Kevin Ashman

Kevin Ashman is almost universally considered to be Britain's finest quiz player. He hails from Winchester in Hampshire and was until recently a civil servant in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. However, after the death in 2002 of Ian Gillies, who served as 'Mycroft', the question-setter and arbiter on the Radio 4 quiz show Brain of Britain, Ashman was appointed his replacement, under the pen-name of 'Jorkins' (a name taken from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens).

Before that, Ashman had won almost every significant title in British quizzing, including a series and Millennium Special Edition of Fifteen to One, a series of Mastermind (a show on which he holds the all-time points scoring record), Brain of Britain itself, and the British Quiz Championship.

Ashman became interested in quizzes in his mid-twenties, when, having graduated from Southampton University with a degree in History, he became dissatisfied with his sketchy scientific knowledge, and resolved to educate himself.