Celebrity Mastermind - Episode 1

Celebrity Mastermind - Episode 1

A new series of Celebrity Mastermind is a nice highlight to the festive season and this years run began tonight with the opening show. All the rules and format etc are the same as in the normal version but Celebrity Mastermind always tends to have far easier questions, in both the special subject and general knowledge. Still, I like many others I am sure always enjoy the Celebrity Mastermind series and with ten episodes in this series there is plenty to lap up.

Tonights Celebrity Mastermind contestants - 

Jay Rayner

OJ Borg

Simon Calder

Anthony Costa

After the jazzed up introductions featuring some posing celebrities, including OJ Borg in full Princess Leia attire, and the general introductions John Humphreys got the 2011/12 Celebrity Mastermind underway with Jay Rayner answering on Musicals of Stephen Sondheim. A good set of questions and some good knowledge shown gave Rayner 9 points.

OJ Borg stepped up next dressed as Princess Leia answering on the Star Wars original trilogy. I am a bit of a Star Wars fan and would have gotten the same score as OJ Borg, 10, on a very easy set of questions. I may be wrong but I think the subject of Star Wars has appeared in every single series of Celebrity Mastermind. Of course this set of questions is a classic example of how a specialist subject is severely toned down for the Celebrity Mastermind version as had this been the normal version the questions would have been much harder.

Simon Calder had chosen the History of Concorde, clearly knowing his planes and scored an impressive 12 points and my money at this point was on Calder to be the first Celebrity Mastermind.

Anthony Costa finished the first round off with Only Fools and Horses as his subject and he knew quite a few facts I didn't (the original name of the show etc) and got a slightly harder set than OJ Borg  but he held his own scoring 7 to keep him in contention.

First round scores - 

Simon Calder - 12
OJ Borg - 10
Jay Rayner - 9
Anthony Costa - 7


Anthony Costa began the first General Knowledge round of Celebrity Mastermind this year, Humphreys having a dig at Eurovision did not please this Eurovision fan and he brought up the tired political voting argument. The set of questions was very easy and very pop-culture orientated, with plenty of music in their to stop Costa looking daft. Definitely one of the easiest Celebrity Mastermind general knowledge sets I have seen scoring 8 points. Nothing learned from this round, really basic questions.

I was hoping that first set was a one off and Celebrity Mastermind would provide a better set of General Knowledge questions for Jay Rayner. He had a few harder questions in there but was feed about 10 points of easy fodder scoring 15 points to take his total to 24.

OJ Borg was next with another easy set but with only 11 he lost his second place. That meant Simon Calder, who I expected to have a better general knowledge than the rest of the contestants, needed only 13 to win. He had the hardest set of all but still managed to get 14 and took the first Celebrity Mastermind episode.

Enjoyable opening edition of the Celebrity Mastermind series but the general knowledge questions did seem to be way easier than even last years series. Good, family teatime viewing though.

Final Score  -


Simon Calder - 26
Jay Rayner - 24
OJ Borg - 21
Anthony Costa - 15