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My wife is amazing. She is quite shy, finds quizzes stupid and was looking forward to a rare date night, but she still agreed to come on Pointless with me because she knew it was, for some reason, important to me to win a small lump of perspex with Pointless written on it. There’s a clue in the trophy as to why I am insane. But my wife was prepared to risk possible humiliation and embarrassment to help me achieve my Pointless ambition. I thought I couldn’t love her more. But as long as we won then I would. If we lost, obviously, I would be straight out the door to find myself a more quizzy wife. It’s a tale as old as time. So many women unobsessed and uninterested in facts find themselves replaced by nerdier cuckolds. I hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
And really if I didn’t win on my third attempt then I would have to accept that I was not the Pointless champion that I imagine myself to be in my dreams. Having to return for a fourth time to win a trophy is essentially just playing the law of averages. I think it’s fair to say that I have been let down by my partners on the other two occasions and been a bit unlucky, but ultimately I could still have got through had I kept a clear head, not panicked and said Joe Dolce like any normal person would have (or rather any normal person wouldn’t have - hence its winning score).
I should have told Rhona Cameron that once an opponent had scored 100 then she should have totally played it safe, as 2 correct answers would have got us through, so I spent a lot of the cab journey in telling Catie the tactics. A correct answer was the most important thing and that I would probably let her go first so that I was able to adapt my own answer accordingly. It’s a good tactic, but would it result in our downfall? She was just worried that she’d make a silly answer and look stupid, but I told her that she’d have to be really stupid to be notable, like when Arlene Phillips (according to someone on Twitter) was asked for an element with an x,y or z in it, replied “A flame?"
I had slept badly and my brain was struggling to come up with answers when I put it to the test. I have certainly lost a lot of my total, instant recall which made me a good quizzer in my youth. Trying to think of actors in Game of Thrones it took me about three minutes to get Mark Addy’s name out and I had interviewed him a couple of months ago. But this was nerves. If I could do what I failed to do on the first showing and remain calm then I thought we were in with a good chance.
It was a family edition and looking at the other teams I thought that we were in with a good chance. Two of the quite elderly Osmond brothers on one podium, Richard Blackwood and his sister (though Blackwood had got through to the head to head last time he’d been on) and Robert Lindsey and his daughter. There’s a lot of luck in Pointless, but I felt we had a chance here.
My wife drew the ball out of the bag to determine which podium we went on. “Anything but one” I told her. My wife does not like to be told what to do, so of course she drew the one. We were on the first podium, which is tricky. You’re the first to answer on one sweep, but that means you get no feeling for the worth of the range of answers and you’re last on the way back which means the obvious answers will have gone and you may have to get a brilliant answer to win. Also, aware my wife was a little out of her comfort zone, I was concerned about her having to face the first interview. On the first occasion I’d been chatted to by Xander, aware that our Pointless survival was on the line, I’d done a terrible interview and my voice had cracked and gone all high, like I was about to cry. I have got through so many stressful situations without showing nerves. Pointless is evil.
Obviously I can’t reveal what happened on the night. The only good thing about going out early would be the fact that we had a car waiting for us and we’d be able to have our date night (though even if we got to the end there would be time for some frivolity). I was hoping we’d be heading home with a trophy each that we could throw on to the bed and make love on top of. I hadn’t been looking forward to that so much with Robert Webb and so was partly relieved that we got knocked out.
It’s a very exciting episode and has everything. My only spoiler will be to say that the Osmonds proved to be an unexpected force of nature, one of them giving a crazy answer which made me think we’d be safe whatever and then the other pulling out an amazing one to make survival far from certain. It was an emotional rollercoaster for me. I tweeted at the end that people would enjoy the result and as I expected responses were split pretty much 50/50 on “you won then” and “you lost then”.
The narrative works either way. Either one of Pointless' biggest fans
triumphed and won or the man who so desperately wants to win a TV quiz
once again had his dream cruelly snatched away from him. If I lost then I can carry on being the unlucky underdog, if I won then I may have to change my schtick but at least I have a trophy, a moment of triumph and then the realistaion that the hole in my soul that I thought was Pointless trophy shaped was in fact about something else and my quest for happiness and self-discovery must continue.
It’s a great bit of TV with really jeopardy (sorry wrong quiz) and twists and turns. There was no Dom Joly figure, everyone was very nice and supportive. But you know what they say “If you can’t see the Dom Joly, then you are the Dom Joly”. But at least Dom Joly is a winner. Though Robert Lindsey is a great actor. Perhaps he was the Dom Joly in Wolfy's clothing. (oh come on, that's good).
We went out after to celebrate/drown our sorrows. Win or lose I so appreciated what my darling wife had done for me that I was happy and glad to get properly drunk for the first time in months. I knew I would regret that tomorrow (and it was only three drinks in that I remembered all the things that I had to do and realised I had been a dick), but we managed to get our date night and be on Pointless and I don’t need to roll around on lumps of perspex to know that I am already a winner.
But it would really fucking help.
