Bahrain Rugby Football Club received a special mention on one of the UK’s most popular television quiz shows … thanks to a panel of ordinary Brits being unable to name Manama as a capital city located between its opposite numbers in Germany and China.
Their lack of geographical prowess proved decisive for a contestant called Celia who pocketed a top cash prize for correctly naming Manama, although her pronunciation of the name had a lot to be desired.
“I’m going for one that has a great rugby club,” she said, a comment of little surprise to any athlete, member or visitor to the premises, actually located on the edge of Saar and Janabiya.
“The importance of Bahrain Rugby is well known around the world as this contestant and her hosts pointed out,” said Nader Shaheen, chairman of Bahrain Rugby Federation, who is also head of marketing and corporate communications at Edamah.
“She also rightly earned a bonus for the answer. After more than 50 years of uninterrupted competition Bahrain rugby was rightly acknowledged.”
The TV fame has delighted BRFC chairman Mike Cunningham as clips from the episode have gone viral on social media.
“I don’t know the date it was broadcast,” he admitted. “It must’ve been recently. I received it from a number of sources yesterday evening.”
Since its formation in 1971 the club has played matches in Juffair, near the airport and in Saar before moving to its current Janabiya location in 1991. Former members of the rugby club, now living back home in Australia, the US, the UK and numerous other countries, frequently make contact through its website.
Pointless is a British television quiz show produced by Banijay subsidiary Remarkable Television for the BBC. It is hosted by Alexander Armstrong with assistance from Richard Osman.
In each episode four teams of two contestants attempt to find correct but obscure answers to four rounds of general knowledge questions, with the winning team eligible to compete for the show’s cash jackpot.
All questions used on the show are factual in nature, and are asked of a panel of 100 individuals in a pre-conducted public survey. A correct answer scores one point for each survey subject who gave it, and the objective is to achieve as low a score as possible.
‘Pointless’ answers, correct responses that were not given by anyone surveyed, score zero points and are the most desirable.
Every pointless answer given during the main game increases the jackpot by £250, and the team that reaches the final round has three chances to win it by giving one such answer.
Pointless debuted on BBC Two on August 24, 2009. The success of its first three series led the BBC to move it to the corporation’s most popular channel BBC One from 2011.
The fact that none of the panel of Brits could name Manama perhaps also shows the necessity of the continuing work being made to promote Bahrain as a travel destination alongside its F1 hosting credentials and, particularly, the delights of the capital city.
“That was going to be a ‘pointless’ answer all day long,” it was suggested on the show.
Manama was designated as the 2012 capital of Arab culture by the Arab League, and a beta global city by the Globalisation and World Cities Research Network in 2018.
As for the pronunciation, it’s amazing how many expatriates have difficulty saying Manama. “Pronouncing it like ‘Panama’ will always make my eye twitch,” added Mr Shaheen, whose mum is British and dad Bahraini.
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