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For Monty Panesar, it was answering that Germany played their home football matches in Athens. For David Lammy, it was saying Henry VIII’s heir was Henry VII. And for actor Amanda Henderson it was responding with the name Sharon to a question about Greta Thunberg.
Panesar’s disastrous appearance on Celebrity Mastermind six years ago was used to taunt him this week by Australia’s cricket captain Steve Smith.
Lammy’s 2009 wrong answers on the BBC show were recently dredged up by Robert Jenrick to question the intelligence of the justice secretary whom he now dubs Mastermind.
And Henderson’s 2020 gaffe about Thunberg caused such a storm on social media that the Swedish climate activist briefly changed her Twitter name to Sharon.
The perils of making a celebrity appearance on a gameshow known for attracting eggheads would appear obvious and can cause lasting reputational damage. So why do celebrities ever agree to appear on such quizzes?
Their agents claim it can increase their clients’ profile and show off their human side.
Bronagh Monahan, cofounder of Mon Rae Management, which specialises in representing YouTubers, said: “These things are generally for charity so there’s a nice halo effect for appearing.
“It’s the taking part that counts. If you get something wrong, it shows you are fallible which makes you popular.”
Don’t believe it, says the Guardian’s sketch writer John Crace, who is still traumatised by spelling mozzarella wrong on Celebrity University Challenge.
“I still get humiliated on a regular basis by my family reminding me of Mozzarellagate,” he said.
Crace’s tip to anyone tempted to appear on such quizzes is: don’t.
“Unless you are exceptionally clever you are likely to make a fool of yourself,” he said. “The producers are hoping you make an arse of yourself as that makes the best TV.”
Crace warned that University Challenge is even more prone to humiliation than Mastermind, because it involves buzzing in with embarrassingly wrong answers, and it does not involve a specialist subject that you can prepare for.
Crace said: “Doing it on the TV is far harder than being a know-all at home. I am quite handy at UC at home and thought I was going to be a star. I wasn’t.”
Not all quizshow appearances end in shame. Journalist and author David Hepworth wanted to turn down an invitation to appear on University Challenge for fear of being shown up. He only agreed after his wife pointed out “you wouldn’t be asked again”.
He didn’t regret after he helped his Middlesex team win the 2023 competition.
But even after this success he would not be tempted to appear on Celebrity Mastermind, describing it as “an exercise in TV exploitation”.
Maths teacher Bobby Seagull has built a media career on his successful performances on University Challenge. He has also won celebrity versions of Mastermind and Pointless and now coaches celebrity contestants.
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“My advice is always to relax and enjoy it. If you treat it too seriously then you panic and get into that circle of doom we’ve seen so many times in celebrity quizzes.”
Seagull’s tips include listening to recordings of the quizmaster to get used to their pronunciations, and binge watching other quizshows.
Even Seagull is haunted by the questions that he has got wrong, such as mistaking Barry Manilow for Rod Stewart. He insisted that Panesar’s Mastermind flop could have happened to anyone.
Seagull said: “If you make a couple of mistakes, it really knocks your confidence. As a maths teacher I see that in class all the time.
“It doesn’t matter how clever you are – you could be Stephen Fry and a brain fog can still obscure your ability to retrieve information under pressure.”
He warned celebrities to stay off social media if they do blunder. Online pile-ons can now be so harsh that Seagull questions the future of such shows.
“The risk of social media blowback is getting to a point when its becoming difficult for producers to recruit celebrities of note to these shows,” he said.
Alex Segal, managing director of the talent agency InterTalent, disagrees. “People do these shows for visibility, they can win good money for charity and its fun. It’s not that deep.”
Segal does warns clients they could be made to “look silly”, and occasionally he has advised against appearances on Mastermind when celebrities do not have time to read up on their specialist subject.
But he said even wrong answers can be entertaining. “I had Omid Djalili do Mastermind. When he didn’t know the answers, he came up with the most ludicrous answers. He didn’t look bad, he just looked funny.”
Asked for the alternative name for the horned rattlesnake based on its movement, Djalili answered “writhing erotically”. The correct answer was sidewinder.
