The bit missing from the Who Dares Sings review and my last post
It's not fair to insist that blokes hit the B-above-middle-C, that note is generally out of their range.

Try telling that to Guy Chambers. Angels covers a range of B2-B4.

As already shown in previous posts, this is hardly unusual. I would add another strategy for Who Dares Sings contestants; it is both valid and often preferable to sing in a gender other than your own with a one-octave transposition, particularly if you're most familiar with the modern pop idiom. Sam will certainly cope with it, and there is a very clear lack of pop songs in a soprano or bass range.

Let us envision a hypothetical set of contestants; Sally, Alice, Tim and Bryan. Sally's an occasional choral soprano, otherwise untrained, and a range of C4-A5. Alice has done amateur musical productions, does a bit of karaoke, probably fancies her chances, and has a range of F3-E5. Tim's your typical karaoke guy, screams along to classic rock or similar, and has a range of C3-A4. Bryan is a singer-songwriter who also enjoys going to karaoke, sings a bit in choir, and has a range of F2-E4.

(Note that Sally's range is Tim's an octave up, and Alice's range is Bryan's an octave up. Also note that Bryan's description and range is a match for the writer, which is deliberate. The significance of the names should be easy to work out.)

Alice has an awful lot of songs to choose from, pretty much the whole female pop canon. She'll want to avoid the work of certain singers - Cantsing, Lewis, some of Clarkson - but it's probably safe to assume she'd know that. The strategy for Alice is to pick songs without large leaps, for these are more difficult to judge, and Sam's judging is going to look at intervals in order to account for octave transpositions, surely. She is right to fancy her chances.

Tim - if he's careful - also has every right to fancy his chances. I say 'if he's careful' because of just how difficult certain rock songs are. If he leaves his bravado on Upper Ground - presumably for collection by Nicky Campbell, judging by his performance when I saw him - he'll find a fair chunk of pop songs to suit him.

Sally's in trouble. Most female-sung pop music goes below middle C. She can't. She may be bailed out by a probable emphasis on higher notes on the pre-selection; I haven't seen an episode, so cannot comment, but can only presume. She might well recognise that Clarkson and Lewis and the like have high notes, and so does she, and she should pick those. Wrong - they invariably have low notes as well. (In fact, the Lewis version of A Moment Like This is too low for Alice, let alone Sally.) Her strategy is to do what Tim does, one octave up, and if that means sounding like a chirpy classical soprano while singing 70s poodle-rock ballads, so be it. It's her best shot at the money. This assumes it's possible. If it's not, she needs to get very lucky with the song choices. Basically, pray for Wuthering Heights.

Bryan's got practically nothing in the male pop canon for him. However, his range is an excellent fit for female-sung pop, and his strategy is to do what Alice does, one octave down, and if it means being a guy singing about girly-girl issues, so be it. It's his best shot at the money. This assumes it's possible. If it's not, he needs to get very lucky with the song choices. If I knew what he had to pray for, I'd be singing it at karaoke myself.

With the show's inherent and nearly unavoidable bias towards the tenor and alto ranges out of the way, let's go for the shows inherent and entirely avoidable flaws. The risk-reward element is probably the worst I've ever seen. (Actually, thinking about it, it's not only not the worst I've ever seen, it's not even the worst I've seen from The London Studios. That was the first round of For The Rest Of Your Life.)

The strategy is exceedingly obvious to all but the most capable singers or the least capable strategists; play for twenty-five grand. I know I'd do that. Obviously I'd do the third performance just in case, and if I knew I'd messed up the second I'd leave with the five grand, but I'd quite deliberately pick my perceived strongest song second, with a view to walking away after it.

Far better in my opinion would be to make the endgame an old-fashioned bonus round, with a set jackpot for a certain average, and failure to do so earning a consolation prize based on their score, in the Family Fortunes style. A grand per point average could work, with fifty grand for an 80 average still there. That way, you actually place more emphasis on the jackpot, and you lose the jeopardy element. Which doesn't work that well on UK television anyway as the contestant pool tends to be relatively risk-averse, doesn't work at all on Saturday night television, and definitely doesn't work on Saturday night television with the mindset of the population increasingly set in recession mode. Even Gambling Party contestants are being remarkably cautious of late, with a string of contestants taking offers that even I wouldn't consider worth taking - and Who Dares Sings contestants don't have someone in a bad shirt to bully them on.

Of course, none of this matters to me. I'd never go on the show for one simple reason; the very high probability of Quirks-unfriendly lighting, not to mention Quirks-unfriendly volume. But if I were to get on the show, I'd be quietly confident of winning twenty-five grand so long as I could pick songs by females and faced a moderately weak opponent in the first round.

In other news, it's my birthday. This isn't entirely unrelated; twelve months and twelve hours ago I was at a karaoke bar in Blackpool. Singing. A song by a female vocalist, natch - There You'll Be.