Egghead champion, Kevin Ashman, says the fame game is not for him

Unassuming and modest, the quiz extraordinaire and Eggheads panellist, drops into the conversation quite casually that he won not only the World Quiz Championships but also the European and the British versions – and all of them three years in a row.

Astonishing as it may seem, he never crams before a big competition (he just tries “to have a glance at the basics”) and rarely reads for anything other than pleasure.

Instead the key to his success seems to lie in his lightning speed recall and the way he soaks up information like a sponge.

It is not a conscious decision on Kevin’s part: he is simply very interested in what goes on around him.

“I’m the most disorganised person in the world,” he says. “I don’t have a photographic memory or anything like it, I wish I did. I just try to absorb things as I go. In a sense I never really switch off.”

The 48-year-old puts his hunger for learning down to having to make his own amusements as an only child.

Born and bred in Winchester, Kevin taught himself to read at the age of three and was devouring an encyclopaedia set meant for much older children just a few years later.

His love of reading has never dimmed.

He buys hundreds of books a year, and can often be spotted among the shelves in his favourite haunt – Waterstone’s in Winchester.

With his home crammed full of thousands of books, he admits, “there is just about room for me” – and I believe him.

Now widely regarded as the country’s top player, his quizzing exploits were once confined to playing along with TV shows at home.

It wasn’t until he joined the Ministry of Defence as a civil servant (after graduating from Southampton University with a history degree) that he joined a quiz league and his colleagues persuaded him to apply for Mastermind.

He made his TV debut on the iconic show fronted by the late Magnus Magnusson in 1987.

It was a very promising start and while he may have lost on passes in the semi-final, a seed had been sown.

Victories followed on Fifteen to One, Sale of the Century, Quiz Night, Trivial Pursuit and The Great British Quiz.

When Mastermind was unexpectedly opened up to former contestants in 1995, Kevin was accepted for the new series but only as a reserve. Luckily for him, another contestant pulled out, and Kevin found himself back in the famous black chair.

Scoring a phenomenal 41 points with no passes (his specialist subject was Martin Luther King), he earned a place which still stands in the Guinness Book of Records and later went on to win the series.

The following year he lifted the Radio 4 Brain of Britain title. The World, European and British championships’ “hat-trick of hat-tricks” followed.

A few years later he became a question setter on Brain of Britain – but last year he fell victim to a BBC reorganisation, when the team was moved to Manchester.

But Kevin didn’t need to worry because he had already become a panellist on BBC2’s Eggheads, the successful weekday teatime quiz show.

Starting in 2003, the programme pits a panel of five British quiz champions (billed as “the most formidable quiz team in the country”) against a new team of challengers each episode.

Attracting around 2.5 million viewers per episode, Eggheads is rarely off-screen thanks to a constant stream of repeats which fill the gap between each new series.

He makes a comfortable living too from the popular show and has won a couple of cars (not being able to drive, he sold them), a trip to Australia, as well as “little bits”

of cash “here and there”.

And so, with a rare space in his diary to fill, he wants to enquire about an Indian dance performance being held at the library that evening.

As we say our goodbyes, Kevin – clutching a plastic bag of books – heads to the reception desk.

Pity any future Eggheads contestants if questions come up on Indian dance.