The most popular specialist subject on Mastermind is Harry Potter, but it is rarely ever allowed, the show’s producer says.
Mark Helsby, who has produced more than five seasons of the challenging BBC Two show, has also revealed that one contestant once asked to be questioned about “pork”, and that a number of sitcoms have now been ruled out due to a lack of possible questions.
Helsby told the Radio Times that JK Rowling’s book series about the boy wizard is the most favoured topic among prospective competitors.
He added: “Last year 262 people wanted to take (Harry Potter) as one of their three specialist subjects – only one of them could.”
Helsby said that a number of popular sitcoms with fewer episodes, such as Fawlty Towers, Blackadder and Father Ted, “have been exhausted for new questions”.
“Thirty-two people wanted to do Fawlty Towers last year, 19 wanted Blackadder and 22 wanted Father Ted,” he said.
“Some of the very popular literary subjects such as the Chronicles of Narnia or Roald Dahl probably wouldn’t be agreed to for the same reason.”
Of the subjects they tend to reject on the quiz show, hosted by John Humphrys, he said: “Some subjects are very broad and need to be tightened up; or they might be too tight and need to be opened out to make them a fair contest compared to the other people they’re competing against.
“One applicant wanted to do ‘meat’ and narrowed it down to ‘pork’. Unfortunately, we still said no.
“I try very hard not to reject any subject out of hand.
“I’d rather work with the contender to find some common ground between what they are interested in and what we think we can write enough questions about.”
Radio Times is on sale now.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here