I’d always been a bit of a quizzer. Right back to primary school when I was booed off the park by my own classmates for scoring the own goal that knocked us out of a local cup competition but redeemed myself in the inter-schools quiz contest by being the highest scorer – this time in the right direction – as we won the competition.
So some ten-fifteen years later when pub quizzes became popular all over the country I was a keen participant. Most of the contestants– where I was on Teesside at least – had been, like myself, made redundant and in an area where male unemployment bobbed along just below the 50% mark it was a useful distraction from the dole and the opportunity to win a few quid or at worst a couple of pints.
It was a team of mates, not chosen for any particular expertise. The regulars were myself, a redundant steelworker, an officially unemployed but occasional taxi driver and one guy who actually had proper job – a docker. I’m not claiming we won everything in sight but we did okay. We’d go to two or three different local quizzes each week and generally won enough to pay for the night out.
Some took it more seriously. There was one team – two unemployed brothers and a couple whose occupations (if any, I forget) I can’t remember. They were assembled on different lines. The brothers were reputed to stay up at night reading encyclopaedias and spend most of the day in the reference library – this being the 1980s and the nascent Internet another decade away. The couple had a handy general knowledge too. They were our greatest rivals and to be honest usually emerged victorious.
But it was a friendly rivalry and one of the brothers told us about this new TV quiz he was going on. It wasn’t so much the TV appearance that attracted our team but the cash. Auditions took place in Newcastle. Anyone could turn up. Train fare was paid and £15 expenses. Think about it. Fares paid and the equivalent of £40 in today’s money tax-free, in your hand in cash, no questions asked. As would later become the phrase it was a no-brainer.
So off we trooped. The audition consisted of a few personal questions and a general knowledge test. To my surprise I was one of the lucky ones selected for the programme. Later I found out this was not as great an achievement as at first sight as the programme was ‘Fifteen-to-One’ which must by now have a six-figure total of contestants over the years.
Over the course of the next year I appeared on it four times, winning two, losing two and reaching one grand final – which was won by Kevin Ashman, later to win ‘Mastermind’ and now a familiar face on shows such as ‘Eggheads.’ On the first occasion my mother told me of a neighbour racing across from the other side of the street and banging on her window telling my mum to ‘switch your telly on, your oldest boy’s on it.’
As if there was a mother in the country who wouldn’t have had their video set to record half an hour before the programme started!
It was from the comparative success there I started to think about ‘Mastermind.’ I’d seen an old teacher of mine appear on it some years previously and reach the semi-finals and like most of the country liked to try and answer the general knowledge questions at least each week.
I was invited to audition – again, if I recall correctly, in Newcastle. I forget what the expenses were but I think on this occasion it was fares only. Certainly the BBC were nowhere near as generous as Channel 4 had been.
It was a similar set of questions and answers – a bit about your personal life and a few general knowledge questions. I left thinking that would be the end of it. White men in their thirties wasn’t exactly the smallest pool for the BBC to fish in.
But I was selected and it was off to the University of Sheffield for the programme. Presenter Magnus Magnusson was amiable and spent a good deal of time chatting with contestants. Two shows were recorded the same day and it was there I met David Steele who was on the other show. David was a keen football fan, programme editor at Carlisle United and we struck up a friendship that has held to this day – even if only at times via Xmas card.
First round. Click to enlarge
It was football that brought us together. David’s subject was ‘The life and career of David Lloyd George’ while mine was ‘The History of British Football from 1863’ So came about my fifteen minutes of fame, thirty years ago today (date of posting). Contestants were introduced to each other beforehand and there was no real rivalry between us. ‘Mastermind’ is like golf. You can only post your own score. You can’t affect anyone else’s. A total that wins one week might be last the next. That particular week – for the programme to be broadcast on April 22nd 1990 – my score was enough to win.
The BBC impressed on everyone the importance of secrecy over the result. Not even closest family members were to be told. So the next few weeks were a bit of a trial as obviously I was delighted to have won and keen to let the world know. But I held out and after the programme was broadcast people on the whole were very kind and congratulatory. I’ll be honest. There were a few whose noses were out of joint and the temptation to give a Father Ted-style ‘Golden Cleric’ award speech was strong. But fortunately I was able to resist.
Many commented on how modest I seemed in triumph. They thought I’d be more excited at the prospect of the upcoming semi-final than I appeared to be. It wasn’t modesty. The semi-final had been recorded in Colchester at the University of Essex a few days prior to the first round broadcast and I already knew I was out. Of course I couldn’t reveal that and had to go along with the pretence that I was looking forward to it, and thanking everyone for their good luck wishes.
Round One L-R Mike Humphrey, Magnus Magnusson, myself, Kenneth Goodridge. Seated: Josephine Levine. Click to enlarge.
I’ll say a word here about the BBC. While in general they treated everyone very well the old establishment air still hung about them. The format was that in the grand final contestants were allowed to revert to their first round specialist subject but I was told in no uncertain terms was football was infra dig and if I won the semi-final I’d have to find a totally new subject for the final. I wouldn’t be allowed to use my semi-final topic ‘European political history 1870-1945’ either. I’d have to start from scratch. It wouldn’t happen nowadays but back then the BBC thought they were taking a bit of a risk including such a ‘lowbrow’ topic as football (then at its lowest ebb in the UK, post-Heysel and Hillsborough and with English clubs still banned from Europe) on what was their most prestigious quiz show. The other finalists’ subjects were the lives and works of Verdi, Mary Wollstonecraft, James Clerk Maxwell, and Cicero. Knowing the outcome of, say, the 1929 Scottish Cup Final was not considered of equal merit.
In case you’re remotely interested Killie beat Rangers 2-0 in 1929. Couldn’t resist using that as my example.
Of course defeat in the semi-final (with the same score as when winning if memory serves) meant that was no longer an option but I knew before the semi-final was taped I had no chance of being the eventual winner. Taking up an entirely new subject while others reverted to their first choice (and no one gave their best subject as a semi-final option because no one could guarantee winning the first round) was, I knew, a bridge too far. David Steele was in the same semi-final but the winner was Paul Webbewood who took the history of the Labour Party since 1900 as his final topic (thus ruining what would have been my ‘third’ choice). The final itself was won by David Edwards who later went on to win £1,000,000 on ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.’
The pretence that I was in with a shout was kept up until early June when the semi-final was aired.
Semi-final line-up. Click to enlarge.
There were some consequences, one distressing, one amusing. The first was that I was more or less forced into ‘retirement’ from pub quizzes. Having now appeared six times in total in both quizzes over fifteen months I was now recognised by other contestants locally. Mutterings of ‘that cunt was on Mastermind’ became commonplace and I was politely requested by a few pubs and clubs to stop competing as some teams stopped turning up fearing they had no chance of winning and takings were being hit.
It was a nonsense. Again, knowing the 1929 Scottish Cup Final outcome or the year the Kaiser dismissed Bismarck – 1890 - wasn’t going to have a great effect on pub quizzes. But the psychology was strong so after a few months I packed it in. I still went out with my mates and I encouraged them to find a new team member but after a while they too stopped competing. A group that had quizzed together for around a decade split up though we continued to meet socially.
There was, as mentioned above, also the amusing. I was in Middlesbrough bus station one day and a woman approached me asking if I was the guy she’d seen on ‘Mastermind.’ We struck up what I thought was just a polite conversation that took a strange turn when out of the blue she said ‘I bet you watch ‘Morse.’ That’s the most intelligent show on TV.’
I had to confess that while I knew of the programme I’d never actually seen it. To which her rejoinder was ‘Oh, you must come round and have a drink sometime and we can watch it together. You’ll love it. I know you will.’
At this juncture my bus arrived. Fortunately it wasn’t this lady’s bus too. I managed to get on it just as she was about to give me her phone number.
It was several months before I ventured into the bus station again on that particular day, at around that time and at that platform.
That, I thought, was the end of my quiz days.
Until some years later a cousin of mine rang me to ask if I’d seen this programme called ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?’ He intended to apply for it and wanted me to be his ‘phone a friend.’ I hadn’t seen the show but started to watch it and like most of the country became hooked. My cousin wasn’t selected and despite applying for several subsequent series neither was I.
It was a couple of years after that I happened to catch a teatime quiz called ‘The People Versus.’ The concept was that members of the public would phone in and try and catch out contestants on their chosen topic. If the contestant was successful they could win big money. If they gave a wrong answer the challenger replaced them. Seeing people rack up winnings of as much as £70,000 was a tempting prospect. So when a second series was announced I applied. I was successful at audition but found when I went to the recording that the format had changed. The powers-that-be had decided that people were winning too much too easily. This time it would be a harder slog to win and the prize money would be much smaller.
But I can’t complain. I did well enough to be still standing at the end of the show and ‘return’ the following day. Or two hours after the first show was recorded. Presenter Kaye Adams had a change of clothes to foster the illusion it was a new day but contestants obviously wore what we came with, leading some to query how dirty we were turning up the next day without so much as a change of shirt.
Eventually I got an answer wrong. I think I had managed to get over fifty correct before it happened, leading me to win a total of £9,502 (don’t ask me where the odd £2 came from). It wasn’t ‘Millionaire,’ it was nowhere near the sums won on the first series but it was a damned good lift nonetheless and the first and last time in eight appearances on TV quizzes that I actually won money.
This was in 2001 or 2002 and I ‘retired’ from quizzing after that, content with my lot. It’s now well over a quarter of a century since I’ve taken part in a pub quiz. These days I don’t even watch on TV. I can’t recall the last time I saw ‘Mastermind’ and I didn’t even know ‘Millionaire’ had been revived until someone told me recently on Twitter.
I had my fifteen minutes of fame – eight times actually – and I’m happy with the memories. In any case I don’t think that at 64 years old my responses would be anywhere near as sharp as they were back then. I wouldn’t want to be like a punch-drunk boxer taking on one contest too many. I enjoyed it at the time as I have recalling it all while writing this. But like the quizzes themselves this article has to have a beginning and an end. This is the point for me to say I’ve started so I’ll finish.
In the famous chair with the man himself, Magnus Magnusson. Click to enlarge.
