Cobblers season ticket holder Gareth Kingston is appearing on Mastermind on Friday June 12th at 7.30pm on BBC 2. Here is his diary of his visits to the famous black chair; Continued from yesterday...

30th June
It's familiar territory now that I am on the homeward stretch. The McRitchie saga. The meeting at the Exeter Rooms and the formation of the Trust. The Shrewsbury game and Pat Gavin. The Atkins era and the two Wembleys. Ups and downs and through to the present day. I don't really expect that there will be many questions about very recent events. There aren't any books to help out the question setter, so I assume that they will play safe.

2nd July
That's it, all my reading has been done. I now have to ensure that I have written questions that cover every possible angle of every interesting fact I've recorded (and some of the not-so interesting facts).

7th July
One week to go. Nearly 500 questions written. I went through them last night and while I know that the vast majority of the questions are too dull or obscure to crop up I need to get on top of them in order to feel confident sitting in that black chair. I struggled with some of the managers and goal scorers. I'm hoping that repetition will fix these in my head

10th July
I had an excellent afternoon. First off I met Frank Grande (the club historian) whose encyclopaedic knowledge of the Cobblers reassured me that there were no major gaps in my revision. More than this though it was great to talk to someone who could bring alive events and players from before I was born. It was a very enjoyable 90 minutes spent with Frank. He should hire himself out!

Then I went to Sixfields. Walking along the corridors and seeing team pictures from 80 or 90 years ago was a test of my revision. I spotted George Jobey, scorer of the first ever goal at Highbury. Poor old Syd Russell, standing proudly in his team picture and yet by the end of the season a leg injury had led to an amputation. The Bowens, Ted and Dave were staring down at me. Facts just kept coming back with each name or face I recognised. I hope that the same will be true in 4 days time. I ran through the 506 questions I've written and got 459 right. The ones I got wrong are pretty obscure and unlikely to come up. Even so, more work to be done!

Just one week to go now. Nerves are starting to kick in.

11th July
I have recorded all of my questions onto my mp3 player so that I can listen to them over and over and over.

13th July The day before the semi-final
I didn't want to take any risks with the trains, so I went up to Manchester the night before my recording and stayed in a hotel courtesy of the Beeb. I ran through my questions again, and also listened to a recording of me reading the questions on my MP3 player. It was only then that I did some reading to bolster my General Knowledge. Half an hour looking at food and drink and classical music was enough I hoped to possibly leave some information in my short-term memory.

My hopes of getting a good nights sleep were thwarted by a tuba playing neighbour, some drunk Kylie fans returning from a concert and at 5am a dustcart collecting bottles right outside my window.

to be continued after Friday's broadcast.