Issue Number 33

November 2012

ME & MAGNUS 1986.

By Willie Keays.Engines.


It's over a quarter of a century ago and I still don't know who it was at Cranwell that sent for an application form for Mastermind on my behalf but I decided to fill it in and apply. The form was an interrogation in itself, requiring an extensive CV and a reading list. Of course it required nomination of three Specialist subjects. The ones I picked were The British Army in the Peninsular War 1807-1813, the Indian Mutiny 1857-58 and the Crimean War 1854-1856; a lot of my interest about the latter two came from the amusing Flashman books. Some weeks later I was invited to meet the producer Peter Massey and his assistant Mary Craig in Cambridge, one of the regional centres. Now, having watched MM, I figured I would have to take part in a number of heats before I got to sit in that black chair; not a bit of it. Having been interviewed in depth about my background, education, family and interests I then had to answer a series of questions against the clock. In retrospect I think this was not to find out at which topics I was good at, but also to identify topics that I didn't know much about. And the whole thing was far from intimidating; Peter and Mary couldn't have been more pleasant. A few weeks later I was invited to take part in the round for the Midlands; it was late 1985.

The first round was held in the Great Hall of the University of Birmingham in early 1986. Two programmes were to be recorded back-to-back. After a briefing about various protocols each contestant was given a dummy run; I did rather dismally. As the evening approached and the studio audience gathered I had one or two sherries; that helped. We entered the Hall from the back and walked to the stage to the accompaniment of Vivaldi and applause from the audience. We sat down and then Magnus Magnusson made his entrance.

I was the last of our four to go. In my two minutes of Peninsular War questions I answered two of them incorrectly so had a score of 17 and no passes. We had been briefed that if we gave an incorrect answer not to dwell on it but immediately listen to the next question which Magnus would already be asking; good advice. I scored a further 18 out of the 20 questions asked in my two minutes of General Knowledge, again with no passes. Another contestant also scored 35 but as he had passed on two, I was the winner. Whoopee!

There were a few months until the semi-final so I got stuck into improving my knowledge not only about the Indian Mutiny, but also trying to fill in the many blanks in my cultural education e.g. literature, art and music. I was a bean-stealer at Cranwell with my home in Aylesbury so I took up visiting various museums in nearby London when time permitted.

With about a month to go I received a call from Peter Massey. Apologetically he explained that the question-setter for the Indian Mutiny was having trouble assembling the 20 odd questions required. Would I mind doing the Crimean War as my 2nd Specialist subject? Well, says I, I suppose I don't have much choice; if I got through to the Final I could revert to the Peninsular War. After I put the phone down, I sat and looked at the vast amount of material I had assembled on the Mutiny. There were books from the library at Cranwell, books and papers from the MOD Library and some of my own volumes. Not enough material for 20 odd questions? Eh? Then the rupee dropped. The semi-final was to be held at Bradford University where a large section of the local population had not inherited feelings of admiration for the British heroes of the Mutiny. It was generally referred to there as the First War of Indian Independence. I sent back all the borrowed volumes on the Mutiny, replacing them with an equal amount of material on the Crimean War and got stuck into them.

The night before the semi-final in May 1986 was memorable; I met my father after 43 years. My mother had divorced him in 1943 and he had then vanished from my life. In 1977 I discovered that he lived in Bradford but we didn't manage to meet although we talked on the phone. When I was on the first round of MM I told him to watch it and, if he liked what he saw, maybe we could meet when I was in Bradford. A sprightly 86-year-old, he turned up early at the hotel in the city and we talked and drank long into the night. We poured him into a taxi after midnight. I woke in the morning with a splitting headache that stayed with me for most of the day. Oh dear!

I was first to go scoring 16 on the Crimean War and then 19 on General Knowledge. The winner was Hendy, wife of a Wingco at Wittering who scored a phenomenal 37. Thus my acquaintance with Magnus came to an end. Even without the enjoyment of the evening before, I was well beaten.

Looking back on the whole experience, I found it very valuable, in more ways than one. I had learnt a lot of arty things that broadened my horizons. Also it provided a useful talking point during the job interviews I had lined up after taking the option of retirement coming up in 1987. Just about every interview board I attended wanted to know what it was like to be on MM. However I must emphasis it is not a demonstration of intelligence. In fact is an example of the lowest rung of learning, Simple Recall. The necessary attributes are a good memory and the ability to access it rapidly under pressure.

During the preliminary briefing we were told that there were one or two questions at the start that we should know the answers to, just to put us at our ease. However I've viewed quite a few MM sessions of that period and have come to the opinion that the questions a contestant meets were a carefully judged mixture of hard, easy and things he/she should know. It was the intense initial interview, like mine at Cambridge that determined just how this mixture was concocted. I'm also sure that each contestant was treated absolutely equably. The split in General Knowledge questions I estimate as 5 hard questions; you had to be well-informed to get these right; then 5 easy questions; most people would have got these right. The other 10, say in a typical session, may have appeared difficult to the viewer but to that contestant, given his or her experience and interests, should have been straightforward. In my first appearance at Birmingham four of my General Knowledge questions had a historical military slant; no coincidence, my Specialist Subjects were all military history. One of my questions was about a common import/export term, CIF; my wife was an import/export manager. Another was about the University application procedure; my twin sons were in that process. I was learning Spanish, so a question about a 'sierra' was easy. Another was about the meaning of 'Dublin'; I'm Irish. (It means Black Pool). The great attraction of MM to the viewer was the rapid-fire questions/answers sequence and seeing somebody get things right at a gallop, but then occasionally watching someone slowly go into melt-down; TV was all smoke and mirrors at that time, and maybe still is. Remember, Mastermind is just another TV game show, cleverly presented and well-regarded but it does not represent the sine qua non of erudition especially if many of the questions were matched to the contestant; I don't know if it still happens but I note that total scores nowadays rarely exceed 30.