But you’ve got certain individuals who can spout off because of the anonymity of platforms and the online world – and they can get away with it. His family moved to Scotland when he was a baby, when his father was appointed European manager of the Icelandic Co-Op. Four (and in later contests five or six) contestants face two rounds, one on a specialised subject of the contestant's choice, the other a general knowledge round.

It’s just that, when he walks through the doors of this building, those points of view need to be invisible. Mastermind International was an annual playoff between winners of various international versions of the show (or the nearest equivalents in some countries) and ran for five years between 1979 and 1983. A special guest would always be invited to present the trophy to the winner, with the exception of the final edition in 1997, in which Magnusson presented it himself. The twist was that Archer's puppet, being incapable of answering questions about himself without exaggeration or evasion, ends the round with zero points. And catchphrases are as important on quiz shows as in comedy: his “Your starter for 10” (announcing the points coming into play) became as famous as “I’ve started, so I’ll finish” on the rival Mastermind, while Gascoigne’s other go-to quote, “I’m sorry I’ll have to hurry you,” charmingly applied his natural good manners to a timed format.Magnús Sigursteinsson was born in Reykjavík on 12 October 1929, but grew up in Edinburgh, where his father, Sigursteinn Magnússon, was the Icelandic consul. There was another series in 2005 (subjects included Black Holes and the Star Wars trilogy), which was won by Robin Geddes, whose specialist subjects were The Vicar of Dibley and A Series of Unfortunate Events, with a third series airing in 2006, won by Domnhall Ryan, and featuring subjects such as Harry Potter and Chelsea Football Club, and a fourth series in 2007 won by Robert Stutter and a fifth series later that year won by David Verghese. It is also distinguished from the original BBC TV series because many more of the specialist subjects come from popular culture.

In 1975 The Goodies featured Mastermind in the episode " Frankenfido" when a dog ( Bill Oddie in a suit) appeared on the show and managed to correctly answer questions asked of it as they all had answers that could be represented by growls, such as "bark" and "ruff". The BBC only apologised, he says, because a woman in Kent didn’t like the D-word, even post-watershed. Consider this: at the end of a Taster Day, when I offer people the opportunity to come along to the first Module of our NLP Practitioner training at a discounted rate, who finds it easiest to say ‘Yes’? The reality is, if you’re going to participate in a 20-day programme spread out over five months, it takes a bit of planning.In 1973 it was moved to a prime-time slot as an emergency replacement for a Leslie Phillips sitcom, Casanova '73, which had been moved to a later time following complaints about its risqué content. You can, in the way that you phrase things and in your whole demeanour, bring across something that suggests you’re not just this two-dimensional news robot reading an Autocue. Its millions of viewers were fascinated by the programme's doom-laden signature tune, the contestants' black chair, facing Magnus Magnusson.