A 24-year-old student from St Andrews University has become the youngest ever champion of the BBC quiz show Mastermind.
Jonathon Gibson, currently studying a PhD in Modern History at St Andrews, won by a margin of four points in the Grand Final, scoring 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 was a worthy winner of the converted engraved glass bowl trophy.
The win makes Jonathon the youngest ever Mastermind Champion since the show started in 1972 beating Gavin Fuller, the previous youngest who was champion in 1993.
‘I don’t know how I did it’
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.
“They [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 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 were so many incredible quizzers my age and younger who are coming up 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 having 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 Ten, is to take over as as the show’s helm when the new series is filmed in Belfast later this year.
