Do you know what’s special about the 11th September 2022? There’s no reason why you should. But this date will be the 50th Anniversary of the broadcast of the first ever edition of Mastermind. Now, I don’t know if the BBC have anything particular planned to celebrate this landmark, in the way that they did with University Challenge when that particular quiz institution reached the half century milestone. I can’t help thinking that the Beeb are probably more concerned about celebrating their centenary.
There’s just under half a year until September, but in TV terms that’s not a huge amount of time. So if there was any kind of commemorative show being planned featuring all the champs who are still with us, then I would have expected to have been sounded out about it by now. Well, fair enough, ‘tis what it is. I do hope they mark the anniversary in some way, though.
I’m going to write a few posts
about the history of the show over the next few weeks. I state now right from
the start that most of what I know about the first 25 years of the show, the
1972-1997 era is taken from information in Magnus Magnusson’s own history of
the show “I’ve Started So I’ll Finish”. If you have any interest in the show at
all, and you haven’t already read it, I can recommend it most highly.
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As Magnus explains, “Mastermind” was born out of producer Bill Wright’s desire to create a challenging quiz that exploited the potential of the televisual medium. Before he created Mastermind he already had some serious form in the TV quiz stakes. He’d produced the popular “Quizball”, which older readers might remember fondly. He was also responsible for a television version of the evergreen Brain of Britain.
Bill Wright was in the RAF during world war II, and he was shot down and interrogated by the Gestapo. He is supposed to have woken up one night, having had the eureka moment of realising that he could use this horrific experience as the inspiration for the new quiz show he wanted to create.
Bill Wright’s original idea had been to have contenders just answer a round on their specialist subject. When it was suggested to him to include a general knowledge round as well, then the basic format of Mastermind was born. I can’t help wondering how long it would have lasted if contenders had only had to answer on their specialisms- the potential for viewers to play along at home would have been much less, I feel.
I think it’s pretty well known that Magnus was not an
instant choice for the role of host and question master. The choice was between
Magnus and a respected journalist and broadcaster called Alan Watson. Both of
them made pilot shows, but Magnus’ must have been the more successful, since he
was given the job. And for those of us old enough to fondly remember much of
the first 25 years of the show, it’s inconceivable that anybody else could have
presented it. He became synonymous with the show. It’s sad that I never
actually got to meet Magnus. By all account he was a wonderful man, with a deep
and abiding love for the show that he was so much a part of, and a deep
affection for and interest in the contenders who submitted to his inquisition.
The format of the show is so strong that despite small
scale tinkering over the years, I reckon that even if you’d only ever watched
the show in the 21st century you’d recognise an edition from the
1970s as being essentially the same show. The first series, in 1972, had 11
heats of 4 contenders in each. There were three semi-finals, and only the
winners of the semis went through to the final. In all honesty I don’t know if
there were any runner up places in the semis in this first series – the maths
seems to argue against it, but I’m willing to be corrected on this one. There were
definitely repechage places in the semis in the 1973 series, as winner that
year, Patricia Owen, had one of them. However, Patricia was our second winner,
while our first was Nancy Wilkinson. The 1972 final was a bit of an oddity,
featuring only 3 finalists. The specialist rounds were two and a half minutes
long, while the GK rounds were a whopping 3 minutes long. With the result that
in Nancy Wilkinson’s round they ran out of questions! You couldn’t make it up,
and I’m not. More questions were hastily written, and the rest is history.
Mastermind might well have become ancient history, if it
weren’t for a bit of good fortune in 1973. The first series was shown late on a
Sunday evening, although an audience of 6 million for the final hinted that it
had the potential to appeal to a mass audience. The following year a smutty
sitcom starring Leslie Phillips was shifted from its pre-watershed slot due to
pressure from the likes of Mary ‘Don’t Get Me Started’ Whitehouse. In a bit of
a bind over what to replace it with, the Beeb opted to put the fledgling quiz
show into this slot, and within a relatively short space of time a national
institution was born.
The first three winners of the show were all women – Nancy
Wilkinson, Patricia Owen and Elizabeth Horrocks. Two were lecturers, and
Elizabeth was a teacher. I’m sorry to say that Nancy had passed away before the
2010 champions series, but both Patricia and Elizabeth took part and it was a
privilege to meet them. Our first male winner was John Hart, also an educator.
He was a house master at Malvern College. I believe that he has since passed
away, and he did not take part in the 2010 series.
I first remember watching the show when I was 10, for
Elizabeth’s final in 1974. Incidentally, this final featured the contender
Magnus called ‘the best champion we never had’, Susan Reynolds. Having greatly
impressed in both heat and semi, the then 19 year old student suffered a
bizarre accident a short while before the final, and was not herself at all,
coming third.
It’s probably fair to say that Mastermind had the
reputation of being a show that would only be won by academics and civil
servants during the 70s. As well as Nancy, Patricia, Elizabeth and John, 1978
winner Rosemary James was a teacher, while 1979 winner Philip Jenkins, Port
Talbot’s first champion, was a graduate student. 1976 winner Roger Pritchard
was a civil servant, and also a former Brain of Britain champion, while 1977’s
silver jubilee series was won by retired ambassador Sir David Hunt. However,
1980 was just around the corner, and this series would bring a champion who is
probably the best remembered of them all, and he would blow this image out of
the water.
The format of the show throughout the 70s also ruled that
contenders should return to the chair in the same order as had been the case
for the GK round. In practice this could mean that the second round lacked
drama, since the first person back to the chair might be so far in front that
the other three had no chance of catching them.
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