As well as the normal Monday event of watching Mastermind and University Challenge on TV, yelling out answers less often than I would like, tonight there was something called Hard Spell.

Its along the lines of the spelling bees which have been so popular in the US for ages, but seems like only one step short of mental abuse to the kids involved. Its very brutal for those little ones who have spent weeks looking forward to their turn on national TV and then get the boot after only 45 seconds trying to spell half a dozen words. It has to be said that the woman who says the words for the children to spell is not really very good at it. Several times she was so indistinct that she had to repeat words and some, like asphalt, she pronounced wrongly which didn’t really give them a proper chance. The funniest bit was where some 11 or 12 year old corrected her. She said the word in her way and then the kid said the word properly, spelled it correctly and then pronounced it correctly again. Two or three times that happened.

On the grown-up quizzes, there was a coincidence for the second week running, where a question in Mastermind also cropped up immediately afterwards in University Challenge. What are the chances of that happening then?

At least all these quiz shows take my mind off the Christmas decorations a bit. Jayne put them all up on Saturday. Two lots of lights on the front of the house, three fibre-optic trees inside and various tacky santas in assorted sizes, including the battery-powered parachuting santa which makes a loud noise if someone claps. Tonight we found that it also works if someone coughs so Jayne relented and turned it off. The one concession to my sensibilities is that when I removed the heavy santa from on top of my Linn Sondek LP12 turntable it stayed removed.