Ofcom rules Mastermind contestant can be called 'astoundingly thick'

By his own admission, the Mastermind appearance was not Simon Curtis’s finest hour. He notched up the BBC quiz show’s worst specialist subject score when he gave only one correct answer out of a possible 25 on the films of the actor Jim Carrey. But Mr Curtis has been dealt another blow to his pride as Ofcom, the broadcasting watchdog, ruled that his performance merited the description “astoundingly thick”. Mr Curtis had complained to Ofcom about a Channel 4 programme, Awfully Good TV, which featured clips of excruciating failures on quiz shows. David Walliams, the comedian, provided a commentary.

Introducing the clip of Mr Curtis’s appearance on Mastermind in 2006, Walliams said: “Sometimes in life, you have to know your limitations. If you’re not, let’s say, very bright, it’s probably not a good idea to go on a quiz show that tests your mental agility. And by 'not very bright’ I mean astoundingly thick.” Mr Curtis took exception, and pointed out that his humiliation occurred in the semi-final of Mastermind. He sailed through the first round, answering specialist subject questions on the rock band The Jam. Moreover, he had won £250,000 on ITV1’s Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? 18 months previously, of which the Channel 4 programme had failed to make any mention.



Mr Curtis told Ofcom he had been “unfairly portrayed as being of low intelligence” and had not given his consent for the clip to be re-broadcast. However, Ofcom dismissed the complaint. The watchdog ruled that the programme “was clearly intended to be a light-hearted and humorous look at past television events” and said that Walliams’s commentary was “not intended in any way to be a serious examination of Mr Curtis’s character, intelligence or competence”. Channel 4 said of the show, which it broadcast in January: “The introductory comments were not a literal assessment of Mr Curtis’s general IQ level but a comment about his remarkably poor performance in the context of a subject matter he professed to be his specialist subject.”

It stood by the comments because “this was the worst performance ever seen on Mastermind in relation to a chosen specialist subject”. Mr Curtis, a probation service administrator expressed his disappointment at the ruling. He said: "Channel 4 and David Walliams have never met me and don't know anything about me, yet they called me astoundingly thick on national television. To me, that denotes general intelligence. How can you say that on the basis of one bad quiz show performance? I've never minded sending myself up but it never goes away - I'm still remembered as the bloke who only won one point on his specialist subject."