Ep 346: Sam Gaffney, Cameron Profitt (December 26, 2011)

Rounds: Here.


On Sam's final night, it's remarked that it was his birthday during the break.  Supposedly he promised to bring the hosts birthday cake but didn't, but they'll forgive him.  (No such promise made it to air, I should add.)

(I'm assuming that Sam's birthday was on December 24th, rather than at the time of filming.  There's a lot of maintenance of the pretence of live filming in this episode, as David and Richard back-and-forth about what they got for Christmas.  It does seem a bit forced, to be honest.)

Tonight's challenger is Cameron Profitt, a GP working in "a small Victorian township".  (Their surgery appears to have nine GPs for a little under 2500 people (as of the 2006 census, the population of Bannockburn was 2468); I don't know if that's an unusual ratio or not.)  Richard asks what the attraction is of being a GP in a small country town; Cameron responds that he's been there for 20 years, and the main appeal is that you get to know people very well over that time, and their family and background.  So when they present with a problem, you can take that knowledge into consideration when determining treatment.


Cameron just isn't able to get started in this game, with no answer for the first two numbers rounds and consistently outdone in the early letters rounds.  Sam is uncatchable going into the second break, and ends up winning 55 to 15 to cap off an excellent performance in all six games.  Easily the best contestant we've seen this series, and I look forward to his reappearance in the finals.

I was horribly patchy in this one, falling apart completely in the middle rounds.  Fortunately (from my perspective) Sam had some difficulties also, and I was able to take a narrow lead into the conundrum.  It proved elusive for Sam but not for me and so I levelled the game score in our informal competition at three games apiece... but six points ahead on aggregate.  It goes to show how closely matched we are!

As usual, details after the jump.