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  3. Question 1: Did She Jump or Was She Pushed?

    Question 2: You? Me? Us?

    Question 3: Am I Wasting My Love On You?

    Question 4: Should I Betray?

    Question 5: How Does Your Garden Grow?

    Question 6: Where’s Home?

    Question 7: Will You Dance, Charlie Boy?

    Question 8: Do All These Tears Belong to You?

        • Adopts Clive Myrie voice:

          And first in the chair tonight is Colin Harper from Northern Ireland who’s chosen as his specialist subject rhetorical questions and non sequiturs in the oeuvre of English folk singer*, Richard Thompson…

          *CM’s description not mine

        • Or a Two Ronnies Mastermind sketch where the answer to one question is another question:

          Q: Has He Got a Friend for Me?
          A: Woman or a Man?

          Q: Will You Dance, Charlie Boy?
          A: Did She Jump or Was She Pushed?

          Q: How Does Your Garden Grow?
          A: Where’s Home?

          A: Am I Wasting My Love On You?
          Q: Should I Betray?

          Q: Do All These Tears Belong to You?
          A: You? Me? Us?

          Q: Where Did You Get That Little Blue Number?
          A: How Will I Ever Be Simple Again?

          Needs work.

  4. I quite enjoy Mastermind but I always feel a bit disappointed when a contestant chooses popular (or in this case unpopular) culture as their specialist subject. I regard it as a bit bogus and limited in scope. There was someone on the other week who answered questions on Anglo-Saxon England. That strikes me as a proper subject and I think the guy actually won.

  5. I turned down an hour-long podcast about Johnny McL recently because an advance look at the questions looked like an exam – or a dream of an exam in which you know nothing. Amazing what you don’t remember after a few years (of your brain being full of other, newer stuff).

  6. That is the problem- were I to appear on Mastermind I would likely choose Elvis Costello as a specialist subject- I think I know a fair bit but could quite easily get nil points.
    A double round of general knowledge could quite easily yield a higher score

  8. When I saw that “Richard Thompson” had been chosen as a specialist subject on Mastermind, I naturally assumed that it was the Richard Thompson who is the Chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board. Imagine my disappointment when I tuned in and was forced to listen to 16 questions about some folk rock guitarist!

  9. Those questions.

    In 1967, the teenage Richard Thompson founded which folk-rock band with Ashley Hutchings and Simon Nicol?

    What was the name of the company founded by the record producer Joe Boyd which acted as Fairport Convention’s management team for much of the band’s early years?

    RT played electric guitar on which song from Nick Drake’s 1969 album Five Leaves Left ?

    Who wrote the poem, found by RT in The Penguin Book Of Sick Verse that was adapted as the song The Lobster which was on Fairport Convention’s 1968 debut album?

    RT released six studio albums as a duo with his then wife Linda, starting in 1974 with I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight and ending in 1982 with which other album?

    At the age of 23, RT attended a meeting of followers what mystical form of Islam, to which he would later convert?

    RT released two albums, Live Love, Laugh & Loaf in 1987, and Invisible Means in 1990, as part of a quartet comprising himself, Henry Kaiser, Fred Frith and which drummer?

    Which song from his 2003 album The Old Kitbag opens with the lyric My screenplay’s on the block, my Tuscan villa’s in hock ?

    RT is one of three musicians playing slide guitar on which track on John Cale’s 1974 album Fear ?

    In 1991, Time magazine selected which song from RT’s 1991 album Rumor And Sigh as one of the greatest English language popular recordings since 1923?

    In his 2021 memoir Beeswing RT said of which folksinger with the 1960s band Eclection that she had been responsible for turning me vegetarian?

    Which song, originally a hit for Britney Spears, did RT record for his 2003 album 1000 Years Of Popular Music ?

  12. Having just read the Nick Drake biography there is mention that RT played on two tracks on Five Leaves Left (there is no mention on the album’s sleeve notes of two however). Alas the book has returned to the library so I can’t check which other one it was said to be.

    • Turns out I got 8/12 – which is pretty good considering a dont really like RT all that much.

      I havent read Beeswing but presumably most if not all the answers could be got from a single reading of that.

      • Though I’m sure that they made some use of “Beeswing”, I doubt the Mastermind question-setters would restrict themselves to just that one source. They’d want it to be more difficult than that.

        As an aside, my reading of the biography of musician, composer, arranger, bandleader and author Neil Ardley, “Kaleidoscopes And Rainbows”, revealed that Neil and his first wife Bridget both worked at times as question setters/researchers for Top Of The Form, Mastermind and a few other quiz programmes.

      • Not forgetting Patrick Humphries book Strange Affair.
        When he did the online book launch I asked a question about the Henry the Human Fly costume as I’d read before that it was produced just for the cover. In the book he recalls wearing it at the Troubadour as he admitted recollections can be wrong.

        I was going to post the answers but as 🌶 says they’re easily googled.

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