Discovering Discovery Mastermind - or not, as the case may be.

Okay, so if you’ve been following my recent posts on LAM you’ll know that one wee half term task that I set myself was to fill the gaps in my Mastermind contender database. The stumbling block I’ve come a cropper on is 2000/2001’s Discovery Mastermind.

Through UK Gameshows I found a database list of all contenders from 1972 until 2003, however the caveat with this is that it can only provide a very incomplete list of Discovery Mastermind contenders, 15 in all. I’ve managed to extend that to 26, largely thanks to finding Brian Daugherty’s videos of his 3 appearances on Discovery Mastermind on Youtube. Thanks for that Brian.

Other than that, though, I’ve found precious little out there to help. Which I suppose shouldn’t really come as a surprise. Being on Discovery I can’t imagine a massive number of people actually watched the series. A quick glance at the BBC’s official Mastermind website shows that although the BBC did, I think, make the show for the Discovery Channel, they are not the least bit interested in it, or the radio 4 shows for that matter. It’s a shame, and it does make it difficult to find any information about the series.

This is what I’ve managed to gather about the series. In the introduction to the third round match on Youtube, Clive Anderson announced that there were 24 contenders left in the round. In each show I watched the top 2 scorers went through to the next round. This suggested 48 contenders in round 2 and therefore 96 in round 1. Working on this principle round 4 must have had 12 contenders, and round 5 must have been the final. I think. If this is true, then there must have been 24 first round heats, 12 second round, 6 third round and 3 fourth round. Adding on a final this makes a total of 42 shows – by some distance the longest series ever. If I’m right.

There’s questions that all of this brings to mind. I’m not clear on whether the contenders had to learn a brand new subject for each round as they do now. If so, hen if I have it right the contenders would have had to learn five subjects in all if they reached the final. Purely in terms of time that’s a hell of an undertaking. Thinking of my own series, I had about 8 weeks to learn for my first round after being confirmed with a place in the first round. I had something like 12 weeks to prepare for the semi-final. I only had 6 weeks to prepare for the final and you’d better believe me when I tell you that I needed all 6 of them. Maybe contenders were allowed to re-use subjects at some point. Maybe you know what happened – I’d love to hear from you if you do.

I admit that I’ve only some vague memories from more than 2 decades and 3 youtube videos to go on, but I have a few opinions about what I saw. Firstly that it was a real sprint. I knew that the round were shorter, but I hadn’t realised how much shorter. The specialist rounds were 70 seconds long, and the GK 75 seconds. Which maybe explains why Clive Anderson was selected as quiz master, since he could fire off the questions at speed. You rarely see a score of less than 5 on a GK round nowadays. In Discovery Mastermind 4 would have been a decent, relatively competitive specialist score. Even with Clive Anderson’s most machine-gun-esque delivery I think that the maximum available on a GK round would have been about 10. Heaven alone knows how the show would have fared had the questions been as long as they’ve been for the last few years.

I didn’t find the incidental music played while the contenders walked to the chair, and then while they were answering the questions to be quite as awful as it sounds. I didn’t like the idea though, and I don’t really think it adds anything at all to the show in terms of entertainment value. Likewise, asking viewers on Sky to vote for who they thought was the ‘brainiest’ contender was frankly a bit naff.

Well, there we are. If you can enlighten me any more about the show I’d love to hear from you. If you were a contender on Discovery Mastermind yourself, and you’d be prepared to share your memories of the show that would be absolutely brilliant, and I’d love to hear from you.