A 24-year-old student from Glasgow has become the youngest ever BBC Mastermind Champion.
PhD history student Jonathan Gibson was crowned the nation’s brainbox on Monday evening.
Jonathan won by a margin of 4 points in the Grand Final – scoring a perfect 11/11 in his specialist subject, comedy song writing duo, Flanders and Swann.
He becomes the youngest ever Mastermind Champion since the show began in 1972.
The previous youngest winner was Gavin Fuller in 1993 when he was 24.
Jonathan is a former pupil of the High School of Glasgow in the West End.
He is currently studying a PhD in Modern History at the University of St. Andrews.
He said he was fiercely proud to be Scottish despite his lack of a strong accent.
And he said his family would be incredibly proud of his achievement.
In his blog before the final, he said: “I have been a quizzer for most of my life, from falling in love with The Weakest Link as a child, to now competing alongside the very best in several national and global quiz leagues.”
And he joked about his fame on social media following his appearances on the quiz show.
He said: “In the last few weeks I have perhaps become somewhat better known, at least on certain corners of Twitter, as ‘that lanky nerd who looks like he’s just funnelled a case of Red Bull’ through my appearances on the BBC quiz show Mastermind.”
About his love of history and quizzes he says: “For about as long as I can remember, history and quiz have been my twin driving passions.
“I have no idea which came first. In many ways, the correlation feels fairly natural.
“Both as a historian and as a quizzer, I love the fact that there is always more to learn.
“The canon is never fixed, or at least it never should be, and the greater the diversity of voices involved in developing theses or setting questions, the more exciting and surprising the task of responding to them becomes.”
Jonathan’s other specialist subjects throughout the competition were Agatha Christie’s Poirot in the heat and William Pitt the Younger in the semi-final.
He scored perfect scores on all three specialist subjects, as well as a perfect general knowledge score in his semi-final round.
In the last few weeks I have perhaps become somewhat better known, at least on certain corners of Twitter, as ‘that lanky nerd who looks like he’s just funnelled a case of Red Bull’ through my appearances on the BBC quiz show Mastermind'
JONATHAN GIBSON
Tonight’s grand final was John Humphrys’ last episode as host of Mastermind.
He has presented 735 episodes of the series and asked more than 80,000 questions during that time.
Presenter Clive Myrie, a BBC news journalist and regular presenter of the BBC News at Six and Ten, will take over the helm of the show when it returns to our screens later in the year.
