What would you do with 1 million GBP ?
Would you buy a mansion, a yacht and a Ferrari, give up your job, go on holiday, donate it all to charity, buy your parents a new house, take over your local football club or get U2 to play at your son’s birthday party ?
Don’t worry - I haven’t succumbed to the lure of ‘1001 subjects to blog about’ for people with vacuous brains.
This was precisely the quandary facing Patrick Gibson in 2004 when he scooped the top prize of 1 million pounds on the ITV show ‘Who wants to be a Millionaire’.
Anyway, Patrick chose to buy the complete Iain Banks’ books catalogue together with DVD’s of Quentin Tarantino’s films and every single episode of Channel 4’s hilarious TV comedy ‘Father Ted’. The reason was that these were to be Patrick’s specialist subjects for BBC’s Mastermind quiz.
Don’t laugh - Patrick was crowned Mastermind of Great Britain on last night’s enthralling show ! Even better, the narrow victory for the Irish software developer prevented an Australian gentleman hoisting the impressive, crystal glass fruit bowl aloft.
Another crushing defeat for the Aussies - oh dear.