Mastermind

The music, the chair. The lights shining on me. And John Humphrys sitting yards away, asking me for my name, occupation and specialist subject. What was I thinking?

I’d wanted to go on Mastermind for years, had applied several times in fact but never got past the qualifying interview where every applicant gets asked the same set of random general knowledge questions to which the answers are never revealed. But, in 2018, I was successful.

They asked me what I would like my specialist subjects to be (you must have three, assuming progression to the final). The rule here is that your subject must have had at least two books published about it that are either in print or easily available second-hand (on this basis, Watford Football Club was ineligible; insert your own joke here). The reason for this is that the people at the BBC who set the questions need to know where to get the information and they can’t just use Wikipedia, it has to be from a source that has been published. I chose John Buchan, Samuel Johnson and – should I make it to the final – the Flashman novels.

Why these? Well, I’ve volunteered at Dr Johnson’s House in the City and I love the Flashman books. John Buchan, meanwhile, is one of my favourite novelists – I first encountered him at school when we had The Thirty-Nine Steps as a class reader in second-year (nowadays Year Eight) English. I don’t recall spending much time on it in class, not that that mattered as I devoured it over a weekend, and then went looking for more books by ‘JB’ (as he was widely known) in the school library. There were quite a few…

Not long after talking specialist subjects, I got the call to say I’d made it onto the show. An email followed shortly with a date and time at which I would be expected to report to the BBC studio at Media City.

And so to Salford. I had to take at least one change of clothes, in case I clashed with another contestant! I went for smart, with a tie and – inspired by Gareth Southgate, for it was that World Cup summer – a waistcoat. None of my rivals went for ties, so I had won on ‘best-dressed contestant’; in fact one of the others had to get changed because of a prominent logo (despite instructions – well, it is a BBC show). Another had previously been on Pointless (which I had once seen as part of the studio audience; another story for another time) but hadn’t won anything.

Here’s what happened: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzzDUMFWnPE&list=PL5riq3KQovvwZwuXgehOfZgX1p0GW0-mW

In a change from the show’s usual format, we went into the studio individually for our specialist rounds and didn’t see how the others did. Then it was back into the studio for general knowledge and only then would we learn how the others had done.

Could I beat three others who’d got to this stage? Unsure, I concentrated on my own expectations. A final score of over twenty would, I felt, be a good showing – whereas under ten would be disgraceful.

The specialist subject round passed in a blur. I remember bright lights as John Humphrys asked the first question; I knew the answer before he’d finished but the rules say you can’t interrupt. At the end, 14 points, no passes and one rather long-winded (but correct) answer. A smile and applause at the end, then I walked off into the company of a runner who kept me apart from the others.

Back in the studio, I wasn’t really surprised when John Humphrys called up one of the others as the lowest-scoring contestant but when he wouldn’t say his score I was surprised. Then, as the poor bloke did very poorly on general knowledge, I remembered that he had said that he was a secondary school teacher and I thought I would not like to be him when this got broadcast. He ended with just seven points. As the highest scorer in the specialist knowledge round, I was the last contestant to be called up, although by then I knew I only needed four points to win.

Was I confident? You bet; my penchant for general knowledge was one of the reasons I’d wanted to go on Mastermind in the first place! But there was this nagging doubt … which didn’t really feature for the next couple of minutes. A couple of slip-ups – since when did I know much about the Brit Awards? – but in the end, a comfortable win, 26 points in total. I was very pleased with myself. Next stop, the semi-finals!

Back in Salford a couple of months later, the atmosphere was very different and not just because there were five contestants, not four (meaning less time for questions). My fellow semi-finalists were all regular quizzers who all seemed to know each other; some had been on Mastermind before and were on first name terms with BBC staff! Most were also several years older (and wiser? we would soon find out!) than me.

Here’s what happened: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt2UD3DY9po

Afterwards, we had to wait several months until the show was broadcast (there are 24 first-round episodes of Mastermind, broadcast one every week, followed by five semi-finals and then the final itself). To be honest, I got fed up with getting asked when ‘my’ episodes would be on – here was a question for which the only answer could be ‘pass’!

It was only when it was broadcast (first round in February 2019, semi-final in April) that certain memories came back.

Not giving me a point for the question about Argentinian cowboys was a bit harsh! Still, at least I did not come last.

The best bit about my semi-final appearance, though, was never going to be broadcast. As I sat in the chair after my general knowledge round, it was announced that they needed to change a camera angle (or something like that) and I would need to stay seated as John Humphrys hadn’t told me my score yet! So, there I was in the Mastermind chair, with John Humphrys staring across at me with no questions. None that were scripted, anyway. What followed next is why I know that John Humphrys, he of the Today programme on Radio Four, is a great interviewer. It started with “so, you say you're a tour guide” and within three questions, we were talking about his native Wales (where, admittedly, I have done tours) with him waxing lyrical about Aberaeron (a town some 25 miles south of Aberystwyth where, I later learned, he has a house). I can personally attest that telling a Welshman that your favourite place in Wales is Tenby (a.k.a. ‘Little England Beyond Wales’) is not a smart move. What can I say? Golden beaches, a couple of nice pubs – not that John Humphrys gave me a chance to back up what I had said, of course. He just said that that was the wrong answer!

Specialising in John Buchan for the first round has had an unusual outcome. My performance was noticed by Ursula Buchan, a grand-daughter of JB and author of a recent a biography, Beyond the Thirty-Nine Steps (too late for me to claim it as a book I used for revision; there are two previous biographies, one written in the Sixties and the other in the Nineties). Some time after my first-round episode, the book launch took place and, having written a biography of a former Governor-General of Canada (as Lord Tweedsmuir, JB held this position from 1935 until his death in 1940), Ursula sent out an invitation to the Canadian High Commission. The High Commissioner was unavailable so the invite got passed onto the trade division … where Allison (my wife) happens to work!

Allison told Ursula of her own interesting JB connection – to which Ursula replied that we would both be very welcome, although this was a coincidence that JB himself wouldn’t have dared use in his novels! We were made to feel very welcome at the launch at Daunt Books in Marylebone, an event in which I found myself in the unusual situation of being in the presence of dozens of descendants of a man who I’d answered questions about on national television. I bought the book, of course, and Ursula was good enough to sign it for “a much admired Mastermind supremo!”.

Would I do it again? Did the dream live up to the reality? Perhaps these are specialist questions saved for a future episode!