Man Picks Joy Division As Specialty On UK Game Show 'Mastermind'

UK-based game show Mastermind is renowned as a proving ground for boffins, connoisseurs, aficionados, know-it-alls and all other types of experts to have a chance to show how brainy they are on television by answering a set of questions based around their chosen area of prowess, which could be anything from the life and works of Gilbert & Sullivan to Joy Division.

Indeed, no topic is treated as too obscure or too niche, as demonstrated by the appearance of nurse Paul Hillman on the show a few days ago, for which he picked the cult post-punk outfit as the thing he knows most about.

Ironically, Hillman stumbles on the first question — "These Days was the B-side to [Joy Division's] only top-20 hit; what was the single?" — offering the relatively less-known Transmission in place of glaringly obvious first-answer material Love Will Tear Us Apart, but otherwise his Joy Division knowledge appears to border on the encyclopaedic; he gets no other questions wrong, though he does pass on one (which track begins with the lyrics, "Here, here/ everything is by design, everything is by design"?), ending up with a grand total of 13 from a possible 15 points. Not too shabby, Hillman.

Interestingly, this isn't the first time the band has been the subject of a Mastermind nerd's obsessions; almost two years to the day before Hillman's appearance, IT technician Jonathan Payton also put his fandom to the test on-air, netting 12 correct answers, zero passes and three errors in his attempt. See how he went (and how Mastermind quiz writers totally re-tap their own well of questions) below.