Tut tut tut.

IIRC I said the first time the Board Gamers played that they'd get hammered by a team that was halfway decent at the Missing Vowels round, since that was the only round they seemed to be actually good at. While they seem to have come on a bit - and aren't employing that 'press ALL the buttons! Press them!' strategy in the wall round any more - I really can't see them making it to the semis somehow. To be honest though, I can't remember there being a stand out team that you'd consider favourites. Anyone?

More like the dragged up Bernard Breslaw in Carry on Loving.

No sense in pretending he looks like a woman when he patently doesn't.

Er that would be 'Doctor' or 'Girls'. No drag required for Gripper Burke in 'Loving'.

There was a point when trying to explain the stages of an eclipse where he said "oh, I don't have to explain all of it do I" and I thought to myself "I doubt you could you jibbering idiot".

No one's pretending anything. She has decided to live her life as a woman and people should respect that. I'm quite clearly fighting a losing battle with some posters here.

I'm quietly very, very pleased about Emma Laslett's appearances on Only Connect. She's a trans woman who's appeared on a popular quiz show, and nobody on that show mentioned that she was a trans woman - just treated it as completely ordinary, no fuss, no batting of eyelids. When you consider that in almost every other case where a trans person has appeared on TV, it's either been in an exploitative news "scoop", a human interest piece focusing on their transition, or otherwise an excuse for people to point and laugh at them (a la Channel 5's "Embarrassing Bodies" and the like), it's wonderful!

The only problem is, by saying how happy I am that society has progressed this far, I'm drawing attention to her and thus defeating my own point...

Why don't you accord the same respect towards Jamie then ?

^This.


^And this.


People aren't necessarily disrespecting him because of his less than conventional appearance. I wouldn't care if he wore a pink wig, a bikini top and had a piercing that connected him from nose to navel. The problem is, every time he opens his mouth he is simply annoying. And he doesn't know where Wales is. Or that billy goats don't produce milk (which I still maintain is quite a worrying thing for a doctor not to know).

I think I can help here. While Emma dresses in a way you clearly don't accept, she is quite clearly someone who has merely entered a tv quiz show and is just enjoying taking part, answering the questions and so on, without needing to put on some sort of wacky performance totally unrelated to what's going on, and thereby trying to upstage everybody else on the show. While Jamie (and one or two others I could mention) evidently think they are comedians and that the whole programme revolves around them.

Ok?

I never called him 'she.'

Thank you.

Haha

It was a great shame to see Only Connect take the celebrity route tonight. Don't these people get enough publicity?

Ordinary people could play in a charity Children in Need special.

It wouldn't be a charity special then.

There is no reason why there could not be a charity edition without celebrities...

It's not the first time. It won't be the last. Why are you particularly disappointed this time?

They do this CIN 'celebrity' edition every year.
Is this the first one you've seen?
I seem to recall at least 2 or 3 before this one.

I notice Clive Anderson missed most of the legal missing vowels questions and Konnie Huq missed most of the Blue Peter ones. Including 'Get Down Shep'!

Maybe I was just being thick tonight but that seemed more difficult than previous celeb/charity specials. Much more like a normal version than the old ones which had clearly been made easier to stop the celebs looking bad.

What would be the point of a charity special that was exactly the same as all the other editions of the programme?

Many series do a celebrity version for charity, if it attracts a few more viewers who donate to the charity then it seems reasonable to me.

At least they were mostly celebrities who I had heard about, Finnemore was the only one who I knew nothing about (still don't!).

Well done, I hope davidbod doesn't forget to send you the royalty cheque
I was shouting Muppetational at the screen from about 0.5 seconds after the first clue was revealed

It was also very nice to see a charity show with clever celebrities and sensible questions for a change!

The missing vowel round needs a particular type of brain, some people are good at it and others not.

I suspect someone doing it logically and carefully working out the answer will too slow. The ones who do well probably do it instinctively - they would have been good recruits for Bletchley Park in WWII!

Thought I remembered seeing that from somewhere!


Got the tiebreaker one instantly -- I'm hopeless on the last round though.

Felt smug getting Bart's chalkboard gag on the first clue (and the daffodil for the Wordsworth poem by chance). Watching Simpsons episodes do come to use.

You should check out the radio four comedy cabin pressure it's marvellous