark James wrote:Also if I had said Ritchie Blackmore was the guitarist in Rainbow (which he was) would that have been classed as a wrong answer or would it have a separate points value?

I'm guessing as the question was worded "with which band is this guitarist most closely associated", it would've been classed as wrong; the "most closely" bit would mean that they'd only accept Deep Purple. It would've been pretty harsh to score 100 points for Rainbow though, as the band you most closely associate him with will some degree be dependent on how old you are. Bad inclusion in the list if you ask me. I'd have replaced him with Tony Horsfall out of Gaye Bykers On Acid, who I'm pretty sure would've been pointless.

Ooh. New Round 1.

Moderate spoiler

Richard: "Westlife have released some Pointless singles"

Quote of the week

JimBentley wrote:

Mark James wrote:Also if I had said Ritchie Blackmore was the guitarist in Rainbow (which he was) would that have been classed as a wrong answer or would it have a separate points value?

I'm guessing as the question was worded "with which band is this guitarist most closely associated", it would've been classed as wrong; the "most closely" bit would mean that they'd only accept Deep Purple. It would've been pretty harsh to score 100 points for Rainbow though, as the band you most closely associate him with will some degree be dependent on how old you are. Bad inclusion in the list if you ask me. I'd have replaced him with Tony Horsfall out of Gaye Bykers On Acid, who I'm pretty sure would've been pointless.

It could be argued that Blackmore's Night is the most correct answer there, given that that's his current project as far as I'm aware, and has been for quite a while.

Phil Reynolds wrote:Ooh. New Round 1.

Yeah, we were informed of that in the new rules. Quite an interesting idea.

Denise Smith from S63 on today's show. Appropriate for her that she gave Mr & Mrs Smith as an answer during the show.

Meh can't believe the pointless answer on the second part of the first round. Obviously not watched one of many awesome episodes from Futurama where Fry's old dog is discovered fossilised.

Craig Beevers wrote:Meh can't believe the pointless answer on the second part of the first round. Obviously not watched one of many awesome episodes from Futurama where Fry's old dog is discovered fossilised.

Yeah, when that list came up I thought that either Karpis and Slaghoople came up, I was sure that one of those would be the Pointless, so was super surprised when it was Dolomite.

Hmm must have been an interesting sample of people they used for the jobs associated with ... question. Seymour Skinner and James Herriot - one scored 62 the other 21.

GET IN. A cricket question at the end, I missed all the other ones.

I got Patrick Clifton's occupation - Postman (Pat) in the 2nd round. Also got some good cricketers for the last round - Gavin Hamilton (must have been pointless), Gladstone Small and Tim Ambrose

Martin Long wrote:I got Patrick Clifton's occupation - Postman (Pat) in the 2nd round. Also got some good cricketers for the last round - Gavin Hamilton (must have been pointless), Gladstone Small and Tim Ambrose

I'd have speculated on Steve James - but despite the heavy welsh link he was born in Gloucestershire and my safe one was Adam Hollioake - I knew he and his brother Ben moved here from Australia. Were so many options, most of the well known ones (to me anyway) were pointless.

I got the best answer for the landlocked African countries question and I knew Jeb Bartlet's job. Can't believe that only scored 2.

Craig Beevers wrote:A cricket question at the end, I missed all the other ones.

And look what he did with it! There was some proper outrage here, I can tell you

I was impressed by the guy picking cricket when he seemed to know less about cricket than I do - surely if you're that rubbish go for education, which is at least more of a 'pot luck' option?

Mark James wrote:I got the best answer for the landlocked African countries question.

Amazed that Central African Republic didn't get 0 for the first time.
I'd have guessed Geraint Jones or Graeme Hick for the cricket question.
Got ALLOTROPE though, nice and easy if you know your Series final conundrums.

Craig Beevers wrote:Hmm must have been an interesting sample of people they used for the jobs associated with ... question. Seymour Skinner and James Herriot - one scored 62 the other 21.

Nicely misleading post there, as it implies that more people recognised the name Seymour Skinner, whereas in fact of course the figures were the other way round. With that clarified, which do you find so "interesting" - that three in five people have heard of James Herriot the famous vet, or that one in five people know the names of relatively minor characters from The Simpsons? Both facts seem to me entirely unremarkable, but hey.

I didn't recognise Seymour Skinner, because I had no idea Principal Skinner even HAD a first name! I thought it might be someone from Last of The Summer Wine!

Karen Pearson wrote:I didn't recognise Seymour Skinner, because I had no idea Principal Skinner even HAD a first name! I thought it might be someone from Last of The Summer Wine!

Strictly that's not even his name. If you remember there was an episode where it was revealed that he was an army member who "took over" Syemour Skinner's life, he was called Armin Tanzarian or something like that.

I'm sure someone can clarify.

Karen Pearson wrote:I didn't recognise Seymour Skinner, because I had no idea Principal Skinner even HAD a first name!

Exactly. I would imagine that significantly more than 21% of the polled sample watch The Simpsons at least occasionally, but that lots of them do so without absorbing all the minutiae. On the other hand, as the focal point of a long-running TV series, James Herriot (and his occupation) will be instantly familiar even to many who never saw the show. I'm not sure why Craig finds all this so troublesome.

James Robinson wrote:

Karen Pearson wrote:I didn't recognise Seymour Skinner, because I had no idea Principal Skinner even HAD a first name! I thought it might be someone from Last of The Summer Wine!

Strictly that's not even his name. If you remember there was an episode where it was revealed that he was an army member who "took over" Syemour Skinner's life, he was called Armin Tanzarian or something like that.

I'm sure someone can clarify.

Armin Tamzarian took over Seymour Skinner's life. But we're not supposed to ever speak of that again.

Phil Reynolds wrote:

Karen Pearson wrote:I didn't recognise Seymour Skinner, because I had no idea Principal Skinner even HAD a first name!

Exactly. I would imagine that significantly more than 21% of the polled sample watch The Simpsons at least occasionally, but that lots of them do so without absorbing all the minutiae. On the other hand, as the focal point of a long-running TV series, James Herriot (and his occupation) will be instantly familiar even to many who never saw the show. I'm not sure why Craig finds all this so troublesome.

Bollocks. I've barely heard of James Herriot which is a fairly indistinct name and I've watched the show (I can remember the theme tune). The Simpsons is much more fresh in people's minds, most people will have watched it at some point and it's probably been going for a lot longer in terms of episodes if not age. Skinner is also quite a distinct name. I think if you asked a studio audience or similarly aged demographic you might get that sort of relative pointage.

Craig Beevers wrote:

Phil Reynolds wrote:

Karen Pearson wrote:I didn't recognise Seymour Skinner, because I had no idea Principal Skinner even HAD a first name!

Exactly. I would imagine that significantly more than 21% of the polled sample watch The Simpsons at least occasionally, but that lots of them do so without absorbing all the minutiae. On the other hand, as the focal point of a long-running TV series, James Herriot (and his occupation) will be instantly familiar even to many who never saw the show. I'm not sure why Craig finds all this so troublesome.

Bollocks. I've barely heard of James Herriot which is a fairly indistinct name and I've watched the show (I can remember the theme tune). The Simpsons is much more fresh in people's minds, most people will have watched it at some point and it's probably been going for a lot longer in terms of episodes if not age. Skinner is also quite a distinct name. I think if you asked a studio audience or similarly aged demographic you might get that sort of relative pointage.

Alternative: I've heard of James Herriot and I've never watched the show (I can't remember the theme tune). He's the main character of a show where the title is a pretty big clue as to what he might do, and a quick Youtube search reveals that even if you didn't watch the programme, the trailers did a pretty good job of helping you out on that front as well. Compare that to the Simpsons where you would have to watch some episodes to encounter Principal Skinner and we even have someone in Karen who was thrown by the fact he is always called Principal Skinner.

Anyway, to add something at least vaguely interesting to this thread, let's look at the UK age distribution. If you took a representative sample from all people 20+ (20 is the cut-off in the dataset I have), then about 75 would be over 35. 65 would be over 40, and 55 over 45. And this is ignoring the fact that even if they were picking a representative sample you could quite easily get some big fluctuation just by chance. The Pointles sample probably is going to be biased, but still, I think you're overestimating how many people aren't old.

Jon Corby wrote:

James Robinson wrote:

Karen Pearson wrote:I didn't recognise Seymour Skinner, because I had no idea Principal Skinner even HAD a first name! I thought it might be someone from Last of The Summer Wine!

Strictly that's not even his name. If you remember there was an episode where it was revealed that he was an army member who "took over" Syemour Skinner's life, he was called Armin Tanzarian or something like that.

I'm sure someone can clarify.

Armin Tamzarian took over Seymour Skinner's life. But we're not supposed to ever speak of that again.

UNDER PENALTY OF TORTURE!

Craig Beevers wrote:I've barely heard of James Herriot which is a fairly indistinct name and I've watched the show (I can remember the theme tune).

I've no idea what point you're attempting to make here.

The Simpsons is much more fresh in people's minds, most people will have watched it at some point

I know, I said that. You're ignoring the significant point which is that lots of people watch it without knowing the full names of all the characters.

I actually learnt a list of Simpsons characters for Pointless and I still didn't know that Principal Skinner's first name was Seymour!

The '100 people' are surveyed online by a reputable market research company. AFAIK it is a random sample rather than a nationally-representative one but I would assume that it only goes to people over 16 - that is the norm for most general surveys.

Karen Pearson wrote:I actually learnt a list of Simpsons characters for Pointless and I still didn't know that Principal Skinner's first name was Seymour!

Why don't you just watch it? Its quite good you know.

I'm not surprised it scored less than James Herriot but I would've thought it would score more than it did. And the amount of people that didn't know it on here is baffling to be honest. It's mentioned quite a lot, especially by his mother and Superintendent Chalmers.

Phil Reynolds wrote:

Craig Beevers wrote:I've barely heard of James Herriot which is a fairly indistinct name and I've watched the show (I can remember the theme tune).

I've no idea what point you're attempting to make here.

The Simpsons is much more fresh in people's minds, most people will have watched it at some point

I know, I said that. You're ignoring the significant point which is that lots of people watch it without knowing the full names of all the characters.

Indistinct name = harder to recall who they are and therefore what they do. You don't need to know the full name to get Seymour Skinner because it's not like Skinner is a particularly common game in TV and Skinner is emphasised often enough on the show.

Mark James wrote:
Why don't you just watch it? Its quite good you know.

I maybe watch about one episode every 3 months. Some of us have jobs and other hobbies too that take up a fair amount of our time. If I am sitting down to my dinner around 6pm then I'd probably rather watch a Pointless recording TBH. Whilst I still like The Simpsons, I think its appeal has diminished somewhat over the years (speaking as someone who remembers when it first started - and indeed as someone who saw the first C4 broadcast of Countdown!)

Craig Beevers wrote:Indistinct name = harder to recall who they are and therefore what they do. You don't need to know the full name to get Seymour Skinner because it's not like Skinner is a particularly common game in TV and Skinner is emphasised often enough on the show.

I've probably seen Frank Skinner on TV more in recent years than I have Principal Skinner.

Mark James wrote:Superintendent Chalmers.

Who?

Mark James wrote:SuperNintendo Chalmers.

SKINN-ERRRRRRR!!!

Craig Beevers wrote:Indistinct name = harder to recall who they are and therefore what they do.

I've no idea what you mean by an "indistinct" name. If as I suspect you mean "not distinctive", then as Karen pointed out there are other Skinners on TV, while I've never heard of anyone else called Herriot. Basically it all comes back to your usual grumble about Pointless, namely that the surveyed 100 are apparently unrepresentative because they're not all clones of you.

Phil Reynolds wrote:

Craig Beevers wrote:Indistinct name = harder to recall who they are and therefore what they do.

I've no idea what you mean by an "indistinct" name. If as I suspect you mean "not distinctive", then as Karen pointed out there are other Skinners on TV, while I've never heard of anyone else called Herriot. Basically it all comes back to your usual grumble about Pointless, namely that the surveyed 100 are apparently unrepresentative because they're not all clones of you.

Hmm I suspect you're being deliberately thick so I'll leave you alone to your work.

Craig Beevers wrote:

Phil Reynolds wrote:

Craig Beevers wrote:Indistinct name = harder to recall who they are and therefore what they do.

I've no idea what you mean by an "indistinct" name. If as I suspect you mean "not distinctive", then as Karen pointed out there are other Skinners on TV, while I've never heard of anyone else called Herriot. Basically it all comes back to your usual grumble about Pointless, namely that the surveyed 100 are apparently unrepresentative because they're not all clones of you.

Hmm I suspect you're being deliberately thick so I'll leave you alone to your work.

Hey guys, this thread is pretty... POINTLESS!!!

Charlie Reams wrote:Hey guys, this thread is pretty... POINTLES!!!

Fix'd.

Just been informed that October 14th, 3 weeks today, will be my Pointless debut.

I have also been told that since they are showing 3 weeks of repeats straight after, my 2nd show, if needed, will be on November 7th.

James Robinson wrote:Just been informed that October 14th, 3 weeks today, will be my Pointless debut.

I have also been told that since they are showing 3 weeks of repeats straight after, my 2nd show, if needed, will be on November 7th.

Good luck James!

Lesley Hines wrote:

James Robinson wrote:Just been informed that October 14th, 3 weeks today, will be my Pointless debut.

I have also been told that since they are showing 3 weeks of repeats straight after, my 2nd show, if needed, will be on November 7th.

Good luck James!

Thank you, Lesley. Although I'm still trying to work out why it's on October 14, rather than 13. Since they do 3 a day, and I heard on my first day there that they had already done 30, I would be on show 34 (since we didn't do it on the first day (October 14 will be Episode 35)), and the TV guide doesn't seem to suggest that there'll be a day off in the next couple of weeks.

Oh well, the mystery of the modern-day TV schedule.........

Hmm 3 wrong answers from the same person, nice.

Oh and more people know where Jasper Carrott is born than George Best. Interesting.

I wonder how strict they would have been on pronunciation for the final. I knew Ray Davis won a Nobel Prize in physics thanks to QI but I would have pronounced it Ray Davies, as they did on QI too as they were trying to get the panel to confuse him with the lead singer of the Kinks.

Mark James wrote:I wonder how strict they would have been on pronunciation for the final. I knew Ray Davis won a Nobel Prize in physics thanks to QI but I would have pronounced it Ray Davies, as they did on QI too as they were trying to get the panel to confuse him with the lead singer of the Kinks.

They're pronounced the same - unless you're one of those people who (incorrectly) pronounce Davies as "Daveys".

Phil Reynolds wrote:

Mark James wrote:I wonder how strict they would have been on pronunciation for the final. I knew Ray Davis won a Nobel Prize in physics thanks to QI but I would have pronounced it Ray Davies, as they did on QI too as they were trying to get the panel to confuse him with the lead singer of the Kinks.

They're pronounced the same - unless you're one of those people who (incorrectly) pronounce Davies as "Daveys".

Actually I just realised that Ray Davies is the only person I do this for. I wouldn't pronounce Alan Davies as Alan Daveys, I would say Alan Davis. Although I will also say that Stephen Fry suggested on QI once that Alan Davies name could be cockney rhyming slang if you were ordering different kinds of Gravies, and I wouldn't pronounce that Gravis I would pronounce it Graveys.

Edit: And when I do pronounce Davis and Davies the same, I can still kind of hear the difference in my own head.

Quite a good win on yesterday's show, that Darren is actually a mate of another member of our clan (the comes from Street, Somerset might be an obvious clue).

I was hoping that Gaston Gaudio and Yevgeny Kafelnikov might be Pointless, but we'll never know I suppose...........

Hmmm, a 200th episode with 4 200er's tomorrow.

That might explain why my episode has been pushed back a day............

I got The Last Samurai one so I guess I'll be getting that medal. Good show that though. It would have been really funny if, just for a laugh in the first round, there was only one pointless answer and all the rest were wrong.

I had hoped they might have started with round 2 yesterday.

AWESOME final round today.

Okay who actually got some of the answers on the second pass of the cross-dressing film question?

I had not a clue, although I did sadly get the 1 point answer on the first pass...


Edit: Okay those are officially one of the worst sets of answers I've ever seen for the last round. Just name some semi-obscure European cities ffs.