UK calling, UK calling. Question - have we become as thick as whale omelettes since I left?

So I'm home for the holidays, due to fly back to Spain – the outcome of a PCR test permitting – on Thursday 6th. I've been able to spend a lot of time at home with my mother, which has meant watching a fair bit of daytime TV.

Now back home in Viana, the TV basically only goes on to watch Brighton games on DAZN. I pretty much don't watch it at all now - partly because, as I've said before on here, Spanish TV is crap, and partly because I've just lost the habit of watching it and now, like a lot of others, pick and choose what I want to watch from YouTube or over my partner's shoulder on Netflix.

My mum's favourite programmes include Tipping Point, a quiz show which, if you haven't seen it, features a giant coin-pusher machine like those penny arcade things, whereby you get a token to put in the thing every time you get a question right, and getting them out brings home the bacon. Watching so many episodes of this, while a bit repetitive, has also been quite illuminating. Now I've never been on a TV quiz show (obviously – cameras!) so I don't know what the pressure of the cameras, heat, lights and time limit do to cognition. I also know that with all general knowledge questions, they're only easy if you know it. What's easy for some people is unknown to others - fair enough. 

However, I just watched three contestants on this game get three questions right between them out of 18 asked, and some of the responses got me howling. (And don't get me started on the 'before my time' response so typical from young mouths on these shows - do people only know about things that happened during their own adulthood now? Does the past not exist to them?)

Anyway - I was so appalled by five of their answers in particular that I wrote them down and present them here - what do you think? Am I being unduly harsh on people trying to answer under conditions I've never experienced, or is this just abject?

What egg-laying mammal's name is derived from the Greek for 'flat-footed'?

"Bear... no, dog!"

What two-word term describes the point at which liquids turn into vapour?

"Gas."

Which illuminated junction in central London turned off its famous advertising signs to... etc etc.

"Westminster."

In a football match, which position is often described as requiring a 'safe pair of hands'?

"Defender."

Which sportswear firm has a high-street outlet in London's Oxford Street called NikeTown?

"Pass."

Now I'm not going to apologise for being dismayed by such responses. I realise, of course, that not everybody knows that the platypus is an egg-laying mammal, for example. But when was the last time you saw a bear, or a dog, lay eggs? The second question quite clearly says the answer is two words, and then gives you one of them. And so on. 

I'm afraid I have to ask the great Ellen Ripley's question when she was awakened after a 57-year hibernation in Aliens. Did IQs just drop suddenly while I was away? I also lost count of how many times one of the contestants said that "xxx isn't my strong point" - he used this for history, politics, geography, sport and entertainment. What the hell is your strong point, then? And what are you doing on a nationally televised general knowledge quiz if you don't know anything... about anything?

So, dear reader - which is it? Am I being harsh or is that just dumb-arsery of the first order?

(Edit. Can now add the following to the Hall of Shame:

In a non-leap year, how many weeks does the month of February have?

"51.")

No voy a traducir esta entrada - no tendrá mucha sentido en España. Pero si quieres... www.deepl.com