When TV game show enthusiast Simon Curtis appeared on BBC's Mastermind in 2006, he probably did not expect to become the programme's worst-performing contestant in a specialist-subject round, scoring only one correct answer out of 25.
But he certainly didn't expect to face further ridicule at the hands of David Walliams who replayed the clip of Mr Curtis's poor performance on his Channel 4 show 'Awfully Good TV' and described him as "astoundingly thick".
Introducing the clip on his programme in January, Mr Walliams said: "Sometimes in life, you have to know your limitations. If you're not, let's say, very bright, it's probably not a good idea to go on a quiz show that tests your mental agility. And by not very bright, I mean astoundingly thick."
Mr Curtis was infuriated by this insult and complained to the broadcasting watchdog Ofcom. He told Ofcom that he had been "unfairly portrayed as being of low intelligence" and that he had not given his permission for the clip to be used.
Mr Curtis claimed that Mr Walliams's programme took his clip out of context since the round in which he failed so dismally was in the semi-final after Mr Curtis had an extremely successful first round.
He also claimed that he had failed to answer questions on his so-called specialist subject of Jim Carrey because he had "plucked the subject out of thin air" since he not expected to get that far in the quiz show.
It further frustrated Mr Curtis that his previous £250,000 win on ITV's 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?' had not been mentioned in Mr Walliams's programme.
Ofcom dismissed Mr Curtis's complaint saying that the 'Awfully Good TV' show "was clearly intended to be a light-hearted and humorous look at past television events" and that Mr Walliams's comments were "not intended in any way to be a serious examination of Mr Curtis's character, intelligence or competence".
Channel 4 said: "The introductory comments were not a literal assessment of Mr Curtis's general IQ level but a comment about his remarkably poor performance in the context of a subject matter he professed to be his specialist subject."
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