Mastermind: I thought the HP Lovecraft questions were a little easier than the Agatha Christie ones – though surely it is a bit unsporting to restrict the Agatha Christie questions to the Poirot novels alone? My knowledge of Led Zeppelin and Gustav Landauer is less complete, but I thought the Landauer guy knew so much about him that he must have written the biography.
As for the general knowledge round, no doubt but that the Led Zeppelin guy got the hardest questions – and still won.
University Challenge: Er, yes. I just sent my future colleague who is a Wadham graduate a note of congratulation. I don’t think I’m still in touch with anyone I knew at Robinson, which is probably just as well. I found the questions about flowers completely impenetrable, though
Needless to say I totally agree with you re: hereditary houses of parliament.
On the matter of Andrew Marr’s private life, I don’t care what he does so long as all parties are consenting, but I think Ian Hislop had a point that it’s a bit rich for Marr to interogate various politicians about their “private embarassments” and then complain / get an injuction when people do it to him, especially as he’d be amongst the first to complain if a politician got a similar injunction. The simple answer would, of course, for people’s affairs not to be treated as news (unless illegality was involved) but I can’t see that happening.