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This is taken from The Times, January 09, 2007:
Magnus Magnusson October 12, 1929 - January 7, 2006 Broadcaster, author and translator who became synonymous with the BBC quiz Mastermind
Among his many other activities, Magnus Magnusson was a translator of the Icelandic sagas and a presenter of television programmes on history and archaeology. But for a wider public he is synonymous with the BBC quiz Mastermind, over which he presided as question master for 25 years.
He had not been the automatic choice for the job. Bernard Levin and the political expert Robert Mackenzie were among the names considered, and when these had been discarded Magnusson had to audition against Alan Watson, a current affairs broadcaster from The Money Programme and Panorama. But he settled effortlessly into the role, which initially bore the forbidding title of interrogator.
Devised as a BBC riposte to ITV’s University Challenge, Mastermind was the creation of its first producer, Bill Wright, inspired by the wartime questioning by the Gestapo he had endured after being shot down over Germany. The BBC wanted a serious quiz and this was underlined by the contestants’ black leather chair, the spotlight that picked them out from surrounding darkness and the atmospheric theme music, appropriately called Approaching Menace.
Magnusson brought to the programme a formal presence, bordering on the austere, but he was always courteous and fair. He also unwittingly devised a catchphrase that stayed with him long after the programme ended. Contestants were given two minutes to answer questions, first on a special subject of their choice, and then on general knowledge. The timing was strict, and a beeper sounded when the two minutes were up. But it was thought fair, if this cut Magnusson off in mid-question, to let him continue and allow an answer. So was born the catchphrase “I’ve started, so I’ll finish”.
Mastermind began as a late-night experiment in 1972, but after moving to a peak-time slot attracted regular audiences of about ten million. Most of the winners enjoyed their moment of fame and returned to obscurity. Among the exceptions were Sir David Hunt, a retired ambassador and former private secretary to Churchill and Attlee, and Fred Housego, a London taxi driver, who both became popular broadcasters themselves.
Blighted, though, by erratic scheduling, Mastermind’s audience gradually declined, and in 1997 the BBC decided to call a halt. Magnusson was allowed to have the black chair as a memento. The format proved durable enough to transfer to radio and it eventually returned to television, but with other question masters. Magnusson, meanwhile, kept in touch with past contestants through the annual reunions of the Mastermind Club, of which he was patron. He also wrote a history of the programme, I’ve Started, so I’ll Finish.
Magnus Magnusson was born in Reykjavik, in 1929, but was brought to Scotland as a baby of 9 months when his father took up a business job in Edinburgh, where he was later the Icelandic Consul-General. At Edinburgh Academy Magnusson shone both in the classroom and on the games field, and he was selected for the Scottish schoolboys cricket team in a match at Lord’s. He would probably have been the first Icelander to play there — but rain prevented a ball being bowled.
Magnusson won a scholarship to Jesus College, Oxford, where he read English. He then spent two years doing postgraduate research into Old Norse literature, but gave it up for journalism, joining the Scottish Daily Express in 1953. He became assistant editor of the Scottish Daily Express before moving to The Scotsman in the same capacity in 1961.
Meanwhile, he had done occasional documentaries for Scottish Television and the BBC. In 1964 he was recruited as a presenter for Tonight, the early evening magazine programme, where he worked alongside Cliff Michelmore and such reporters as Fyfe Robertson and Alan Whicker.
After a year, during which Magnusson had leave of absence from The Scotsman, the Tonight programme was brought to an end, having been on the air since 1957. Magnusson was offered a job on its successor, Twenty-Four Hours, but instead, wishing to bring up his young family in Scotland rather than England, he chose to return to The Scotsman.
By now, however, television held more appeal for him. He produced documentaries for BBC Scotland and presented its weekly current affairs series. In 1966 he returned to national television as the presenter of Chronicle, a monthly programme for the BBC on archaeology and history. He was with Chronicle for 12 years and regarded it, and the series it spawned, as his most satisfying television achievement.
The first of these series, the 12-part BC: The Archaeology of the Bible Lands, was transmitted in 1977. Vikings!, a ten-part homage to his Norse ancestors, followed three years later. These were good-quality television, playing to appreciative but small audiences. But with Mastermind Magnusson became a television celebrity with a face known to millions.
Away from the screen he was a prolific author and translator. His early books were spin-offs from Chronicle and his archaeology series, but he also wrote histories of Ireland, Iceland, the island of Lindisfarne and his old school, Edinburgh Academy. A fascination with reference books led to his editing the 1990 edition of Chambers Biographical Dictionary.
In 2000 he published his most ambitious work, Scotland: The Story of a Nation, which ran to more than 700 pages — even though it ended in the 18th century. It was inspired partly by Walter Scott’s Tales of a Grandfather and a radio series in which he interviewed contemporary historians who were looking afresh at Scotland’s past.
Magnusson had translated and produced Icelandic plays while at Oxford, and he became a regular translator of Iceland’s literature. Among the works he tackled were four of the Icelandic sagas, in collaboration with Herman Palsson, and five novels by the Nobel prizewinner Halldor Laxness.
Although always busy with projects of his own, Magnusson found time to sit on several public bodies, and he served them assiduously. He was chairman of the Ancient Monuments Board for Scotland from 1981 to 1989 and of Scottish Natural Heritage for seven years in the 1990s. He sat on the boards of organisations concerned with museums and the environment and, as a keen bird-watcher since boyhood, was elected president of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in 1985.
Magnusson was Rector of Edinburgh University, 1975-78, and in 2002 became Chancellor of Glasgow Caledonian University. He had a string of honorary doctorates. He liked to say that while his hearth was in Scotland his heart was in Iceland, and he never gave up his Icelandic citizenship. In 1989 he was appointed honorary KBE.
He married Mamie Baird, a journalist, in 1954. Of their two sons and three daughters, one son died in a road accident just before his 12th birthday. Magnusson is survived by his wife and by his four remaining children, all of whom have worked in broadcasting.
Magnus Magnusson, journalist, broadcaster and author, was born on October 12, 1929. He died of cancer on January 7, 2006, aged 77
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