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My second attempt at Pointless Celebrities was broadcast this evening. I didn’t watch it at the time, but followed the reaction to the action on Twitter. Spoilers on their way if you haven’t seen it yet.
This was a much less embarrassing attempt to win the trophy (though to be fair, last time my hand was forced, even if nerves got to me and made me bottle it). This time we were fortunate to get through a crap shoot of a first round where aside from the trickier ones (that I could mainly work out, but which I didn’t want to risk for fear of a 100% wrong answer record) it was impossible to guess how many people would have said what. The round was to come up with the common first name shared by politicians and celebrities. I assumed less people would know Vince Cable and Vince Vaun than Nick Clegg or George Osborne. But I was wrong. But luck went our way and Robert Webb and I got through to the second round. Which is lucky, because I would now be dead by my own hand had I got knocked out in the first round again (and I really thought we would be).
What happened in the second round was so exciting that I didn’t really mind coming off second best, especially given I had acquitted myself well. We had to name countries that ended in a vowel and like any good Pointless fan I was well aware of Djibouti and Tuvalu, but had fallen short at committing Naurau and Palau to memory. I had even checked the spelling of the first two just before walking on to set (not that that stopped me mispronouncing both of them). Djibouti got me the ultimate accolade of a Pointless answer, which was probably achievement enough for me and Robert Webb only needed to score below 9 to get us through to the next round. But “Chile” was a bit too safe and got us 11, meaning that Hal Cruttenden and Dave Spikey had to find an answer of one or less. They got a two point answer which sent us spiralling into lockdown (though for a glorious second I thought that meant we were through). Who would have thought Guatemala would beat Tuvalu? Not me. I thought we were heading into another lockdown and was actually quite relieved we weren’t as I would have actually had to think of an answer.
But it was another slightly unlucky beat in a televised quiz show, which adds to the legend of my inability to win anything.
I watched the later rounds for the first time on iPlayer later on. My answers in the head to head would have beaten Alistair and Ronnie (and I’d have beaten Hal and David in the first question, but lost in the second). I don’t know what we’d have chosen in the final round or whether we’d have guessed a Pointless composer. But a Pointless trophy was all I wanted. And of course money for my charity. Neither of which I got because for the second time the jackpot was won (otherwise the money gets divided between the charities of all the contestants).
This time, at least, there was no Dom Joly and the winners were both lovely men who deserved their prize. But even though I can go on again, surely there the victory is little diluted if it takes you ten times to win. Or maybe even in an infinite universe there are some constants and one of those constants is that I never win a Pointless trophy. My failure makes me more loveable. My clear desperation to win makes my story more tragic. And I am pretty sure Osman just types in whatever score he fancies.
The Christmas episode of Bojack Horseman is great, though you’ll need to watch the series first (it’s on Netflix). It makes me wish that they would just make all eight seasons of Horsin’ Around. In fact I think we should insist that they do that. By punishment of death if they fail.
