Battle of the Brains

Shunting Eggheads to the 6.30 slot on BBC2 I've been catching the slightly reformatted Battle of the Brains. As a premise I enjoy the show, it's well structured, but true to form there are two minor niggling problems.

The first is the music - it's not bad, just loud; turn the volume up so you can actually hear the host and contestants and you get deafened between each round. Second problem is the presenter himself, Nicky Campbell. Seriously what is it with hosts and pointless exclamations? On a buzzer round to five points one of the contestants answers correctly making the score 1-0 and up pops Nicky with "He's storming ahead now" um what? Likewise in this type of round but more noticeably in a type designated "Identity" he has the unfortunate habit of misplaced pauses.

For this particular type of round you get a serious of clues either contestant can buzz in to guess, but if they get it wrong are frozen out for the next clue. So we're looking, for say, an artist -

NC: This artist was born in Milan.
Buzz.
C1: Michaelangelo?
NC: That's incorrect I can give the full clue to your opponent.

What do you mean full clue, you stopped you came to a complete halt at what everyone assumed was the end of the clue. Worse yet in an attempt to offset this annoying behaviour when he does finally finish the clue he occasionally tries to egg on the contestants to solve it.

Oh and I have to suppress the urge to bellow "Let's Get Ready to Rumble" as the round starts.

Still better than Eggheads though and miles better than the interminable repeats of The Simpsons on Channel 4, which have now reached the giddy heights of season 9 - again, except on Sundays which for some reason plonks down a couple of season 15's.