Mitchell Symons was born in 1957 in London and educated at Mill Hill School and the LSE, where he studied law. Since leaving BBC TV, where he was a researcher and then a director, he has worked as a writer, broadcaster and journalist. He was a principal writer of early editions of the board game Trivial Pursuit and has devised many television formats. Currently he writes an award-winning weekly column for the Sunday Express. He has written over forty books - including five for children with another eight in various stages of preparation. In naming Mitchell as the friend he would phone (as a Phone-A-Friend) if he were appearing on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, Chris Tarrant said: "Mitch knows more totally useless things about useless subjects than anybody on earth".