The Screen Crack'd From To to Bottom (Almost)

I got the Radio 4 indie-rock reference

I've just got back from the three-yearly Brain of Brains and nine-yearly Top Brain, filmed at the BBC Radio Theatre at Broadcasting House, which has been done up lush and elegant no end, guvnor. Lovely deep reds and a comfy atmosphere prevailing and no knifes, swords or cutting implements due to the heavy security - my cigar cutter (a long story to do with duty free, airport boredom and pure silliness) was confiscated and went into the intricate bagging system for people afraid of certain scenes in the film Darkman.

Suffice to say, I would be the King of Spoiler Idiots to reveal the result of the recordings that involved the contestants Mark Bytheway, Pat Gibson and Chris Hughes, and in the latter, Alan Bennett - my Brain of Britain 2004 semi-final nemesis, who in reality is no such thing and is a rather nice, feet on the ground sort of fellow, two-time FT champ - when he was competing under a different surname, should have really asked about - Leslie Duncalf and ... (ha! you almost got me there didn't you? (Or is that the other way round?). Only you should really listen in September when it goes out.

One piece of 'legal' news: The host, coming back to effortlessly take the presenting reins, was Robert Robinson - to which I say 'hurrah!', reasons of laughter foremost, and a whole load of other things that hark back to a post I did last year. Let's leave it in the past, even if we know the past isn't dead, it isn't even past, nicking from Faulkner once again.

Piffling travails of my own
In other news I have successfully cracked the screen of my old laptop, possibly due to the sizeable amount of work I have been putting into it. I really dunno what happened. You smack it and whack it accidentally for a period of seven years, then you put it down and pick it up not more than an hour later and find that the top right hand corner has splintered beyond all repair into several shards each blotted by black ink, as if a tiny squid had exploded inside and bled in random areas. Perhaps, I don't even know my own strength. Perhaps, I don't even know I have any strength. On previous form, i.e. my entire puny life, this was doubtful. These Luddite fingers have become most excellent at the skill of destroying computer equipment. I haven't told you about the HP printer that went mental and died about a month ago. I don't think I'll tell you either, for all our sakes.

Anyway, I'm off to Manchester tomorrow to film Battle of the Brains - this trivia life never ends; ok, it does, but you don't want it to; so my quotidian promise may be broken inside a mere week. I mean, gosh, I have already been assailed by a couple of folk today for putting only FIVE questions up every weekday, as if I had saddled them with huge disappointment caused by the current paucity of my once-bountiful question supply. Well, 'tis better than nowt, we all agreed, or more truthfully, I said with an EH? attached to the end of the sentence. And it is, you know. IT IS.

FE:V
1. Sicily's second largest city is located on the east coast of the island at the foot of Mount Etna. What is it called?
2. Bernard Shakey is the 'nom-du-cinema' of which rock star, whose middle name is Percival, when he takes up directing duties on films?
3. Written in 1538 by a German language professor called Nicholas Wynman, Colymbetes is believed to be the first book written on what leisure activity?
4. What electrical device allows more current to flow in one direction than the other, thus enabling alternating e.m.f.s to drive only direct current?
5. The first rocket attack in Europe was carried out by the Mongols at which 1241 battle in Poland, the furthest west they fought? Though the Polish leader Hendryk II of Silesia was killed, the Mongols withdrew thereafter.

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Answers to FE:V
1. Catania 2. Neil Young 3. Swimming 4. Rectifier 5. Legnica