ANNAN music fan Neil Carruthers displayed his wealth of knowledge on the subject this week as he made it three wins from three appearances on a popular national radio quiz show.
Hosted by Ken Bruce, PopMaster takes place live in front of millions of listeners weekdays mornings on Greatest Hits Radio.
Neil appeared on the airwaves for the popular music quiz on Wednesday this week. And he won following an impressive score of 33 points.
He said: “On the morning I wasn’t so bad (with nerves). His Greatest Hits show has about five million listeners, it’s a crazy number. You can’t imagine five million people!
“I’m a big quizzer, but particularly music – that’s my hot subject.”
A huge music fan, Neil’s favourite genre is 70s prog and he named Jethro Tull as his favourite band.
This was the third time he had appeared on the quiz, having twice played and twice won back in the BBC Radio 2 days.
Neil said: “It was with Claudia Winkleman the first time, she was covering for Ken Bruce. I won it with 33 points.
“And, within Ken’s last year of being on Radio Two, I got on again and I won it on 24 points. It was a lot more stressful that time.
“This week I thought it was more relaxed again (on Greatest Hits Radio) and I won it with 33 points again.”
PopMaster entails two contestants, going one at a time, facing questions on music from the 1950s through to the present day. There are also three bonus questions.
Whoever has the most points is named winner and goes on to play the endgame ‘three-in-ten’ where they have ten seconds to name three UK Singles Chart hits by a randomly named group. If scores are equal then the quiz has a tie-break decider.
Neil added: “The ‘three-in-ten’ was The Shadows. That was a blessing as well, because when I was 12 I had The Shadows compilation on cassette, so I remembered the names of the songs on it.”
A Bluetooth speaker and a year’s subscription to the station’s premium subscription were the prizes for winning.
