Maarten and Philip not recognized as a duo: they still have years to do The smartest person | The Smartest Look

Poor Karsu. Have you been working as an artist for some years now? With tours, albums, theater tours, a documentary, its own cooking show, 822,000 followers on Instagram and yes, participation in Dear Singers in 2021. And then one day you look at The smartest person, presenter Philip Freriks asks the candidates: what do you know about Karsu? Says one (VVD member of parliament Queeny Rajkowski): ,,A dish. A culture. A tradition. An art style. An actor. A photographer.” And the other (comedian Boban Benjamin Braspenning): “Comes from Asia, is Japanese, Chinese, is an art form, a poetic form.”

You can still see pop and jazz singer Karsu perform this year. The halls of Het Paard, Doornroosje, TivoliVredenburg and the Concertgebouw are sold out in the autumn, but tickets are still available on April 21 in Podium Fluor (Amersfoort).

The candidates this year, they are not yet raising the level – to put it mildly – to Champions League heights. Prince Charles is mistaken for Philip, nobody knows anything about both the Muiderslot (‘A former castle?’) and Slot Loevestein and is a sparrow nowadays a mammal that lays eggs? Dan Queeny Rajkowski. She received all kinds of gifts when she was sworn in as a Member of Parliament, a bird house, socks and … a Forest atlas. Just leafing through would have been enough to know something about Twente. Enschede, for example. Marjon de Hond could not come up with that either. Isn’t there weather?

No, it must be strange if the eventual winner is to come out of these first three weeks. In fact, only Martin Rombouts (five stage victories!) rose above the deplorable level. The poet had practiced a lot in the Smartest personapp, he said. He constantly played against one Heleen21 who was ‘slightly better’. This Heleen21 (21 years old or from 1921?) had Brainy Smurf as avatar picture. Rombouts would like to know who is behind Heleen21 and made an appeal. ,,Get in touch! I am very curious!”

Rombouts was on a roll at the gallery of the educational museums, but shot when pictures of duos passed by. After Tom Cruise and Jerry Springer (Tom and Jerry), Ernst Kuipers and Bobbi Eden (Ernst and Bobbi), Maarten van der Weijden and Prince Philip followed. To the disappointment of the presenter and presumably the jury member, no one in the seats thought of the Smartest duo: Maarten and Philip. Conclusion: they have to go on for a long, long time.

Maarten van Rossem, the oasis in the tidbits desert, is horrified by the poignant lack of (historical) knowledge, he said (‘The ignorance of many candidates is not unique for this season’) this week to my colleague Sanne. Fortunately, there are also fewer worldly annoyances. In response to the viewer’s question, ‘Why are people eating so unhealthy and in such large quantities in America?’, he told his own story. How he ordered an omelette in America this year -he said oomelette, as if it were an uncle- and got a lesson with it. You imagined that tower of side food. I hope there are pictures of that that leak out very soon.