蜜芽传媒

The 2022 Round Britain Quiz league table going into today's programme stands as follows:

1聽 South of England聽 聽Played 4聽 Won 3聽 Drawn 0聽 Lost 1聽 Total points 82
2 Midlands聽 聽P3聽 W1聽 D2聽 L0聽 Pts 61
3聽 Wales聽 聽P3聽 W1聽 D1聽 L1聽 Pts 58
4聽 North of England聽 聽P3聽 W1聽 D1聽 L1聽 Pts 57
5聽 Scotland聽 聽P2聽 W1聽 D0聽 L1聽 Pts 40
6聽 Northern Ireland聽 聽P3聽 W0聽 D0聽 L3聽 Pts 55聽

Last time, Kirsty asked why Countdown's original arithmetician, a breakfast DJ who later dominated Saturday night, an actor who's neither a fool nor a horse, and a canny Shawshank strategist, might all have cause to feel their careers have taken off?
'Taken off' is the crucial phrase because these are all celebrities who have pilots' licences and are enthusiastic fliers. Respectively, they are Carol Vorderman, Noel Edmonds, David Jason and Morgan Freeman.聽

Q1聽 Why might painter Norman, writer Irvine and Commander-in-Chief Sir John all have grown up a little confused?
Q2聽 Why might an ancient Scottish province, King Duncan's younger son, and Aconitum napellus, be thought of as a cause of misery?
Q3 (from David Murphy)聽 How would the first three of these extracts give the appearance of the last?
Q4聽 Which commonly-found chaps are, respectively, as contented as they can be, able to turn their hand to anything, and thief and beneficiary in a pointless crime?
Q5 (from John Kennedy)聽 Why might you expect Allan Smethurst, Dennis Potter, a Lancashire art installation that shares its name with a children's movie classic, Jeanne-Paule Marie Deckers, and a Jack Vettriano painting, to form a choir?
Q6 (from Ivan Whetton)聽 Music: Which service or agency workers might find a use for these?
Q7 (from Simon Meara)聽 If three of the seven are the little gentleman in the black velvet waistcoat, something Bill Shankly described as being nothing, and the river that flows past the University of Glasgow, on what would you base your answer?聽
Q8聽 What objects might Bill Haley ask the following to rattle: the operatic first winner of Britain's Got Talent; Babs. Dee-Dee, Ruth, Louise and Cherry; the driver of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang; and del Toro's elaborate fairytale?聽

Think about this at your leisure until we reveal the solution next time:
Can you place in the correct order: Kubrick's pioneering space epic, the first Allie Burns thriller, an Olympic-sized hit comedy and a partly-pornographic novel by Alasdair Gray?