Blush hours

Nul points has its own wacky cachet in the Eurovision song festival - however, in quizzes it is an undesirable result. From what I gather, therefore, contestants in one of the current quiz game shows, if not on both, are given a set of question-and-answer papers to study, so that they might achieve at least a modicum of points. This turns at least a part of the quiz into a memory game, rather that a test of the candidate's general knowledge.

This week, even the quizmaster got it wrong - although, to be fair, in one case it was not his fault.

One of the questions involved the Forbidden Fruit as indicated for Muslims. The correct answer was designated as 'banana'; my young Muslim friends tell me it could (also?) have been 'the fruit of the vine' or mulberries. In Judaism it is variously alleged to have been a pomegranate, grape, fig, or even wheat.

But the quizmaster did not say that - what he said was that in the Christian religion it was an apple. This, of course, it not necessarily true, because the Bible calls it the fruit of "the tree that gives knowledge of what is good and what is bad" (Gen. 2:16-17); nowhere is the actual name of the fruit given.

The wrong idea probably came about because of a pun; in Latin, malus sounds both like 'apple' and 'evil'. No Adam's apple got stuck in his throat.

The other error involved the game where various pointers connected with all 12 months of a particular year are meant to provide enough hints for the competitors to guess the year. One of the comments was about "the month in which Raisa Gorbachev" was born.

A question like this indicates that these questions are probably being written by a man; most women will recall a particular incident in her life. Papal protocol requires that women, even the wives of world leaders, wear any colour as long as it is black during audiences at the Vatican; but she wore red. Mikhail Gorbachev had introduced her to the Pope as his wife, but she had interjected, with a touch of pride, "I am Raisa Maximovna, from Russia".

One notes that this, then, was the name with which she was born - and as a married woman, her surname would have been the feminine "Gorbacheva", so as one beautiful newscaster has it, it's "two wrongs".

To be frank, I did offer my services for setting some of the questions in either quiz; if only because these tiny errors irritate me; whereas I got a polite note of refusal from Hames Mija, the people at Kontra l-Hin did not even bother sending me an acknowledgement.

Then there was the item, in Net News on Saturday night, about the riots in France - when the clip was showing the Iraqi Vice-Premier, Mr Chalabi, in America.

Even the best of us make mistakes, or at least sins of omission. In the informative magazine programme Voyager on RAI Due, information given about Stonehenge, wherein the site was compared to the Pyramids with regard to age - but not to Hagar Qim, so much closer to both Italy and Britain than Egypt, with regard to structure and purpose.

We did send an e-mail to the presenter, but as yet he has not replied.

Speaking of important women - this week we had some information about L-ewwel President tal-Kontinent ta' l-Afrika, rather as if the whole continent were one country.

Hot on the heels of this gaffe came the zghazagh ta' sess maskili phrase to describe the irregular immigrants who had just arrived in Malta - what's wrong with the word guvintur?

Don't people who set pen to paper stop to think before doing so, only to have to extricate their toes from between their teeth, later? Here, they don't even have the sad excuse that "it's a live programme" to protect them.

On the religious front, however, we may rest assured that the Knisja Kattolika u Umana bases its teachings on the Kristu li irrezurcizza lilu nnifsu.

Compliment of the week was an allusion, in absentia, to Julia Farrugia. "The air scintillated; the panes cleaned themselves..." And this was before she won the Broadcast Script Journalism Award. Congratulations to her and all the other winners... but I wish that different radio and television stations, as well as newspapers, would not select individuals for praise just because they happen to have similar (probably political) views to theirs.

A lifetime ago, after nigh on 50 years on the Station of the Nation scene, Mgr Victor Grech was booted out because he failed to comply with newfangled pesky rules; he had been invited to reapply for his slot come February 2005, but he appears to be quite comfortable in his new niche, thank you very much.

Michael Mallia had "taken decisions that were not in line with ministry policies", and, I understand, was definitely not invited to reapply for his job, come hell or high water.

At the time I had asked whether he had been the sacrificial lamb, while suggesting a list of items that Andrew Agius Muscat ought to procure before stepping into his new role, to protect himself from 'fowl' play. Mr Agius Muscat had told us, in no uncertain terms, that there was no room for prima donnas (it must have been around October 1904) at PBS.

And now we are supposed to be happy that over Lm1.8 million were saved through the restructuring, which, I suppose, was intended to shut up those who argued that the government was not giving 'enough funds' to PBS.

Well, in January we were informed that the political items on the news had fallen by 6.3% - and to me, it made no difference; I still think the news are saturated with party politics, in one way or another, even obliquely.