The History of Mastermind: Part 2: Fred and Co.

I’ve been a schoolteacher for 35 years now, and what’s more, I’m still the last schoolteacher to win Mastermind – although not the last educator. But I still remember how happy I was that London taxi driver Fred Housego won the 1980 series. I’ve said on this very blog on more than one occasion that I’ve never yet met Fred, and I would absolutely love to. (Fred, if by any chance you read this, I’m serious. Just drop me a message and let’s get it on.) It’s not like I grew up in a socially deprived area of London – I didn’t. But I always identified with the contenders from more - God, this is going to sound patronising - more ’humble’ professions. My old man was a mechanic (on a good day. On a bad day he was a boozy lush, but that’s another story for another time.) My mum was a housewife who had been a secretary. Nothing to be ashamed of there (apart from my Dad). But as a family we didn’t have a professional background. Friends of the family tended to be more like Fred than previous winners.

In the 70s and early 80s, until I went away to University, Mastermind was a show we would watch together as a family. I remain convinced that this was a practice which helped make me into a quizzer, because not only did you have to try to shout out the answer to a question before the contender on the telly, you also had to try to shout it out before anyone else in the room at the time. We also used to have our favourites in each series, and we liked Fred right from his first round. We’d felt the same about Philip Jenkins in 1979.

After he won his final, Fred became an instant celebrity, and within a couple of years he had a regular spot on London Weekend’s 6 O’Clock show, and his own TV series “History on Your Doorstep” One of these was about the London Borough of Ealing where I grew up, and very good it was too.

After this exuberance, normal service seemed to be resumed when schoolteacher Leslie Grout won in 1981. But the door was now open. Leslie wouldn’t be the last schoolteacher to win, but from now on they’d be the exception rather than the rule.

So, by 1982, the show had been running for 10 years. We’d had ten champions, and so the time was ripe to hold the first Champion of Champions tournament. Except that it wasn’t. The first I mean. Way back in 1975, immediately after John Hart’s final, a special called Supermind was filmed, pitting the first 4 champions in a winner takes all showdown. It beggars belief that you’d expect anyone to compete in this immediately after winning a Mastermind final. But then the Beeb had previous form on this score, when Patricia Owen had to film her Grand Final immediately after winning her semi final in 1973. Supermind was a close contest, and Nancy won the tie break. I believe that another Supermind contest happened sometime later, when the champ of that series took on luminaries such as Irene Thomas, and the current Brain of Britain and Brain of Mensa champions.

Coming back to 1982, the decision was made to shift Mastermind from the Autumn to the Spring schedules, which meant that the next series wouldn’t air until 1983. So the Champion of Champions mini-series was born. Five champions played in the first heat, and five more in the second. The two highest scoring champs from both of the two heats contested the final. That made sense, and the winner was. . . well, despite the huge support for Fred it was actually the 1977 champ, Sir David Hunt, who took the title. Incidentally, the only champ to have played in all three champions’ tournaments to date was Patricia Owen, and I did chat with her about this when we shared a heat in the 2010 champ of champs series.

So to 1983, and our second champion from outside the traditional Mastermind winning professions, Christopher Hughes. At the time, Chris was a London Underground train driver. I remember Chris had appeared a year or two earlier on a one-off ITV series called Top of The World, an ITV attempt at a big budget, big prize serious quiz show, fronted by Eamonn Andrews. Chris won a couple of shows but didn’t win the series. My opinion was that he was miles better by the time he was on Mastermind. I wouldn’t say that his subsequent celebrity status quite matched the heights of Fredmania a couple of years earlier, but in the long run it’s Chris who went on to become one of TV’s Eggheads, since which he also added the Brain of Britain title to his CV.

In 1984 another teacher, Margaret Harris, won, setting a massive record score of 38, while in 1985 another driver, ambulance driver Ian Meadows, won. Margaret Harris’ record only lasted for 2 years, because librarian Jennifer Keaveney twice scored 40 in the 1986 series. One of these two scores was achieved in the Grand Final.

It’s unthinkable that a contender could get close to 40 in the current incarnation of the show, but this is a relatively recent development, which we’ll discuss when we get to the current era. In the last 10 years, with rounds being different lengths in heats, semis and finals, sometimes even differing from one season to another, it’s very difficult to compare performances between the current era, and the Magnus era. One could even be wary of comparing seasons in the Magnus era with each other . In his book, Magnus admits that there were some seasons where the average scores were considerably lower than the previous or following ones, without any ostensible reason.

One thing we can say about the 1988 and 1989 winners, House of Lords clerk David Beamish and vet Mary-Elizabeth Raw, respectively, is that neither of them incurred any passes for the whole series. Before them, though, was the 1987 champion, Dr. Jeremy Bradbrooke. I met Jeremy at the Champion of Champions recordings in 2010, and he spoke with great affection about his time on Mastermind. One other notable thing about his series was that it saw the first appearance of Kevin Ashman, although he was defeated in the semi-final. He would be back once the one series only rule was scrapped in 1995.

I want to talk about that rule for a moment. Prior to 1995, contenders were only allowed to appear in one series of Mastermind. If they didn’t win – and most of them didn’t, let’s face it – then it was a case of sorry, but you don’t get to go again. In 1980 a lady called Sheila Denyer appeared in Fred’s series. Remember that. In Ian Meadows’ 1985 series, a lady called Sheila Altree appeared in the first round and won her heat. After the heat was aired, a former contender rang the show and asked, since a contender from a previous series was having another go, could she as well? The production team checked the tapes, and also the two application forms from 1980 and 1985, and there was no doubt, Sheila Denyer had divorced and remarried, and was now Sheila Altree. Sadly, Sheila was disqualified and her place in the semi went to the runner up in her heat, Ian McKillop, who won and went through to the final. After the rule was scrapped, Sheila was invited to reapply, and she played in the 1997 series. I believe she also played in the 2003 series, the first season of the BBC TV revival. I know for a fact that she reached the semi final in 2007, because it was my semi-final.

There are some extremely good quizzers and quiz people, whose opinions I always take note of and respect, who feel that you should only ever be allowed one attempt. I feel the opposite – not surprisingly considering that I bombed out in the first round in 2006, before doing a bit better the next season.

I’d like to say a little bit more about the 1989 champion, the late Mary Elizabeth Raw. She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, but won the series despite the debilitating effects of her illness. Mary-Elizabeth wrote about her experience on the show in her book, “. . . And No Passes”, and a very entertaining and informative read it is too.