Fifty years ago there occurred a pivotal couple of days in my father’s life. On 11 September 1972, the first ever episode of Mastermind aired. Two days later, he became a father for the third time, when I was born. I like to think the latter milestone was the more significant, but it was a close-run thing.
My dad – who before Mastermind would never have watched a quiz show – adored the programme. Some of my earliest memories involve being curled up on his lap, listening in awe as he answered question after question, frequently outperforming guests on their specialist subjects. My sisters and I begged him to apply but, modest to a fault, he shunned the limelight.
Like dad, Mastermind was understated, unshowy and intellectual. It lacked the pizazz of other gameshows. Gone were the jaunty theme tunes, the wise-cracking host, the excitable contestants and the big cash prizes. Instead, portentous music (appropriately entitled Approaching Menace) was followed by a contestant walking to a black leather office chair, where they were subjected to two minutes of brutal interrogation by the show’s unsmiling host, Magnus Magnusson.
This interrogatory aspect of Mastermind was no accident. The show was the brainchild of producer Bill Wright, who based the format on his experience of being interrogated by the Gestapo during the second world war. Wright, an RAF gunner, had been shot down over Germany, and upon capture, was suspected of being a spy.
For three weeks the Gestapo questioned him, repeatedly demanding his name, rank and serial number, until they were finally able to verify his credentials as a bona fide serviceman. The single light over the contestant in a darkened studio, and the rapid-fire questions, were a nod to Wright’s experiences. “Name, rank and serial number” was replaced by “Name, occupation and specialist subject”. There was no small talk.
But Mastermind’s gladiatorial nature wasn’t the only thing that singled it out from other TV quiz shows. It was also really hard.
Indeed, so hard were the questions that BBC executives had given the show a late-night slot for fear that it was too highbrow for a prime-time audience. It was only during the second series that the show was moved, when the new Leslie Phillips sitcom, Casanova ’73, was shunted to a later time thanks to its supposedly lewd content. Mastermind was given its 8pm slot, and found an audience. And what an audience. At its peak, this humble quiz show pulled in ratings of 20 million viewers.
Yet the audience figures didn’t create celebrities of the winners – until the arrival of Fred Housego in 1980. Before Housego, Mastermind champions tended to be, as he later put it, “librarians, retired civil servants, lecturers and lawyers”. Housego was a London taxi driver, who was immediately – and somewhat patronisingly – declared a “working-class hero”. While eschewing such grandiose tags, Housego used his newfound fame to build himself a decent media career, including presenting The Six O’Clock Show, and hosting a late-night phone-in on LBC well into the 1990s.
Shaun Wallace, better known to many today as The Dark Destroyer on ITV’s The Chase, was another whose fame transcended the famous Mastermind chair. The first black series winner, in 2004, he recalls being absolutely overcome by the magnitude of his achievement. “I just sat there for about two minutes. I don’t think I’ve ever been happier. Tears of joy were just flooding down my face – I think they thought there was something wrong with me. They had to re-film the ending once I’d gathered my composure.”
Kevin Ashman, familiar to TV quiz aficionados as one of the Eggheads, was another whose celebrity began with Mastermind. He holds the record for the highest score in the show’s history – a staggering 41 points, achieved in the first round of the 1995 series, with his specialist subject the life of Martin Luther King. Ashman went on to win the series, before becoming the world quiz champion six times.
But for every Kevin Ashman, there is a Kajen Thuraaisingham. Thuraaisingham holds the dubious honour of the lowest score in the (main) show’s history. Disaster befell the software analyst in 2010, when he recorded a score of just five points. Even worse was Kadeena Cox’s appearance on Celebrity Mastermind. Cox, a magnificent Paralympic athlete, proved less adept at answering questions, with her general knowledge round becoming the only pointless round in Mastermind history.
Not that she is the only celebrity to embarrass herself on the show. David Lammy MP, the shadow foreign secretary, once asserted that Henry VIII was succeeded on the throne by Henry VII. Meanwhile, in the show’s regular version, a contestant was once asked what Sir Alex Ferguson was reportedly doing when he discovered Manchester United had won the 1992/3 league title. The correct answer was playing golf. Not, as the contestant suggested, “having a poo”. It’s not often you see John Humphrys dumbstruck.
The show’s current host, Clive Myrie, has sympathy for contestants who freeze in the spotlight. “Oh it’s sad. They’ve already come through a pretty tough vetting process to make it on to the show, but the pressure is just too much when it really counts. Everyone understands that sometimes things don’t go according to plan. That’s why it’s television’s toughest quiz, and why being able to call yourself a Mastermind champion is the pinnacle. You’re not just battling the questions – you’re battling the nerves!”
Although I was raised with Mastermind, literally at my father’s knee, my own relationship with the show has been more intermittent. But when Covid hit, my wife and I had an awful lot of free evenings to fill. Having worked our way through lockdown staples such as Tiger King and Normal People, we stumbled across Mastermind on iPlayer. Pandora’s box was duly opened. We spent night after night mainlining Mastermind and knocking back wine, getting ever more competitive as the evening went on. We even started keeping score – an unforgivable display of geekiness that I put down to the temporary insanity of lockdown. We all cope in different ways. Ours was to shout at each other about whose answer had been shouted first.
And so, two days apart, Mastermind and I celebrate our 50th birthdays. Sadly, only one of us is thought to be getting easier with age. But Myrie has this combative response to those who say the show has dumbed down. “I look forward to seeing them take on the black chair! Smartypants!” He readily admits he couldn’t take on the challenge himself. “I’ve never believed that I could function as a Mastermind. I know the pressure. There’s no conferring. There’s no one you can lean on. I would never ever sit in that chair and do it.”
Indeed, it is because the show is still so difficult that it has remained such a fixture on TV screens. “It is still Britain’s toughest quiz, and thoroughly entertaining. Its enduring appeal is down to its simplicity; a test of knowledge against the clock,” says Myrie. “The format itself is an interrogation. You’re seeing someone under the spotlight, being grilled as the clock ticks down, and that can be thrilling, but it can be uplifting as well.”
In the end, it’s all about the questions. And, as such, the real heroes of the show aren’t the presenters – or even the contestants. They are the question-setters, who have to ensure an equal level of difficulty – and question length – across a range of subjects, from complex nuclear physics to the history of the Spice Girls.
Occasionally, though, even they hit a brick wall. Over the years, Mastermind has had to ban certain topics from its specialist subject list, because they have simply run out of questions. Anyone submitting applications for Blackadder, Fawlty Towers, Father Ted, Harry Potter, Roald Dahl or The Chronicles of Narnia will be disappointed.
And, in the past five decades, some subjects have proved too niche even for Mastermind. So we will never be treated to the prospect of two minutes of questioning about farm wagons and carts of England and Wales, cremation practice and law in Britain, orthopaedic cement in total hip replacement, or routes to anywhere in mainland Britain by road from Letchworth. One contestant even applied proposing the subject “meat”. On being told it was unsuitable, they offered to change it to “pork”. It was still rejected.
Dad died in January 2017. His last years had been blighted by Alzheimer’s – a savage and cruel irony that a man of such remarkable memory should, in the end, fail to call to mind even the names of his loved ones. But to me, and to my mum and sisters, he will always be the genius who uncharacteristically allowed himself – only in front of his family – to show off just a little bit. Maybe he wouldn’t have been the next Kevin Ashman, Fred Housego or Shaun Wallace. But he’d have given them a bloody good run for their money.
• Mastermind returns to BBC Two on 19 September at 7pm.
