When it comes to testing someone’s bottle and brains there isn’t anything quite like Mastermind
When it comes to testing someone’s bottle and brains there isn’t anything quite like Mastermind.
Notoriously challenging questions, an intimidating setting and a black leather chair lit by a solitary spotlight would be enough to push most people over the edge.
But Teesside quizzer Clive Dunning proved he not only had the right answers, but could also handle the pressure when he was last night crowned 2014 Mastermind champion.
And Clive wasn’t alone in proving our area has brains. He was joined in the final by civil servant Michael McPartland, from Acklam, Middlesbrough, who led the contest after the specialist subject round.
Clive, a 55-year-old English lecturer from Stockton said: “It was a totally surreal experience – I was nervous throughout, but the tension in the final was a completely different ball game,”
“When I won I thought I would be totally euphoric, but there was just this great sense of relief.
“For me, as somebody who loves quizzes, winning Mastermind is the ultimate accolade.”
Clive has always enjoyed quizzes and has been a regular at the Malleable Social Club, Stockton, weekly quiz for about 30 years.
But it was when he was made redundant from his job at Stockton Riverside College that he decided to take his hobby to the next level.
“When I was made redundant it was quite a blow, it was a job I loved,” said Clive, a dad to three daughters, who reached the semi-final of the Brain of Britain quiz on Radio 4 in 2013.
“So rather than stagnate, I thought I would give myself a focus.”
And to get a place on the BBC2 show, Teesside University graduate Clive beat more than 2,000 applicants before making it through to the final.
“The only questions I could remember after were the ones I should have got,” said Clive, who lives with partner Jean Dove.
“For the final you film a short piece about your chosen subject - mine being the life and poetry of Philip Larkin - and we went to Hull, where he lived the greater part of his working life. However I had originally suggested going to Haydon Bridge where he spent time at a holiday cottage.
“But in the final, one of the questions was where was the cottage and I couldn’t get it. It just showed the pressure of it all.”
But the tension didn’t stop there when at the end of the show, Clive and another contestant had scored the same numberof points.
The winner therefore had to be decided by the person who had made the least amount of passes. Thankfully, Clive had only passed once.
“When John Humphrys handed me the bowl he said ‘you look like a nervous wreck’ and I was,” said Clive, who is to start private tutoring.
“How I got through it I don’t know but it is a really proud achievement.”
How do you measure up? Test yourself against five of the general knowledge questions faced by Clive
1. In international cricket matches, what does the technology DRS stand for?
2. The siege of Troy by the Greeks was the setting for which Shakespeare play?
3. Which mountain range, designated a national park in 2003, contains four of Britain’s five highest mountain peaks?
4. Which band central to the psychedelic movement had fans knows at “deadheads”?
5. For which 1996 film did Geoffrey Rush win a best actor Oscar for playing the gifted but troubled pianist David Helfgott?
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