A Healthy Serving of Egg on the Face

So, last night my daughter Jess took up the reins as quiz master in the rugby club for the first time. I have mentioned this once or twice before, but it does mean that all of the regular members of the team, Jess, Dan, Adam and I have all taken our turn as question master. I am willing to be corrected on this, but I believe that it’s the first time that all the regular members of a team have acted as question master. That’s certainly true since I’ve been coming, and my participation goes back to 1995.

The ironic thing is that we did have another member of the team playing last night as well. Fran sometimes plays for us, but not regularly. Not last night either. No, last night George played. George is the last remaining player from the Boycs team from when I joined in 1995. Over the years a number of our key players passed away and some others just stopped coming. You know as well as I do that the pandemic changed so many things, and to be honest, my quizzing lost weekend period began before lockdown, and I hadn’t come for a while. George has played with us in one quiz since we started to play again in August, but I think he’s finding it hard to find the oomph to come out on a Thursday night.

Coming back to Jess, she did a fine quiz last night, and she too used the connections format that I’ve written about before. And. . . I’m angry with myself for this, and proud of her for it at the same time, she came up with one connection which we just didn’t see. I’ll ask you the questions, and you may see the connection straightaway:-

1) Which 1976 sci fi film starred Michael York and Jenny Agutter?

2) What name was given to the marching step used by the Wermacht in Nazi Germany?

3) What is the original name of the victim in Cluedo?

Answers

1) Logan’s Run

2) Goose Step

3) Doctor Black

Can you see the connection? Probably. Well we couldn’t, and it was a real egg on the face moment when Jess announced that they were all berries. We’d got ourselves fixated on X Men and just couldn’t get away from that track, even though we knew it was wrong.

Well, as my dear late friend Alan Coombs used to say, the best kind of question is the one where you say ‘I should’ve known that!’ when you’re told the answer. So well done Jess! I’m always proud of all five of you, but I was very proud with the way you presented yourself as quiz master.

The History Of Mastermind Part 4 : BBCTV Mastermind Take Two

Mastermind returned to BBC TV on the last but one day of 2002. I don’t know if this celebrity special was only ever intended to be a one-off, but it certainly spawned the popular Celebrity Mastermind, which has run for 20 series since and shows no sign of running out of steam any time soon. For the record, those first game celebrities were Janet Street-Porter, Vic Reeves, Adam Hart-Davies and winner Jonathan Meades. The main differences between the celebrity version and the regular show are that each show within a series is self-contained. The winner gets a trophy and doesn’t have to go through to a semi final or a final. Another difference is that winning celebrities can still come back on the show, and some have even won more than once.

In may ways the best thing about the first celebrity show is that it made the return of the regular show to the BBC seem a distinct possibility. And indeed, on the 7^th July 2003 the first of 12 heats was broadcast. Heat winners advanced to the semi finals, and the  semi final winners contested the final. In the final civil servant Andy Page won a tight contest to become the first champion of the new, John Humphrys era.

Now that John Humphrys has retired from the show, we can maybe come to a reasoned appraisal of his tenure. I don’t know that he ever became quite as indelibly a part of the show in the public consciousness as Magnus had during the show’s first incarnation. In part this may well be because of circumstances beyond his control. After the 1973 scheduling shift, for the rest of its run to 1997 Mastermind was shown on BBC1. TV audiences for any shows were generally larger for any kind of show in the pre internet and pre satellite/cable days in which the show was first established, so it was far easier for a show to etch itself deeply on the national consciousness.

I’ve always wondered whether Jeremy Paxman’s selection to host “University Challenge” from its revival in 1994 had an influence on John Humphrys’ selection for Mastermind. In the case of UC, Bamber Gascoigne politely turned down the opportunity of picking up the reins for the revival, so it seems to me that the producers may well have gone for a conscious choice of ‘and now for something completely different’. For me that approach hadn’t worked in Discovery Mastermind, with cleverdick Clive Anderson seeming a very poor fit for the question master’s chair. Fair enough. If University Challenge could use BBCTV’s most renowned political interview rottweiler, then surely Mastermind could use BBC Radio’s.

Whatever the case, response to new Mastermind was favourable enough, and by the later semis John H. was inviting members of the public to apply for the 2004 series. While the 2003 series consisted of 17 shows in total, that was raised to 31 for 2004, and every series since has consisted of the same number of shows. 24 heat winners progressed to 6 semi-finals, and the 6 winners progressed to the final. The final was won by barrister Shaun Wallace, who became the first black Mastermind champion. It was the start of a memorable TV career for Shaun. He lost out on becoming an Egghead when defeated by Barry Simmons in the first series of Are You An Egghead?, however he soon became the first Chaser on ITV’s highly popular The Chase.

The 2005 series was won by one of the few quizzers who can challenge Kevin Ashman for the title of the most successful quizzer. Like Kevin, if it’s worth winning, then Pat Gibson has probably won it. A year or two before appearing on Mastermind, Pat had already won the £1 million prize on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. In the 2005 final Pat answered on Father Ted. I mention it, because this sitcom is often quoted along with Fawlty Towers and Harry Potter as one of the three subjects that more applicants request as specialist subject choices than any other. Runner up in his final was future Brain of Britain champion Mark Grant, who has now, I believe, made more grand final appearances than any other contender. Pat went on to win the joyous 2010 Champion of Champions tournament, which I was privileged to have a ringside seat for having been the highest scoring runner up n the heats, and therefore being stand in for the final.

This leads nicely to the 2006 series, which was won by the 2003 runner up, Geoff Thomas. It was also the series which saw my own first appearance on Mastermind. I was beaten in the heats by Kath Drury who achieved the highest of all the scores in the semi-finals. As one of three highest scoring runners up, I got to attend the semi-finals as a stand in. I didn’t get to take part, but at least I got to watch the semi-finals as they happened. After this I was convinced that Geoff was going to win the final – he honestly looked a different class, Kath’s performance notwithstanding. The other  talking point was the, at the time, record low specialist subject score in the semi finals.

Geoff was presented the trophy for winning the final by Magnus Magnusson himself. Sadly, the following year saw Magnus pass away in the January, and it’s fair to say that the 2007 series rightly served as something of a memorial to the great man. The decision had been made prior to the start of the series to begin broadcasting the heats in the late summer, which meant that the final would not be broadcast until the end of March 2008. However, the shows were all in the can by the middle of June. The final was actually filmed on 15th June 2007, which by coincidence was my birthday. As a tribute to Magnus it was held in Glasgow Caledonian University, a place very dear to Magnus’ heart, where he had served as Chancellor. The trophy was presented by his daughter, broadcaster Sally Magnusson. I’m perfectly fine with not being one of the most distinctive or distinguished champions, but I think my win was noteworthy for a couple of reasons. I was the first – and only – schoolteacher to win during the Humphrys era (and at time of writing am still the last to do so.) Also, I am the only champion to date to be knocked out in the first round of one series, and come straight back to win the very next series.

In the early days of the Mastermind, the first four winners were all schoolteachers or college lecturers, and the first three champions were all women. New Mastermind had its first schoolteacher champion in 2007. 2009 would bring its first woman champion, Nancy Dickmann. Nancy’s series was the first that I covered in LAM, and it’s a matter of some pride to me that I tipped her as the most likely contender in the series to become the first woman to win in the revived show. I did, I will admit, tip Ian Bayley to win the final, while he in fact came second behind Nancy. In my defence, Ian was a top Masterminder, as he would go on to prove in his next final appearance in 2011.

In 2010, the production team finally bowed to requests to reinstate the semi final places for the highest scoring runners up. As series of Mastermind go, I look back on 2010 as a classic. There were so many very fine quizzers involved. Reading my preview back, for the final I couldn’t decide who to tip as the most likely champ between Jesse Honey and Kathryn Johnson, and indeed they did take the first two spots on the podium. In the final Jesse scored a Humphrys era record of 37 – which would, incidentally have won many of the finals in the Magnus era as well. The recording of the heats of the 2010 champions series took place just a couple of days before the broadcast of Jesse’s final. Jesse was runner up in the tournament, however, in his heat he set the all-time record of 23 points for a single round, answering on Flags. That was a 2-minute round as well.

In 2011, Ian Bayley bounced back from his narrow defeat in 2009, to add the Mastermind title to the Brain of Britain title he’d won the previous year. His Brain of Britain performance was the most commanding win in many a long year – I know because I was sitting next to him at the time. He was also a member of the all conquering Crossworders team which won the first series of Only Connect. In 2011 Ian made no mistakes, and won comfortably, equalling Jesse’s modern era record of 37 from the previous final.

During 2010 my team, the Radio Addicts, reached the final of the 4th series of Only Connect. Neil Phillips, captain Gary Grant and I spent a fair bit of time together on the filming days for the show, and skipper Gary shared with us his desire to become a Mastermind champion. He’d reached the semi finals in Nancy’s series in 2009, but this was never going to be enough for him. In 2012 his ambition came to fruition. In the grand final, Gary scored a spectacular 19 on his specialist subject of Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises, and in the end won with a total of 35, 5 points ahead of Andy Tucker, an excellent quizzer in his own right. Gary was the second medical doctor to win the title, following in the footsteps of 1987 champion Dr. Jeremy Bradbrooke.

So to the 2013 series. In the previous 3 finals the winners had all scored in the high 30s. From 2013 onwards, there was a move towards longer questions, which worked to make monster scores like this very much the exception rather than the rule. Nonetheless the Grand Final in 2013 was a very keenly fought contest, and was won by charity director Aidan McQuade. I’ve never met Aidan yet, nor had any communication with him, but his attitude towards the show is one that I’ve always been able to run up the flagpole and salute. Aidan said that he wasn’t that bothered about winning or losing, for him it was all about the ‘craic’, the giving it a go, and the camaraderie between the contenders. Amen to that.

So that’s our first 10 seasons of the revived series. In the next and final installment, we’ll bring the show up to the present day.

Mastermind 2022 Grand Final Review

Well, dearly beloved, shall we begin the grand final review which inevitably begins with me apologising to all the contenders, and to all of you, for the fact that I had as much success predicting the outcome of this final as I had last weekend in picking a winner in the Grand National? Let’s do just that.

Kicking us off was Ian Wang. The highlight of Ian’s filmed insert was probably receiving a filmed message of encouragement from Sir Steve McQueen himself. He also received a visit in person from Jonathan Gibson, last year’s winner and the youngest ever Mastermind champion. His opinion is that records are there to be broken, and so wished the 23 year old Ian the very best of luck. Well, if you prepare properly, then luck doesn’t need to come into it. Ian has been pretty much perfect on specialist all series, and tonight was no different. 13 meant that he was going to be up among the leaders at the turnaround.

In her filmed insert Alice Walker said that she lives in the Peak District, so maybe being filmed walking amongst that magnificent setting was a little bit of a busman’s holiday. She didn’t seem to mind, though, and indeed, who could possibly complain about it? Alice scored a decent 11 on specialist in the heat, and an excellent 13 in the semi, and her round on the Peak District tonight topped that. A pretty much pitch perfect display saw her set the target at 14, one more than Ian’s score.

Eleanor Ayres’ film concentrated quite a bit on her own specialist subject, her namesake Eleanor of Aquitaine. She visited nearby Cambridge University to speak to ain impressive professor, who professed delight to see someone take Eleanor on Mastermind. There was also a message from Judtih Keppel, the Egghead and first winner of the million on Millionaire. Why? Oh, do pay attention 007! Eleanor of Aquitaine was the subject of Judith’s million-pound question. Eleanor scored 9 in the heat and 11 in the semi final on specialist, and I did highlight this as my main concern about her chances. She matched her semi final score, but this meant that she was now 3 points behind the leader.

Anthony Fish hadn’t really put a foot wrong in either first round heat or semi-final. His film concentrated on his family, and how they have supported his efforts to become a better quizzer, and to be successful in his chosen pursuit. The message of encouragement came from no less a personage than Sir David Jason – although this was in the form of a letter rather than a short film. In the first round Anthony scored 14 on specialist, and in the semi final 13. Sadly, the curse of the Clark tip struck him in his round tonight. He stumbled badly on an early question, and although he rallied himself well, he ended with 11. Being 3 points behind at half time isn’t necessarily a gap you can’t bridge, but it’s hard.

Patrick Buckingham explained in his film that his whole family used to watch the Magnus era of Mastermind together – I know the feeling, sir - but that he’d never found time in his life what with his intense career to do much quizzing until the last few years. He possibly has the best case for regretting that he wasn’t on the show 5 years ago, when his specialist subject of Carole Lombard would surely have bought him a trip to the US to make his film. Well, that was then, and this is now. If you read my preview you’ll know that Patrick was one of my pre-race favourites, and sadly I think the curse of the Clark tip did for him as well. Having scored a brace of 13s in his previous specialists, he languished on 10 after this one.

Finally Sarah Trevarthen got to sit in the chair, as we watched her own filmed insert. She showed us her winning appearance on Pointless with her husband, and again, seems to be another finalist whose interest in quizzing has really developed over the last few years. Her appearance in the recent final of Counterpoint is a pretty good demonstration of this. Like Patrick she came into the final with a brace of 13s in her previous specialist rounds. Unlike Patrick my tipping her for a podium position didn’t seem to do her any harm, as she completed a full set of 13 pointer specialist rounds on Dame Barbara Hepworth.

4 points off the lead, Patrick was looking like the outsider when he returned to the chair. If all the contenders matched their average GK scores from the heats and semis, then he couldn’t win. But nobody seemed to have told him that. Yeah, okay, so he was some way off the lead. It didn’t matter. He threw himself into his GK round, gripped it firmly in his teeth and never let it go until the 2 and a half minutes were over. 17 in a final is a terrific score, more than enough to place the rest of the field within the corridor of doubt. One thing that I was in no doubt about was that Patrick would not be finishing in 6^th place.

The only other contender to have scored 17 on GK this series was Eleanor Ayres, who was the next to take the chair. Eleanor had scored 17 in a brilliant round in her semi-final. This was 5 points better than she managed in the heat. So the big question was, could she reproduce this form? Well, for the first half dozen questions the answer was yes, certainly. However, a golf question stopped her momentum, and several wrong answers followed. By the time she got moving again, it was going to be a case of damage limitation. And indeed, a score of 11, for a total of 22 is absolutely nothing to be ashamed about at all.

So the question now had to be faced – could my pre-race favourite, Anthony, match Patrick’s general knowledge heroics? Well, he certainly gave it a lash. After a minute and a half I thought he was slightly slower than Patrick, but then he had started one point to the good. But he fell behind, and by the time the white line of doom began to snake around the score it looked as if 15 for 26 was going to be the best he could do. Which indeed it was. Another fine GK effort, even if it was not quite good enough on this occasion.

So to Ian Wang, just one point off the lead on 13. In my preview I said that I didn’t think Ian’s general knowledge was quite strong enough to win the big one at this early stage of his quiz career. Well, his first half dozen answers seemed to make a mockery of this observation. Sadly, though, the wrong answers began to creep in. He was never very far away from what he needed, but never quite got the run of five or 6 correct answers in a row when he really needed them. In the end, he levelled out at 12 for 25. So Patrick could not be worse than 3^rd, and with only 2 contenders to go could still end up as champion.

Sarah Trevarthen had scored 15 in her first-round heat GK, and if she could repeat that then she would go into the lead. And for much of the round it looked as if this was going to happen. And yet, when the white line made its first appearance she still wasn’t there yet. In the end it was only her last question which brought her a 14th point. Were we potentially in for a tie break? In a word no, because Sarah led by pass countback.

Finally, Alice Walker came back to the chair. She scored 15 in her GK round in the heat, and a repeat of that would do it with a little bit to spare. In the semi she scored 11, and that wouldn’t do it. Still, with two and a half minutes now, the title was hers to win or lose. What followed, over the next two and half minutes, must have been the round of her life. She faced 22 questions. She passed on none. She gave 3 wrong answers. The mathematically gifted among you will have worked out that this meant she gave 19 correct answers. Nothing slowed her at all. She won’t have realised which answer meant that she was the champion, nor the fact that she went on to give another 6 correct answers after that. It was a perfect example of a contender finding that wonderful head space where you are just totally in the moment, concentrating on each question and for the most part, finding the answers. It was a magnificent performance, and yes, I was standing up and applauding the telly. 33, as Clive pointed out, is the highest score of the series.

Thanks to all of the contenders, not just in this high-quality final, but in the whole series. Without you and your willingness to learn your subjects and brave the chair, then there is no show. Thank you to the production team as well for bringing us another fine series. Especially, thanks to Clive Myrie, for proving that my conviction that he was a good choice to replace John Humphrys was correct. But let’s end with congratulations to Alice Walker, Mastermind of the United Kingdom 2022!

The Details

Ian Wang	The film and TV works of Sir Steve McQueen	13	0	12	0	25	0
Alice Walker	The Peak District National Park	14	0	19	0	33	0
Eleanor Ayres	Eleanor of Aquitaine	11	1	11	0	22	1
Anthony Fish	Open All Hours	11	1	15	0	26	1
Patrick Buckingham	Carole Lombard	10	1	17	0	27	1
Sarah Trevarthen	Dame Barbara Hepworth	13	0	14	0	27	0

New Show - A One and Six Zeroes

Another new show which I’ve only managed to see today on catch up is A One and Six Zeroes, currently showing at 6 pm on Sundays on Channel 4. I think I should probably put my cards on the table and say that now that I’ve watched the show, I think it is a lot of the things that I dislike in a quiz game show.

Let’s talk about the mechanics of the show for a moment. It's a non-adversarial quiz. You're not playing to beat anyone else, simply to win a sizeable amount of cash. A team of three plays. With the one I watched it was a perfectly nice father, mother and daughter from Durham. The team are asked a number of questions, and they must answer 7 multiple choice questions correctly. It’s not quite that simple though. So the first question decides what the value of the coins they are playing for are. Huh? Well, suppose you get it right? In that case you’re playing for a million £1 coins. If you decide you can’t answer it and take another question, then you’re playing for a million 50p coins, so £500,000. If you don’t like that, then you can swap, and instead play for 20ps. You can keep swapping all the way down to 1p for £10,000. You can swap any of the questions. Okay, so if you get the first question right you lock in the first 0 of the prize pot, the second for the second zero and so on. Get one wrong, and you lose a zero. So, taking the show that I watched, they swapped out 2 questions, so that by the time they got to the last question, they were playing for £200,000. They got it wrong, so lost a zero, which meant that they walked away with £20,000. Still a very nice wedge for an evening’s work.

There is a little more to it. After a couple of questions 1 member of the team had to go sit out the rest of the show, and then a few questions later a second team member had to do the same.

Basically, that’s it. Now, as I said, this is lots of things I dislike in a game show. I’m afraid that I can be very misanthropic, and I get worse as I get older. The family on the show I watched were, frankly very nice, very bubbly, the sort of people I can imagine would be very easy to be friends with. But . . . I didn’t really care about them. Sorry, but when it comes to a quiz game, that’s just not why I buy the ticket in the first place. Yet with so few questions – and remember that even if the team swapped out all of their questions once you’d only get 13 questions in a show – a lot of the heavy lifting is going to be done by the host’s interaction with the team. I like Dara O’Briain very much, but he’s hamstrung on this show. He can poke some gentle fun but he really can’t start ridiculing the team playing. Especially after the Dad revealed that he is a stroke survivor. 

I’ll be honest, I didn’t really think that much of the questions either. Yeah, you’d expect a preponderance of entertainment and sport on a prime-time show, fair enough, but I don’t really like multiple choice questions.

And for me this is the real problem with the show. Even if you do like the question format, there are nothing like enough of them to keep interest in a show which is about 45 minutes in length even without the advertising breaks. Maybe you like the conversation and interplay between host and team. I don’t, it’s not my sort of thing, but even with an audience of people who are quite receptive to it, I think the show is taking a hell of a gamble. After all, not all of the teams are going to be interesting enough for you, it stands to reason. Well, are you going to sit around watching when a particular team doesn’t appeal to you, and the conversation falls flat? Maybe some people would, but I’d imagine that a significant amount of your audience wouldn’t.

Maybe I’m wrong, and maybe a loyal audience will enjoy and stick with this show. But I’d be surprised. The talented Dara is wasted in my opinion, there are too few questions and they’re not all that interesting if truth be told. The only notable thing about the show is the massive prize, and the fact that you can fall quite a long way short of it, and still come away with a very sizeable chunk of cash. And that’s not enough. Sorry, but it’s a no from me. 

New Show - The 1 Percent Club

Saturday evening saw the debut of ITV’s new quiz show, “The 1 Percent Club”. In the interests of the blog, I watched the show on the ITV player this morning. I’ll be honest, it didn’t take me long to come to a couple of conclusions. Before a question was asked, we saw host Lee Mack encouraging one of the 100 contestants to tell us that she thought she was a good singer, but everyone else didn’t, then to sing to prove it. I’ll be honest, that’s the sort of thing which really brings out my misanthropic qualities. – Not going to like this – thought I.Then as the mechanics of the show became apparent, I realised that we were only going to get 15 questions in a whole 45 minute show. Definitely not going to like this – thought I.

This might be an appropriate moment to look at the mechanics of the game. 100 people face a range of questions that have been asked to a large number of people throughout the country. The first question will have been answered correctly by 90% of the people asked, the second 80, the third 70 and so on. After the 50% question, it goes down in fives rather than tens. At some point the players remaining were given one pass, worth £1000, and if they hadn’t used it by a certain point they could leave the show, taking the £1000 with them. Okay. So, when you get a question wrong, then you’re out, unless you play your pass. For every player who is out, £1000 is added to the prize pot. If you manage to last until the 5% question and you get it right, hey, congratulations. However many of you get through can choose to take an equal share of £10,000.If by any chance you’ve got this far without using your pass, then that £1000 goes into your back pocket whatever happens. However you can ignore the £10,000 and attempt the 1 question. If you do, and you get it right, you share whatever is in the prize pot, which is going to be close to 100 grand. Get that wrong though, and it’s all over and you leave with nowt – unless you’ve got the 1 grand for not using your pass.

That’s the mechanics. And maybe if you haven’t seen the show you’ll be thinking, OK, I’ve heard worse. But what that summary of the mechanics doesn’t do is show you the importance of Lee Mack to the show. And make no bones about it, he is very important. I’m not going to make nasty or sarcastic comments about him as a performer. Lee Mack is a highly experienced and successful comedian, and a proven panel game performer. I dare say how much you’ll enjoy the show depends heavily on how much you like Lee Mack. Mind you, I like Lee Mack, but I can’t say that I particularly liked this show.

Why not? Well, I’ve already mentioned its glacial slowness as a quiz. 15 questions in a 45 minute show works out at one question every three minutes. Which might leave you to ask, what the hell does it do for the rest of the time? Well, Lee Mack interacts with the contestants and, er, that’s about it. Now, as I said, I’m not going to criticise Lee Mack – he does his bit very well. It’s easy enough to take the pee out of someone who has just given a wrong answer and humiliate them, and not so easy to extract some humour from the situation without ridiculing and belittling them – and Lee Mack manages to do this, fair play. But at the end of the day, I’m just not interested in this. I’m sorry, but I just don’t care about any of the contestants’ lives off of my screen. I’m not that bothered about them on the screen either, at least, not until the last question anyway.

What about the questions, then? Well, they’re not straight general knowledge, but each requires some logic and some working out. Now, I noticed that the QuizQuizQuiz organisation are involved in setting the questions, and they certainly have a great quiz background and know what they’re doing. But the format of the show means, I’m afraid, that many of the questions, until you really get into the business end, seem blindingly obvious. Which kind of puts this show into a genre I like to think of as ‘Ooh, aren’t you thick?!” This is most noticeable in the earlier rounds, where we saw the spotlight focus on the poor lady who failed to pick out a photograph of a polar bear by a palm tree as the odd one out. I’ve no doubt that she is a perfectly normal person of at least average intelligence, but when you’re taking part in a telly quiz it can do strange things to you.

As I said, I know that QuizQuizQuiz are a very reputable organisation, so if the show says that these questions have been asked to a significant number of people, and this percentage got them right, while that percentage got them wrong, then it’s true. But I have to say that even after 27 years as a question master in the club, and 35 years of teaching, I still found it surprising just how many people seemed to struggle on some of these questions. Case in point. The 1 question, the ‘answer this and you get a share in over 90 grand’ question was this. Which two letters come next in this sequence T N E C R E P E ? Bear in mind the name of the show. Maybe you’d be as surprised as I was when I tell you that only one of three contestants, each of whom had turned down a share in £10,000, got it right. OK, adrenaline and greed are a potent mixture – I threw away £32,000 on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire once because of it – and they make you do strange things. But when you get right down to it, there’s an awful lot of stuff I had to sit through to get to the point in the show where this happened.

A show based on working logically to work out answers to puzzle questions is not intrinsically a bad idea. Theoretically it might be possible to make a quiz game based on this type of questioning which could work well for a wide raging audience at prime time. In my opinion, and by all means feel free to disagree, “The 1 Percent Club’ isn’t it. Which is a bit of a shame, since there is the germ of a halfway decent quiz game here. If you cut out much of the chat and the faffing about it might make a quite diverting daytime show. Of course this is not feasible bearing in mind that you have 100 contestants to deal with. Which is why you put it on prime time, and give it a big name host to justify the time slot, throw it at the wall and hope that most of it sticks. And maybe you will find that works for you. For me, not so much.

The History Of Mastermind 3) The End of an Era

So we reach the third decade of the History of Mastermind, the 1990s. The 90s proved to be a momentous decade for the show and not only because of the quality of the champions, high though that was. 1993 saw the youngest champion, Gavin Fuller, who held that distinction until 2021, when beaten by the slightly younger Jonathan Gibson. 1995 saw the removal of the one series only rule, and then, in 1997, the show was removed from BBCTV altogether. We’ll come to that.

In 1990 teacher David Edwards won the title, despite having to come through a repechage semi final having narrowly lost out in the first-round heats. David has gone on to have an extremely successful quizzing career. Only another Mastermind champion, Pat Gibson, prevented him from becoming an Egghead in the final of the second series of “Are You An Egghead?” and he was the first Mastermind champion to go on to win £1million on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire – Pat Gibson won Millionaire first before winning Mastermind in 2004.

Actor Stephen Allen won in 1991. His professional name is Stephen Tomlin, but he entered, and won, the 1991 series under his own personal name. Stephen was invited into the 2010 Champions series, where he proved he was still no slouch at all by being the second highest scoring runner up from the heats (modesty prevents me from saying who the highest scoring runner up was).

1992 winner, computer programmer Steve Williams, also holds the distinction of being a Countdown octochamp, a distinction he won a few years prior to his Mastermind experiences. Steve did not take part in 2010. I don’t know if he was invited or not, to be perfectly honest, but it’s a shame they couldn’t have all the past champions for the series.

I’ve already mentioned Gavin. In 1993 Gavin’s first round heat specialist subject was Doctor Who. In 2005 there would be a one-off Doctor Who Mastermind competition to celebrate the revival of Doctor Who. Gavin was presented the trophy by the 1977 champion Sir David Hunt – at that time the oldest Mastermind champion.

One other rule change which happened during the 1990s was that contenders were no longer allowed to revert to the specialist subject from their heats if they got to the grand final. Sometimes it happened that it was too difficult to make a fair second set of questions on a given subject and so contenders might be asked to take a different specialist subject anyway. This happened to David Edwards, for example. There was a general feeling that this was rather unfair, and so the fairest thing would be to say that all contenders would have to nominate 3 separate subjects.

The 1994 series was won by the late George Davidson. A university lecturer, in 1965 George had been captain of the Jesus College University Challenge team that reached that year’s semi-finals. To date only one University Challenge winner has gone on to win Mastermind, and we’ll come to him soon.

1995 saw the ending of the ban on appearing in more than one series. In retrospect it seems almost inevitable that the 1995 series should be won by a former contender, and in particular, that it should be won by Kevin Ashman. Kevin Ashman is quite simply a real contender for the title of most successful quizzer ever. Since the noughties he’s probably been best known as one of TV’s Eggheads, but there’s been far more to his career than this. Put simply, when it comes to quizzes, if it’s worth winning then Kevin has won it, and probably more than once. I’m lucky enough to have met Kevin on a number of occasions and have always found him to be a very quiet, self-effacing, modest and friendly guy, in fact, an all-round good bloke. To me, and I would imagine to many other people as well, he is simply the quizzers’ quizzer. Kevin first appeared in the 1987 series when he was beaten in the semi-final. In 1995 he carried all before him, setting a record of 41 that still stands. Never’s a long time, but I can’t see this particular Mastermind record being beaten.

Given the unenviable task of following Kevin, the 1996 series saw clergyman the Reverend Richard Sturch- or ‘Sturch the Church’ as Magnus once called him – become the champion. This was his first attempt at Mastermind, and indeed the next, and as it turned out, last champion of the Magnus era, novelist Anne Ashurst was making her own first appearance as well.

In his book, “I’ve Started So I’ll Finish” Magnus describes receiving the letter telling him that the 1997 series would be the last without any rancour or self-pity. The series was somewhat shorter than had become the norm, and the final took place, at Magnus’ suggestion, in the Cathedral of St. Magnus in Kirkwall on Orkney. Magnus relates that he had arranged that, if the result of the show was in no doubt, then the last question asked would be the first he had asked in the first edition of the show in 1972, about Picasso’s Guernica.  

All good things must come to an end. . . but Mastermind never did. In the same announcement that the 1997 series would be the last, it was also announced that the show would continue on BBC Radio 4. Magnus never mentions this in his book. So I honestly have no idea whether he was asked to do it but turned it down, or whether he was never asked and it was given to Peter Snow. Whatever the case, for the next three years Mastermind joined Radio 4’s extremely strong stable of quizzes, notably Brain of Britain, Counterpoint and Round Britain Quiz.

I’ve always formed the impression that the BBC would rather wipe the radio years out of the history of Mastermind. Three fine champions won in those years – Robert Gibson in 1998, Christopher Carter in 1999, and Stephen Follows in 2000. Stephen incidentally is to date the only University Challenge winner to also win Mastermind. If you look on the official BBC Mastermind Gallery, not only does it not mention Radio 4 Mastermind in the History of the Show section, but the winners’ gallery also jumps from Anne Ashurst in 1997 to Andy Page in 2003. You’d like more evidence? Well, in my grand final in 2007, John Humphrys announced at the start that we were all playing to become the 30^th Mastermind champion. Rubbish. We were playing to become the 30^th BBCTV Mastermind champion, but the 34th champion overall. Mind you, I didn’t tell him so at the time. I doubt that any of the radio champs were invited to take part in the 2010 champions series.

For all that I enjoyed all of the radio Mastermind shows that I listened to, I did think that the show worked better on TV than on radio. Not being able to watch the contenders during their rounds did rob it of one level of tension, in my opinion. Please feel free to disagree. Whatever the case, after 3 years on the radio the show did return to TV in 2001. Not BBCTV, though, but the Discovery Channel. I had mixed feelings after watching some of the shows. While it was great to see the show back on TV, I wasn’t sure that the shorter rounds which were necessary to accommodate the commercial break were a good idea. I didn’t like the incidental music in the show, and I didn’t think that Mastermind and Clive Anderson as question master were a good match for each other. Nonetheless, the show produced an excellent champion in Michael Penrice, a perennial Fifteen to One Grand Finalist, and the last but one teacher to win Mastermind.

If nothing else, maybe Discovery Mastermind encouraged BBCTV to take it back as its own. In 2002 John Humphrys presented the first Celebrity Mastermind. It raised hopes that a new regular series might be just around the corner . . .

Where now for the blog?

Apologies if this sounds a little self-congratulatory. I mean, it is a little self-congratulatory, but I’m sorry if this sounds that way. I revived the blog (again) on the 26^th August 2021 to review Clive Myrie’s first regular Mastermind. I didn’t know if I was going to continue the blog, or whether it would all just peter out again, just as it had done in previous revivals.

Since then I have made over 100 posts in just under 8 months. To put that into perspective, the last time that I made over 100 posts within a calendar year was as long ago as 2015.

Of course, the vast majority of these recent posts have been reviews of University Challenge and Mastermind. And there’s the thing. University Challenge 2022 ended with the Grand Final last Monday. Mastermind 2022 will end with the Grand Final next Monday. So I find myself wondering – what am I going to post about until the Autumn when they come back?

And it is a fair question to ask. Looking back to 2015, at the start of the year I was reviewing University Challenge, Mastermind, Only Connect and Brain of Britain. I was posting In the News questions based on my ‘doing the papers’ and their answers every week. I was also still just about doing my podcast. During the year I did post about some new quiz shows, and also about regular quizzes I took part in, and the quiz league in Bridgend. In 2011, 12 and 13 I managed over 300 posts a year, which, with the benefit of hindsight, is probably overkill.

Now, though, I find myself wondering – how am I going to keep it going now for the next few months until UC starts again? After all:-

In 2017 I stopped playing in the Bridgend Quiz League. I had been diagnosed with depression (don’t worry, I shan’t be banging on about this again much) and it was a bad time all round. I don’t have any bad feelings towards the league, but I haven’t any strong wish to play in it again now. Which is not to say that if I was asked to help out a team in a hypothetical local league I would automatically say no. I am far too susceptible to flattery for that. But it certainly isn’t in my plans.

I have only a couple of times gone to more than one quiz in a week since the pandemic began. I certainly don’t plan to expend my quiz activity at least until I finish teaching, hopefully in a couple of years’ time.

So I guess why I’m writing this post is to say that I want to keep the blog going, or at least ticking over until the return of my two fave shows, but as to the content, well, I’m just going to have to play that one by ear.