The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Mastermind king sets new record as youngest winner
A24-year-old student from St Andrews University has become the youngest-yet champion of the BBC quiz show Mastermind.
Jonathon Gibson, studying for a PHD in modern history, won by a margin of four points in the grand final.
Jonathon scored a perfect 11 correct answers in his specialist subject, the comedy songwriting duo of Flanders and Swann.
It follows similar perfect scores from the student, from Glasgow, in his chosen subjects of Agatha Christie’s Poirot in the heat and William Pitt the Younger in the semi-final.
In addition, Jonathon delivered a perfect general knowledge round in his semi-final – proving he is a worthy winner of the converted engraved glass bowl trophy.
The win makes Jonathon the youngest Mastermind champion since the show started in 1972 – beating Gavin Fuller, the previous youngest who was champion in 1993
Jonathon said the win felt “absolutely incredible” and “like a dream come true”.
He added: “That’s definitely not what I would have expected.
“The fact that I was able to increase my score every time,
“I don’t honestly really know how I did that.
“My parents have been so supportive to me and I’m just really looking forward to getting home and telling them about it and seeing what celebration meal my mum’s going to make for me.
“The fact that I’ve won as the only Scottish finalist means a huge amount, because, despite the confusing evidence of my accent, I am fiercely proud to be Scottish.
“I’m really proud to demonstrate that Scottish quizzers and quizzers from outside of London exist and that we can beat the rest.
“Having now broken the record as the youngest-ever winner of Mastermind, in a way, I kind of hope and expect that my record won’t stand for all that long because there are so many incredible quizzers my age and also younger who are coming through at the moment.
“It’s time that the world knows about them and understands that our generation is coming through.
“And I absolutely want this victory to inspire, if possible, quizzers of my age and younger to give it a go and prove themselves, because we can win.”
The grand final was also John Humphrys’ last as host of Mastermind.
He presented 735 episodes and asked more than 80,000 questions during his time with the show.
News reader and journalist Clive Myrie, a regular presenter of BBC News at Six and News at Ten programmes, is to take over as the new questionmaster when the new series of Mastermind is filmed in Belfast later this year.