THE winner of Superbrain 2016 is retired deputy head teacher Peter Twiss, of Durham, who is generously giving his prize to a local charity.

"You do Superbrain for the glory – not the money," he said.

Mr Twiss last won the North-East's toughest trivia quiz outright in 1996, and in 2005 he led his High Shincliffe pub team to the keenly-contested prize.

"I'm so pleased," he said when he learned of his triumph. "It's marvellous. I may have to sit down."

He got 289 marks out of a possible 300 in the quiz which was set by quizmaster David Chisholm, of Newton Aycliffe, and so wins the first prize of £250. His team members all entered the quiz separately and between them scooped the £100 runners-up place, and three £25 category prizes, which means that their chosen charity, St Cuthbert's Hospice in Durham, will be more than £400 better off.

"It's a great cause and it's local," said Mr Twiss.

Superbrain appeared with The Northern Echo on December 24, and has been a major part of the paper's Christmas publishing schedule for nearly 30 years.

"When I first won it in 1996, Google didn't really exist, but now the world is a very different place," said Peter, of Framwellgate Moor. "It was hard this year. A lot of the answers you can get with a bit of research but some are virtually ungoogleable. I have a lot of reference books because I am an inveterate quizzer.

"You keep chipping away at it and then towards the end, when you have 20 or 30 questions left, you can sit for three hours and get nothing, but then you can get three in an hour."

Congratulations to Peter, and to the runner up, Alan Perry, also of Framwellgate Moor, who was also King of the Pictures.

To see all the Superbrain answers, click here

The picture round is probably the hardest in the contest because it is completely ungoogeable. Quizmaster Chisholm reports that no one recognised the picture of Samantha Purvis, the Stockton swimmer who represented Great Britain at the 1984 and 1992 Olympic Games, and surprisingly few people in the North-East section identified the pictures of Wensleydale Creamery saviour Kit Calvert or weatherman Bill Foggitt.

The £25 category winners were Ian Dodds of Low Fell (TV and Film), Don Wilson of Durham (Literature), Ken Wilkinson of Sunderland (General Knowledge), John Heslop of Durham City (North-East), John Deller of Shincliffe (Pop) and Robin Taylor-Wilson of Durham (Sport).