Weaver's Week 2025-10-05

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We rather misread the schedules. We thought ITV's primetime show Win Win was going to finish this weekend. It's actually going to run on into next weekend, when someone will walk away with about £1 for every viewer the show's attracted. Expect a full review next week.

In its place, something we don't do often enough.

Interesting snippets of information we've found out from television and radio quizzes, and from generally reading and listening around. We hope this will pique your curiosity, and help you to remember something in a pub quiz in the future.

Most obvious place to start is the calendar, this month showing a lovely picture of the parliament chambers in St John's. Almost all parliamentary chambers in the Commonwealth have the governing parties on the Speaker's right. The exception is in Newfoundland, where the government is on the left. Why is this? The fireplace in the debating chamber there is also to the Speaker's left.

Yes, the calendar reminds us that Canada celebrates Thanksgiving next weekend. The holiday dates back to Martin Frobisher's voyage to Canada in 1578. He was looking for precious metals, perhaps including gold ore.

But after failing to find anything of value, and losing two ships from his fleet, Frobisher retreated to the safe and warm climes of Newfoundland. There, he and his crew ate the best bits of their rations - a meal of salt beef, biscuits and mushy peas - to celebrate and give thanks for their safe arrival. The tradition was maintained amongst settlers in the far west colonies of Upper and Lower Canada, and was influenced by a similar celebration amongst religious exiles to the south.

Thanksgiving was eventually declared a holiday across the entire Dominion, that was in 1879, when it was fixed on 6 November. After a few years, there was intense lobbying from the railway companies. They wanted an official long weekend so people would travel to see their families, and would just happen to use their trains. The holiday moved to a Monday in 1908, and doubled up as an Armistice commemoration in the early 1920s. These days, Thanksgiving is the second Monday in October, where it's been since the 1950s.

Thanksgiving in Canada falls between 8 and 14 October. South of the border, Thanksgiving falls on the fourth Thursday in November, so between 22 and 28 November. Because of the way the calendar works, there are always 45 days between the Canadian and Yankee Thanksgiving festivals - when one is early, the other is early. 45 days is also the exact distance between Pancake Day and Good Friday, important dates in the Christian calendar.

If you're marking Thanksgiving next weekend, do have a wonderful time, and we hope your dinners will not consist entirely of salt beef, biscuits, and mushy peas.

Pointless briefly mentioned Pope Hilarius, a pontiff from the 5th century. Hilarius came from Sardinia, and was once forced to leave a council of bishops and seek cover as a monk because he disagreed with their interpretation of church law. Really don't get that any more, you don't catch Father Dougal cowering in the corner of the chapel because he's being pursued by Dick Byrne and his fanatics.

The appointed successor to Pope Leo the Great, Hilarius brought stability to the church, especially the restive congregations in France. He was tough on heresy, publicly reprimanding Emperor Anthemius for commissioning another series of the David Baddiel blather-show.

Hilarius also commissioned a lot of church buildings in Rome, most notably an oratory dedicated to St John the Evangelist, whom Hilarius thanked for saving him at the perilous council. In a final dose of comedy, Pope Hilarius died on 29 February 468, thus ensuring he only gets a quarter of the feast days every other saint gets. His successor was Simplicius, so there is hope for Father Dougal yet.

Ronald Reagan was a sports announcer in Des Moines. He later went on to star in movies with a chimp.

Nigel Planer was the understudy in the opening case of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Evita. He later found great fame as Neil in The Young Ones, and many other acting credits.

Ketchup on hot dogs is a massive no-no in Chicago. Nobody's quite sure why: some say it's because ketchup attracts flies, others that the taste of ketchup adds nothing to the flavours already in a Chicago hot dog.

Butter on bread is a massive no-no in Italy; oil and herbs are quite sufficient.

Stephen Sondheim helped to popularise the cryptic crossword in North America. Well, we say "popularise", we mean "introduced"; results from DASH suggest so many North Americans cannot solve a cryptic even when given the answers. Wait, that's this column, grown in a spin for failure.

Only Connect mentioned games to have won the Spiel des Jahres prize. You might have heard of Ticket to Ride, or Codenames, maybe played Azul or storytelling game Dixit. Winners don't include Flügelschag, the jury started reading the rulebook in 2019 and have not been heard from since.

Transfer season in the television world, and once again Channel 4 has made an unexpected signing. Following their successful poaching of Bake Off a decade ago, and their less-than-successful pilfering of the Thefa Men's XI football matches at the start of this decade, Channel 4 has nicked University Challenge.

[reads the press release again]

Channel 4 has nicked The University Challenge Boat Race, in which groups of athletes answer questions while rowing a boat up a river. Best performance wins. Reigning champions Cambridge will face an opponent to be named when the race is next staged over Easter weekend.

Oti Mabuse has been named as the new head judge for RTÉ's Dancing With the Stars, their version of Strictly Come Dancing. Mabuse replaces Loraine Barry as head judge, and will work alongside returning judges Brian Redmond, Arthur Gourounlian, and Karen Byrne. There's also a change to the presenting line-up: Doireann Garrihy will be away on maternity leave, so Laura Fox will join Jennifer Zamparelli when the series returns at the start of next year.

Good to see House of Games (3) with some new episodes. Jenny Powell was not as sharp as when she hosted No Limits, but there was nothing to choose between Melanie Bracewell, Mark Steel, and Ruth Madeley. Literally nothing: a speculative guess here, a slight mispronunciation there, and the week's winner could have changed.

A strong performance from Danielle Connolly to win Mastermind. She'd taken ten series of The Simpsons and crushed the specialist round, and then added a very strong general knowledge round - perhaps fell away in the last few seconds, but surely the win was secured by then.

Why are they talking about hard pounding? Has the chancellor had another run on the currency? No, it's a round of Only Connect, and Victoria's being arch again. It's the absolutely brutal Third Quarter of the draw, where the Benchwarmers beat the Scanners 26-25. Benchwarmers took the early lead with "woof woof" in other languages, and backed it up with prizes for reaching 100 years old. Scanners hit back with a sequence of things noted by ST, TU, UV, VW; Benchwarmers found synonyms for the film Everything Everywhere All at Once. Perfection on the walls, and the Benchwarmers had the best of the early missing vowels. Then the Scanners took six in a row, sweeping "film titles with 'hood' removed", and coming within a gnat's crotchet of tying the game. Someone had to lose, shame it was them.

Strathclyde beat Harper Adams by 205-45. Nine starters from captain Jack Stirling, but a bonus rate of 40% and an overall rate of 50% show Strathclyde were not at their best. Harper Adams are the first team from Shropshire to qualify, and the first team from an agricultural university, and were constantly just beaten to the buzzer.

With just two heats to go, we know that Sheffield and SOAS will take part in the repêchage; New Oxford (150) and Lancaster (145) hold the remaining spots. Someone suggested there were a lot of science questions this week. We don't agree; we noted 12 opportunities for the teams to answer a science question (starters count double, as both sides can answer). The average for this year's first round is about 18, so if anything the teams had too little science.

New this week: Scones and something else on The Celebrity Traitors (BBC1, Wed and Thu). The Inner Circle (BBC1: celebrities on Saturday, civilians during the week). Never Mind the Buzzcocks comes back (Sky Maxmillian, Tue).

Travel broadens the mind, Worlds Apart (C4, Tue) explores the generation gap in Japan. Winner found on Lego Masters Down Under (E4, Sun), and a very belated Challenge Anneka (C5, Sun). After the final of Win Win next Saturday, the ITV network begins new episodes of The 1% Club and Romesh Ranganathan's Parents' Evening.

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