What's next in the sequence: Only, Connect, Cock?

I must admit my share in tonight's "Only Connect" mess. If I had realised how far my distance vision had deteriorated I would have gone to the opticians well before the Cardiff recording, I would have recognised Rodgers and Williams and probably made the connection with the SDP/Liberal Alliance.

I should explain. In the studio, the visuals are presented to the teams on domestic TVs mounted a metre or so above the opposition and on the afternoon in question on the same level as an annoying spotlight. (In the auditions we were sat at a desk in the Parasol offices with a small screen but one that was on the desk in front of us.) I realised I had a problem in the round recorded earlier that day when I found I struggled to make out text and had real trouble with pictures. Then, David made up for my deficiencies (Harriet had already admitted she had never been good at recognising faces). Unfortunately, David has no interest in football, so Brendan Rodgers completely passed him by. But my real failure was when the "answer" was read out by Victoria Coren-Mitchell. If I had not been so confused, I would have objected at the time that while the four people named were part of the SDP/Liberal alliance, they were not the Gang Of Four. At the very least that would have resulted in the Only Connect team digging out an alternative question and re-starting the recording.

That vision thing also resulted in my being slower than the opposition in the Missing Vowels round, especially in the geographic set. So apologies to David and Harriet for letting them down.

It should be stressed that after they realised the brick they had dropped, the Parasol team did their best to make amends and kept in touch with the CIx Networkers team members at every stage between the recording and tonight's broadcast. A bonus was that I several times heard again the honeyed tones of Chris Stuart, now with Parasol.