Andy Baddeley has shelved winter training in order to sharpen up for a forthcoming appearance on the BBC's Mastermind. Baddeley - who claims the show's title was in honour of him - has said that his involvement is inspired by a belief that "Britain is getting thicker". The one-time 3:49 miler is rumoured to be filming as early as February and has chosen a specialist subject of Particle Physics. A spokesman for the Harrrow man has denied speculation that he is only going ahead with idea as sales of his début book Quantum Chromodynamics and the Long Distance Runner: Thoughts and Observations have been disappointing. "Andy is ready to prove to all the world that he has the best mind in the business" said the aide "and above all he just wants to prove that he is an ordinary guy, doing ordinary things."
Baddeley's campaign to prove what his people call "normality" took a backward step over the summer, when the European fifth placer slammed Kenyans for their lack of intelligence. "It was a shame the press chose to focus on that" continued his press secretary "but since then, Andy has made a real effort to show that he is just a normal world class athlete with a double first from Cambridge. For example, just last month he watched five minutes of the X Factor whilst he waited for his show about the history of the Large Electron-Positron Collider to come onto BBC Four."
The part time lecturer at St Mary's is slated to appear on the celebrity edition of the show alongside Big Brother star Kinga Karolczak and Fame Academy winner David Sneddon. Baddeley did concede that he "had never heard" of either rival but hoped for "some lively mathematical related banter" backstage.