A Marston woman is aiming to prove she can become the UK’s top Mastermind – despite giving birth to her first child weeks before sitting in the famous black chair.

Nancy Dickmann managed to beat off competition from three other brainboxes to win her place in the semi-final of TV show Mastermind.

Miss Dickmann, of Edgeway Road, correctly answered 13 questions on her specialist subject, the Amelia Peabody novels by Elizabeth Peters, and 14 on general knowledge.

She said: “My boyfriend saw an advert in the Oxford Times that they were holding auditions in February so I decided to go along.

“I had my baby, Imogen, in April and we recorded the show at the end of May.

“It wasn’t too bad because when she woke up for a feed in the middle of the night, I could read my book at the same time so I did a lot of my swotting at 4am.”

The 33-year-old’s episode was screened last Friday where American-born Miss Dickmann correctly answered questions on everything from the film A Beautiful Mind to Greek Mythology and Internet “cookies”.

Among the questions she didn’t know the answer to were the name of Manuel’s pet rat in the classic television comedy Fawlty Towers. The correct answer is Basil.

She also could not identify the Scots gaelic word for a lake in the Scottish Highlands as a loch.

Miss Dickmann, who is currently on maternity leave from her career as a children’s book publisher, said: “It was really good fun. I was expecting the questions to be harder than they were and for them to be more obscure, but on the day it wasn’t too bad.

“I was surprised to win because I wasn’t getting much sleep those days and I didn’t think I would be very sharp because you have to answer very quickly.”

She was initially tied with one other person but was declared winner as she had passed on less questions.

The other specialist subjects from contestants in her heat were the Coventry Blitz, the Scottish Englightment and a Welsh uprising.

Miss Dickmann has already recorded her semi-final round, which will be screened in the new year, but is sworn to secrecy as to how she fared.

Her new specialist subject was the films of Fritz Lang. She said: “That was good because I could pop a DVD in and watch while I was feeding Imogen or playing with her.

“I’m not sure if Imogen picked up any of it through osmosis, but she certainly watched a lot of Fritz Lang films, and she seems to recognise me on screen.”

fbardsley@oxfordmail.co.uk