Mastermind champion Nancy Dickmann has a new specialist subject — househunting.

Ms Dickmann, who lives in Marston with husband Duncan Gilbert and their two daughters, achieved the highest total score of the television series during last year’s final.

The couple, along with two-year-old Imogen and two-month-old Helena, are hoping to move to a larger home within Oxford, or to one of the surrounding villages.

Their existing property is a two-bedroom Victorian house in Edgeway Road with a sitting room, dining room, kitchen, utility room and 68-foot landscaped gardens.

Ms Dickmann said: “I keep the Mastermind trophy under my bed because I am just a bit worried, with having kids and cats, about getting it knocked over and broken.

“Marston is a lovely area to live because it has a rural feel to it. We’ve got cows at the end of the road but you can walk into the city centre.”

Her specialist subject was The Lewis and Clark Expedition, 1804-06, while in earlier rounds, it was The Amelia Peabody novels of Elizabeth Peters and the life and early German films of Fritz Lang.

Last month, when the BBC aired the final of the current Mastermind series, Ms Dickmann was seen presenting the new champion with their trophy.

Originally from St Louis in the USA, Ms Dickmann, 34, will also appear in a Mastermind Champion of Champions tournament later this year, alongside 16 previous winners from as far back as the 1970s.

Since her Mastermind triumph she has been invited to audition for a number of other quiz shows and appeared on Radio 4’s Brain of Britain show in December.

“I’ve also been strong-armed into joining the quiz team at The Plough in Wolvercote,” she joked.

Ms Dickmann, who works for publishing company Capstone, said her husband saw a piece about Mastermind looking for hopefuls in The Oxford Times and persuaded her to audition.

“He said since I was always shouting out the answer from the sofa, I ought to have a go for real. When I did the audition, I was seven months pregnant with Imogen.

“Then, when we recorded the Champion of Champions show I was pregnant again, this time with Helena. The producers couldn’t quite believe it.

“I have a very good memory for facts, read loads of books and absorb a lot of what I read.

“The publishing company I work for produces non-fiction children’s books and they are packed full of information, which I am sure helped me with answering the questions.”

Number 9, Edgeway Road is on the market for £325,000. For more information or to arrange a viewing, contact Breckon & Breckon on 01865 310300 or visit www.breckon.co.uk