. . . and you have two minutes on utter trivia, starting now

A COUPLE of weeks ago I switched on the idiot box to find I had acquired STAR TV, and the quiz programme Mastermind.

That is the show where a bunch of people, who have had nothing better to do for a few decades than become experts in things esoteric, gets to demonstrate just how much ratbag information the human computer can spit out in under two minutes.

Why an insurance broker from Macclesfield would want to know the finer details on ''The Life of Pope Sixtus IV as a Patron of the Arts during the Years 1476 to 1479'' is known only to him. And why the chartered accountant from Romford, Essex, chose to be an expert on ''The 15th Century Polish Jagiellonian Period'' is doubtless a result of some research he conducted back in 1956 which showed nobody in the whole of Britain knew or cared what it was.

Thirty-seven years of dedicated study on the subject was enough to make him the leading British authority, which is, I suppose, marginally more interesting than being a leading authority on nothing at all, and a vast improvement on being just a charteredaccountant from Romford, Essex.

There are plenty of people in Hongkong with brains fully loaded with things irrelevant; smart asses who are desperate for a Mastermind of their own. OK, you insignificant little know-alls, your big chance has arrived with Sherwood's Annual General Knowledge Quiz.

What is the difference between a cat in a red hot wok and Cantonese opera? The Noon Day Gun has been redesigned to fire a small nuclear device at Kai Tak at midnight on June 30, 1997, if Chek Lap Kok is not built.