The last place in the final of this year's competition is at stake at the Taliesin Centre for the Arts, University College of Swansea.

The contenders are the four best-scoring losers from the first-round programmes. Ronald Fraser (freelance journalist) The life and works of Charles Rennie Mackintosh Rex Walford (university lecturer) The history of British musicals, 1945-1980 Clive Evans (unemployed cost clerk) British politics, 1905-1979

Roger Stein (schoolteacher) The life and works of Edward Elgar