I was off work on Monday, and turned the computer on in the evening to see my agent’s e-mail asking me if I’d be the reserve for Celebrity Mastermind being filmed on Thursday. Essentially this meant being on-call in case someone dropped out. While the idea appealed and is very flattering, after all it’s good profile-raising stuff in a serious light that wouldn’t hurt my serious reputation, there was one big problem….
It was to be on Thursday! Only two preparation days away and I’d lots of other work on (including getting the weekly email sent out, never a small job). Plus this is the first I’d ever heard about it, and frankly I have no clue what my specialist subject would be (possibly the Christopher Reeve Superman films, but I’m not sure something so specific would be allowed – they may have wanted Superman in general which is well beyond me as I’m not a comic book reader). After all, I doubt they’d allow “MoneySaving” as a speciality.
The problem was the programme’s viewers wouldn’t know that I’d only found out two days earlier while other contestants had probably been preparing for months. Plus, this isn’t the Weakest Link or Millionaire, where the questions aren’t very tough, it’s Mastermind…. I suspect my score would have been in high single digits at best and, embarrassingly, record-breakingly low at worst. And that doesn’t exactly do me much good.
So all in all I’ve decided to opt out and ask to be considered for the next series, with some decent adequate warning I hope!
