Mastermind misery

Is it possible the man just froze in a very stressful situation?

I agree, I was shocked at how little he knew. He obviously is completely blinkered about anything beyond cricket.

He was on A Question of Sport, shown the same day, and answered the cricket questions. He seemed a quiet man on both programmes and was probably far out of his comfort zone.

I am useless at quizzes even when I know the answers so try not to judge those celebs (as opposed to quizzers) who come a cropper in the pressure of a TV studio!
My DH has a wealth of useless facts stored in his brain that he can recall at the drop of a hat.
Was Monty trying to win money for a charity or something?

The celebrities’ fees are donated to charity. I felt sorry for Monty, as he did seem to be out of his depth.

I felt sorry for him. I know he signed up for it, but I still felt sorry for him, his performance has been ripped to pieces on social media. Perhaps he did indeed "freeze".

Jangran
Don't be ridiculous.
An England cricketer, interviewed hundreds of times, well used to stressful situations on and off the pitch. The others wiped the floor with him, even a Coronation Street actor and a comedian.
Some of the answers he came up with were frankly ludicrous. This was for each contestant's personal charity and all the contestants volunteered to take part.

Your rudeness and intolerance are what are ridiculous. You asked for thoughts, you got them.(or is it your opinion only that counts?)

You think Monty was bad? Poor fellow looked like a rabbit caught in headlights.

Did anyone see Shaun Ryder’s performance a few weeks ago. He looked and sounded drunk. Yuk!

Ignore her Jangran

My goodness what a harsh and judgemental post Gabrielle some people just go blank when asked questions and maybe aren’t as fast as you don’t be such a miserabke so and so
Those are my thoughts

Anja
Can't Jangran99 think for herself or does she need a prompt from you?

I agree that there have been some risible performance recently. I can't remember each individual celeb but when they scored badly on their specialist subject we thought maybe they'd redeem themselves with general knowledge.

Nope!

I actually think it's an insult to the charity they're supporting.

was zero, in fact, less than a 5 yr old
An absolute disgrace, given that he was born and bred in Luton.

What relevance does being born in Luton have?

Anja

I saw him on Question of Sport and thought he did OK (well, he knew more than me!)

Perhaps he just froze - or they were just the 'wrong' questions.
How often do we watch such programmes and think 'how can they not know that'? But perhaps nerves get the better of some people.

Perhaps people from Luton have exceptionally high IQs, MawBroon?
Or a high level of general knowledge?
Perhaps Monty let the side down for Luton.

There are humpty dumpty programmes available that celebs can go on to raise their profile money for charity. Mastermind is not live so even with editing they're not going to put themselves in the best of lights.

Maybe their agent is holding a gun to their heads?

I've seen several contestants on Celebrity Mastermind who have done very badly on their specialist subjects and general knowledge. Why does it so enrage you that this particular person's performance was very poor and why do you describe it as "insular"? I imagine there are many people "born and bred in Luton" - and other towns - who have equally poor general knowledge.

There is, in my opinion, a rather unpleasant undertone to your post.

We do seem to have a lot of celebs doing this for charity recently, some winning not very large sums for their chosen charities. Are they paid to do this, how much does production cost? Far more than goes to the charity I expect.

It's all a bit Pointless..

MawBroon
I mentioned Luton because not everyone on here has heard of him and, given his name, might assume he had lived most of his life in another country with little knowledge of the UK.
I was merely informing the (possibly) uninformed that, being born and bred here, his knowledge of the country he was educated and lived in fell woefully short of even basic standards.

Eloethan
Ignoring your last silly sentence, I was but enraged rather 'gobsmacked' that someone who has travelled more broadly and had a wealth of experience in the eye of Joe Public and the media, could know so little about the wide-ranging general knowledge questions.

* was not enraged, not but enraged.

He's quite famous and played for England so I don't know why we wouldn't have heard of him.
Does that mean someone with a non-British sounding name is assumed to be a foreigner then?

That would include some of my family