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Why do parents come to Master Brain Academy? In addition, one other contestant, Mark Grant, was appearing in his second "Mastermind" Grand Final, having previously achieved the feat in The champion, Dr.
Ian Bayley, had previously been a contestant twice on 'University Challenge', reaching the second round on his first appearance on behalf of Imperial College, London, in and the quarter-finals the second time on behalf of Balliol College, Oxford, in Bayley later went on to become a 'Mastermind' finallist in and was narrowly beaten by Nancy Dickmann, which made him all the more determined to go one better in the series. Oh, and he'd also previously won 'Brain of Britain', as Humphrys pointed out when presenting Bayley with the 'Mastermind' trophy.
Another champion who'd formerly been on UC was the winner Marianne Fairthorne, who had been part of the London School of Economics team that reached the quarter-finals of the series of said quiz.
The rules were changed in to allow previous contenders, except finalists, to return. This has since been changed again to allow defeated finalists another go as well. Isabelle Heward may be the most prolific contender: she has appeared in five series , , , , , reaching the semi-finals on each of her last four entries and winning the series at her fifth attempt, having advanced to the final via what is believed to be the first-ever three-way tiebreak.
Delighted though Heward was to receive the trophy, she did express mild disappointment that she couldn't go through the whole process again, seemingly only half-joking. Geoff Thomas won the title at his fourth attempt: he was a semi-finalist in and again in 's one-off Discovery Mastermind series, runner-up in and finally champion in Brian Chesney won the series on his second attempt in , having lost the final only on passes.
Mark Grant has been a finalist three times, in , and , and he has appeared in at least 2 other series, in which he has been a semi-finalist. A contender who was in 2 grand finals, other than the previously-mentioned Dr. Bayley, was Richard Heller, who made it that far in and Sheila Altree also appeared in four series , , , , the first time under her first married name, Sheila Denyer.
She won her heat in before someone tipped off the producers that Altree and Denyer were the same person and they disqualified her. A panel of clergy contested a heat at Norwich Cathedral in and the winner, Dr. Richard Sturch, went on to win that series' grand final.
When he returned for the 'Champion of Champions' series, Sturch revealed that he had originally gone on mainly because, at the time, the clergy had not been getting a very good press within the field of quizzing and other aspects of popular culture, so he had wanted to try to redress the balance, as did the 'Mastermind' team, which was why they had decided to have an all-clergymen edition.
However, it's also worth noting that the famous 'showbiz vicar', the Reverend David Smith, was still very active in the quizzing world at the time: he had always proved highly entertaining and knowledgeable in all the many shows he had been on. In , married couple Paul and Christine Hancock competed in the same edition of the show.
Both scored 34 correct answers and two passes; Mr. Hancock won the play-off by one question. Magnus very appropriately entitled that edition 'Hancock's Half-Hour'. The couple also later appeared on Masterteam , along with Mr.
Hancock's brother. Similarly, a father and son who appeared on the programme were Ashok Venkatesh, who had been a finallist in the regular series, and his son, Nikhil, who had previously done well in his first-round match in that year's 'Junior' series. Nikhil went on to become a contestant on the series of University Challenge : his team made it as far as the quarter-finals.
Another family event occurred during the two series of Junior Mastermind. In the series screened early that year, twins Robert and Tintin real name Antonia Stutter competed in separate heats. Although they both scored impressively, only Robert made it into the Grand Final, which he duly won - with the specialised subject of Tintin , appropriately enough. Their younger brother Edmund took part in the later series, having apparently been determined to follow in his siblings' footsteps, and also performed well: he was one of the defeated finallists.
Had he won, he would have received the trophy from his own brother, because the previous champions in that series always came to present the trophy. Previous winners also presented the trophy on several occasions during the regular series. One of Robert's opponents in the aforementioned Grand Final, William, had interested Humphrys in his first round by answering questions and winning the heat on 'Hancock's Half Hour' - Humphrys was surprised that a radio comedy from so long ago held the interest of such a young contender.
It also transpired that William listened to the 'Today' programme, much to Humphrys's delight - but in fact, the only reason for that was the fact that the lad's parents insisted on listening to said programme while driving him to school and, as he was always sat in the back of the car, he could not change the channel.
Oh well, you can't win 'em all, Humphrys, eh? Oh, and William also had the honour of meeting the then-Duke of Wellington, who gave him a good deal of helpful information and encouragement towards his specialist subject for the Grand Final, namely The Battle of Waterloo.
Another memorable moment from 'Junior Mastermind' was just after the last so far champion, David Verghese, had been presented with his trophy by the aforementioned Robert: Humphrys asked David what he hoped to do next and the latter stated that, as soon as he was old enough, he wanted to go on University Challenge , adult Mastermind and Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Humphrys duly wished him luck with all that.
In fact, David has now achieved one of those ambitions, by appearing in the series of University Challenge : his team made it as far as the quarter-finals. Many of the celebrities' appearances on their version of the show proved memorable. Vic Reeves did a silly walk to the black chair and Magnus rather sourly asked him, "Occupation?
When John Humphrys asked Edward Stourton for his name, Stourton responded in mock-indignation, "John - we practically sleep together! Why not indeed? When Bernard Cribbins appeared, Humphrys asked him to do a 'Wombles'-narration, which he was famous for doing in the 70's - Cribbins duly obliged with his usual great aplomb, finishing with, "John - go out and collect any old rubbish you can, but John - don't bring her back to the burrow!
Humphrys also asked Tim Vine to do his most famous trick of telling as many jokes as he could in a short space of time one minute in this case and, like Cribbins, Vine certainly did not disappoint us. Nor did Pam Ayres, who recited an excellent poem that she had composed about taking part in the show. When she won the game, Humphrys asked whether she had a poem for that too, and Ayres responded, "Well, I'm sure I will, but I'm so stunned at the moment - you'll have to give me some time" - fair enough.
In addition, thanks to Humphrys, we got to find out how Spoony got his nickname - apparently, his head was shaped like a spoon when he was a kid. We also found out that the veteran quiz host and producer William G.
Stewart found asking the questions much easier than answering them. Later on in that episode, when Peter Serafinowicz was presented with his trophy, he returned to the black chair and pretended to drop off to sleep, as if indicating that the whole experience was a very draining one.
Humphrys was somewhat nonplussed and tried nudging him - but to no avail. A classic moment occurred in the all-comedians Children In Need special, when Stephen K Amos scored 5 points with 5 passes on his specialist subject, which just happened to be Five Star, the s pop group! Amos then went on to achieve an equally appropriate final score of 15, admittedly with a bit of help from Humphrys, but rightly so in this case.
Soon after this, when the late Michael Winner appeared, he failed to live up to his name quite the reverse, in fact and even resorted to constantly asking Humphrys, "Can I ask the audience? Actually, it was nice to see Winner showing a sense of humour, rather than his usual abrasive persona. Humphrys decided to move swiftly on. When Humphrys presented the trophy to Hilary Kay in a Celebrity edition, he asked her to give a valuation for said trophy, much as she would in her main show, The Antiques Roadshow.
Kay responded, in her usual style, "Well, how much would you say it's worth? One question enquiring after the title of their reunion album had to be answered in French Pour l'Amour des Chiens and he failed to do so, but was most indignant when Humphrys took it as a pass. At the end of his round, Threlfall protested that he knew what it was but just couldn't manage the French pronunciation. Threlfall still looked and sounded disgruntled, although he appeared slightly mollified when he found out that he'd scored 12 points.
Humphrys' apparent rudeness was explained and excused when Threlfall returned for his General Knowledge questions and their chat revealed that Humphrys and Threlfall knew each other from the school run, as their children went to the same school.
Actor Rhys Thomas not only scored a celebrity record 21 points on his specialist subject, the rock group Queen, but did so dressed in a replica of Freddie Mercury's famous harlequin costume, much to Humphrys' amusement.
Comedian Andi Osho made a considerable impact when competing in one of the celebrity specials. Not only did she become the first celebrity to win twice, having previously done so in the Children In Need Special, but she also chose 'The Life and Career of John Humphrys ' as her specialist subject, "for reasons best known to herself", declared a rather bemused Humphrys.
Humphrys was even more bemused in a celebrity edition, when he had a puppet, CBBC's Hacker T Dog, as a contender - his Humphrys's resigned expression and voice said it all.
For the Today anchor, the occasion was made all the more surreal by the fact that it was filmed on the day of Donald Trump's victory in the US Presidential election - he later summed up his thoughts as "I've been a political journalist for most of my life, and here I am on a day when a massive story has broken that will affect the entire world and I'm interviewing a puppet! Hacker actually achieved a decent score and nearly won, puppeteer Phil Fletcher having insisted on taking a subject that he knew about - the pop duo Pet Shop Boys - rather than the producers' suggested topic of Sue Barker.
The chef Paul Rankin beat him by just one point - and only on his Rankin's very last question at that - he would otherwise have lost to Hacker on passes. Oh, and let's not forget that classic moment when "Dad's Army's" Ian Lavender had just sat down in the black chair: Humphrys asked him his name and one of Lavender's opponents, Rick Wakeman, called out that immortal line, "Don't tell him, Pike! The first ever question asked on the show was "Picasso's Guernica was a protest about the bombing by Spanish planes of a village.
What was the year when the event took place which inspired the painting? Which is a shame, since the bombers were German, not Spanish. As a way of 'correcting' the error on Magnus's final show as host, after ensuring that it would not affect the scores, he swapped in a virtually identical question to the first one asked back in in the dying seconds of the final contender's general knowledge round.
According to question-setter Elizabeth Salmon, this was the first and only time a question on the show was censored in this way. Magnus Magnusson claimed that he once got a letter from an irate viewer who accused him of blasphemy for saying that Jesus' first name was Reginald. It turned out that the correspondent had actually misheard a question concerning Jeeves's first name! With the many hundreds, if not thousands of questions asked each series, it's perhaps inevitable an incorrect question will slip through now and again.
In one episode in February , a contender was asked of which African country was Janet Jagan the president between The contender guessed Ghana, but was told the answer was Guyana - which is in fact a South American country. The contender in question ultimately finished in last place however, some 13 points behind the winner, and 6 points behind their nearest competitor, meaning it didn't materially affect the game.
In a heat in , Colin Cadby was judged to have given an incorrect answer to a question when he had actually got it correct. He ended up losing to Tony Dart - however, he qualified as one of the highest-scoring losers, and ended up reaching the final beating Dart in his semi-final. Around , John Humphrys asked the question 'Which chemical has the symbol Ti?
Thankfully it made no difference to the outcome of the match. In one celebrity edition, the question setters took advantage of Humphrys' Welsh origins by having him enquire after the island on which Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch is situated.
Anglesey, which the contender Hal Cruttenden got right. Similarly, Humphrys used said Welsh heritage to good effect again when, in the regular series, he read out the names of characters from a certain radio drama by Dylan Thomas and the contender was asked to name said drama: 'Under Milk Wood', of course. Pleasingly, one former contender, Anna Torpey, later became a question-setter for the programme and was listed as such in the end credits during that period.
Torpey was a finallist in the series. In addition, a former 'University Challenge' champion, Freya McClements, has recently become a question-setter on 'Mastermind'. Nancy Lam scored 5 points on John Humphrys ' final episode 1 on her specialist subject. By the programme had visited every British university, with Aberdeen the last to play host to the show.
One venue that provided some very interesting scenery was the National Motor Museum in Beaulieu, Hampshire, which played host to the show in it was certainly refreshingly different to see the contenders competing amid a collection of vintage vehicles.
The same museum reappeared 21 years later on the first 'Junior Mastermind' Grand Final - not as a venue for the programme, but as the place where the eventual winner, Daniel Parker, had gone to research his chosen subject.
That subject was 'James Bond Villains', although one would suspect that the museum was actually a more obvious research-venue for his previous subject, namely 'The Volkswagen Beetle'. Not that it ultimately mattered in any case: he won the series in considerable style. It only moved north in , when the Salford complex opened.
That pressure, that dramatic tension, is part of the reason the show became such a success after it kicked off in the UK on BBC1 in Creator Bill Wright drew on his experiences as a prisoner of war in Germany during World War II in coming up with the intimidating format.
But for viewers, the show offers another layer of fascination: the specialist topic. For the new Australian version, each night four contestants will have 90 seconds to answer as many questions as possible on their special subject.
In round two, they again face 90 seconds of rapid-fire questions, this time on general knowledge.
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