the BBC’s long-running quiz Mastermind

Life If you happen to be watching the Autumn season of the BBC’s long-running quiz Mastermind keep an eye on the famous black chair. And then shift that eye just upwards in the long shots to the audience and at to one end of the back row and if you can see someone who looks like their hair recently lost an argument with a barber, wearing a black jumper that could possibly be a size too small for them, then I completely failed in my attempt to not appear on screen during yesterday afternoon’s taping in Manchester, at the old Granada Studios.

Actually, given how often the studio went dark, that the audience were generally wearing black and the show didn’t seem to be shooting on HD yet, you probably won’t be able to see me. You don’t need to – the presence of a studio audience is just part of the artifice, someone to provide a backdrop to the verbal conflict between John Humphries, the question setter and contestant and to clap admirably in the right places, more like supporting artists than spectators (though we were still that too).

I was keen see if the show looked as impressive in the flesh and MDF as on screen, the interrogatory lights beating down on the computer engineer/quantitative surveyor/estate agent from East Sussex/Derby/Shrewsbury answering questions on The East India Company/Life and Work of DH Lawrence/Clouds as Humphries fired off question upon question. As I expected the chair just looks like an expensive office chair – I think the one I’m sitting as I write this is more intimidating. One or two of the contestants dwarfed it. But it was clear, even before the close of the first taping that it’s not the chair its self that’s important – it’s what it represents.

I’ve always liked Mastermind, though I have to admit to not having watched it much in the past few years. I like that it offers the common man (or woman), some more common than others, the chance to demonstrate that it isn’t simply in academia that one can build up a body of knowledge. There is an element of simply learning a collection of random facts and hoping that they're the right topics and yet I think there’s a real achievement in being able to make connections within this information, being able to distinguish between the various choices that might spring to mind at the close of a question, snapping it out and being able to do that over and over again within two minutes.

As an audience, generally we were hearded – from the street through the lobby – the lobby to the basement café – café to studio – or rather studio built onto a soundstage. This at least offered the chance to see some of the studio which was covered with fading publicity photos for the kinds of drama ITV aren't making any more and not in Manchester and not for the network. Those people who’d ignored the instruction to wear dark colour were separated out into an area behind the cameras. The rest of us were put into the main audience area, ringing the set like theatre in the round. My seat luckily gave good view of question master and question answerer and meant I could still see the sweat on brow, the disappointment of missed questions, the crushing defeat of simply not knowing anything about anything.

The crew, runners and researchers, were young and friendly – all seemed pleased to be there, none betraying signs of what must be quite long and punishing working days in which they have to be nice all of the time. These are probably the future presenters and producers, literally the face of television in about ten years. The floor manager, Sarah, looked to be in her late twenties. I regarded them all with envious eyes wondering what I’d have to be in their shoes – it seemed like so much fun for all the running (these people wear trainers).

The warm-up man was of course Mr. Ted Robbins. In my imagination he’s the warm-up man on all programmes. They probably clone him. For people who don’t know, he had a bloom of televisual fame with his sister Kate on an ITV sketch show in the eighties thaving worked the clubs as a comic for years and now he’s known as the audience entertainer in the business. Here is a younger version of him introducing his own gameshow:



We weren’t his best audience – as he kept reminding us. Sometimes filthy, generally un-PC he filled the uncomfortable silences between recording breaks, joshing with the crew. He could be very funny, though he clearly wasn't sure how to judge the crowd here so just kept going, jokes, audience interaction, general sarcasm. Often his desperation was funnier than the material but he kept slogging onward. He was particularly good when he noticed that two women had spotted each other across the studio, two women who it transpired had gone to school together and hadn't seen each other for twenty years. As he noted it was like something from Surprise Surprise ...

And there were plenty of recording breaks. We watched three episodes being recorded and far from the as-live straight through impression given by the television show, there were lengthy gaps between rounds and pick-ups throughout. Sometimes this entails having the contestant doing their walk up to the chair over and over, even once the main body of the programme had finished – though virtually none of them seem to demoralised by this even having done rather badly. We were all sharing in the artificiality; it has been described as a kind of drama and so the fact that close-ups need to be reshot and parts of the script are repeated only underscores that.

John Humphry’s was as I expected. Someone I’ve admired for years, he’s a genial host – well about as genial as he can be within the strict structure of an episode – yet erasable when it comes to shooting the extras including a new opening in which he has to talk directly into the camera standing alongside the contestants like Anne Robinson at the opening of The Weakest Link, an attempt he said ironically to make the thing more dynamic, sex things up a bit (actually he might not have said the latter but I imagine he did). His best moments were when he'd catch something Ted had said and collapsed with laughter showing that comedy travels (and how odd to see Ted and John, celebrities from totally different worlds, sharing the stage together, one oh so ITV the other very, very BBC).

Another “innovation” is that, from what we could gather, the contestants are going to be introduced in specially filmed bit at the opening of the episode removing the chatter in the middle were John asks them why they chose 'the design of the coke bottle in the 20th century' as a topic or whatever. That might look quite good on screen but it meant that in the studio we didn’t really get to know the contestants, couldn’t choose who to get behind. Some will hate this, though it seems to be a production decision made to increase the speed of the recording process – not that it decreased the length of the session – we began at 1pm and didn’t leave until 5:45.

It would be wrong to say too much about what happened in the actual quizzes, except to say that they were all close run things, and that one contestant had a complete brain collapse during his specialist subject round of the kind which should be mentioned in the papers on the day after transmission. Those subjects ranged from football managers, periods in British history, composers and mountain ranges. One contestant, we were informed, would be answering questions about a Star Trek spin-off and inevitably it was Voyager. I was horrified to discover that I knew more about the programme than she did and I haven’t watched it in ten years and not to the end. That episode will be worth watching just to hear Humphrey’s trying to get his voice around a range of technobabble not having the slightest clue what any of it means.

The trick on Mastermind seems to be to select a relatively narrow subject and learn it inside out. Another contestant selected Bill Hicks and knew his stuff whereas 17th century British history was far too broad, though it has to be said there were inconsistencies. The Voyager questions generally kept themselves within the fiction of the series – in other words made up fictional story details – whereas the man handling Handel had to deal with biographical details as well as the content of the music and dates of composition which doesn’t seem like quite the same thing. Knowing the key that one of the movements in the Water Music is written seems somewhat different to know which actress played Captain Janeway or what seven of nine’s real name is.

We were told often and repeatedly beforehand not to shout out the answers. Not that it didn’t stop me mouthing them, usually with my hand covering my mouth so that the contestant couldn’t see, which was stupid since the last place they were looking was in our direction. I did remarkably well with the general knowledge questions; the problem is speed. Most of the time the contestants knew the answers, but there’s no time to send an expedition to the tip of their tongue to get confirmation, so it’s stupid answer or pass. Usually pass. Not that it didn’t stop me from feeling a bit smug when I got their first.

Then, three and a half hours after it began, it was time to leave. Unlike a theatrical performance there’s no sense of closure; even at the close of the final ‘contest’ there were pick-ups – so the process it a bit anti-climactic. The best way to experience Mastermind must be as a contestant, led out to the stage, the glare of the lights, a couple of hundred eyes watching you, John Humphries’s chisled face, four of the worst minutes of your life and then its all over, unless you’ve won the heat and then you’ll be going through the whole process a few more times. Where do I apply?