omkar
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When most 11-year-old girls day-dream about their idols, they fantasise about Harry Styles from One Direction and write his name in love hearts all over their school exercise books.
Not Shrinidhi Prakash. She is counting down the days until she meets her very own hero, the BBCs business editor Robert Peston. She is a big fan of his work.
She hopes he will be impressed by the essay she has penned for him on economic growth, entitled Notes On Austerity. Quite clearly, Shrinidhi is no ordinary girl. This week, she beat more than 2,000 children to be crowned Britains first Child Genius - a sort of Mastermind-meets-Countdown, for the under 11s.
On the day I visit Shrinidhi at her home in Orpington, Kent, its hard to miss the giant silver trophy she was awarded at the end of the final of the Channel 4 series. In fact, its so big it wont even fit on the mantelpiece - so it stands on the floor of the living room, by the fireplace, until her parents can find a piece of furniture big enough to hold it.
Even so, Shrinidhi is not entirely happy with her gong. Shes squinting critically through her spectacles at the Latin inscription on the side: I am not sure thats the right grammar, she says.
Angusta ad Augusta; its meant to mean: Through trial to triumph, but I think Augusta is not the right word. Thats the name of the wife of the Roman Emperor.
Grammar aside, the wording is indeed apt: there were indeed plenty of trials for the young competitors in this programme.
Over the four-part series, 21 finalists aged eight to 11 were tested in quick-fire rounds such as Debating, Logic, Mental Arithmetic, Spelling and General Knowledge.
Not only were the questions so hard that many were beyond plenty of adults. But the stress for the children answering them was also mercilessly recorded by cameras, which seemed to take perverse pleasure in recording their faces crumple as, one by one, they crashed out of the competition.
Even cycling gold medallist Chris Hoy, a man used to the extreme edge of competition, tweeted that these intelligence tests made the Olympics seem pretty stress-free.
Other commentators questioned the programmes seeming failure to acknowledge that other competitors in the group might possibly be on the autistic spectrum in case it jeopardised the fun they were having at the childrens expense.
Yet despite the intense pressure, Shrinidhi thrived. Not only did she manage to recall the order of an entire pack of 52 playing cards, but in the final programme she triumphed with a winning debate speech on whether money brings happiness, correctly identified Lake Baikal in Siberia as the largest freshwater pool in the world and correctly spelled the world metallurgy.
Shrinidhis achievement is all the more impressive when you consider that her first language is not even English, but Tamil, which she still speaks with her family at home, and she came to live in the UK from India only three years ago.
But the supreme irony is that of all the children in the competition, Shrinidhi appeared to be the least pushed by her parents, Suja and Prakash. Indeed, the mild-mannered Indian couple looked like ***** cats compared to other tiger mothers in the show.
Take chess prodigy and fellow contestant Josh Altman, nine, who sat meekly as his mother told him he needed 50,000 practice hours to become a chess grandmaster by the age of 13.
He later writhed in discomfort as she told him to keep going to the next round, despite the fact he had hardly scored a point and complained to her that he felt ill?
Supreme Tiger of all was Sarah Gyles, 34, mother of nine-year-old Connor who announced without a shred of embarrassment: Of course, I want him to do well. I want to show off. Is that bad? And: I want to go around and say: Look how clever my son is. Arent I great?
Shrinidhi, however, seemed to trundle through the competition in her own sweet way. Of all the children who appeared in the series, Shrinidhi, the current Under-12 World Scrabble Champion, seemed the most naturally gifted and the most rightful winner.
Compared to Josh, Shrinidhi plays about an hour a week to retain her Scrabble title.
She would love to spend more time playing it online, but finds that other competitors get abusive and accuse her of cheating if she gets more than three bonus words in a row.
Blessed with a brain that is an amazing magnet for words, even before Child Genius came along Shrinidhis favourite book was her bumper edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.
As she worked her way through the literary classics, she looked up the words that interested her and jotted them down on her iPad.
Perhaps after all this hot-housing, this then was the secret. While other youngsters faltered in tears with nerve-induced nausea and anxiety attacks, Shrinidhi was under less pressure and so managed to keep her head. Yet as charming as Shrinidhi is, dressed today in her too-small dungaree dress, its hard not to wonder if her gifts come at the expense of other areas of her development.
She is, to be blunt, sweetly unaware. Her confession that she loves to sniff and even lick the books she describes as her friends will go down as one of the oddest remarks on a reality TV show.
And mother Suja, 36, a stay-at-home mother who also has a three-year-old son Sachin, is honest enough to admit that while her daughter is far ahead in some areas, she lags behind in others.
Where Shrinidhi is lacking is that she is not street-smart. She is a bit innocent for her age. Its difficult for her to attach herself to a group, because her interests are on a different plane.
Is this the brainiest child in Britain? Proof you DON'T need to be a pushy parent to make your little darling a success | Mail Online
Not Shrinidhi Prakash. She is counting down the days until she meets her very own hero, the BBCs business editor Robert Peston. She is a big fan of his work.
She hopes he will be impressed by the essay she has penned for him on economic growth, entitled Notes On Austerity. Quite clearly, Shrinidhi is no ordinary girl. This week, she beat more than 2,000 children to be crowned Britains first Child Genius - a sort of Mastermind-meets-Countdown, for the under 11s.
On the day I visit Shrinidhi at her home in Orpington, Kent, its hard to miss the giant silver trophy she was awarded at the end of the final of the Channel 4 series. In fact, its so big it wont even fit on the mantelpiece - so it stands on the floor of the living room, by the fireplace, until her parents can find a piece of furniture big enough to hold it.
Even so, Shrinidhi is not entirely happy with her gong. Shes squinting critically through her spectacles at the Latin inscription on the side: I am not sure thats the right grammar, she says.
Angusta ad Augusta; its meant to mean: Through trial to triumph, but I think Augusta is not the right word. Thats the name of the wife of the Roman Emperor.
Grammar aside, the wording is indeed apt: there were indeed plenty of trials for the young competitors in this programme.
Over the four-part series, 21 finalists aged eight to 11 were tested in quick-fire rounds such as Debating, Logic, Mental Arithmetic, Spelling and General Knowledge.
Not only were the questions so hard that many were beyond plenty of adults. But the stress for the children answering them was also mercilessly recorded by cameras, which seemed to take perverse pleasure in recording their faces crumple as, one by one, they crashed out of the competition.
Even cycling gold medallist Chris Hoy, a man used to the extreme edge of competition, tweeted that these intelligence tests made the Olympics seem pretty stress-free.
Other commentators questioned the programmes seeming failure to acknowledge that other competitors in the group might possibly be on the autistic spectrum in case it jeopardised the fun they were having at the childrens expense.
Yet despite the intense pressure, Shrinidhi thrived. Not only did she manage to recall the order of an entire pack of 52 playing cards, but in the final programme she triumphed with a winning debate speech on whether money brings happiness, correctly identified Lake Baikal in Siberia as the largest freshwater pool in the world and correctly spelled the world metallurgy.
Shrinidhis achievement is all the more impressive when you consider that her first language is not even English, but Tamil, which she still speaks with her family at home, and she came to live in the UK from India only three years ago.
But the supreme irony is that of all the children in the competition, Shrinidhi appeared to be the least pushed by her parents, Suja and Prakash. Indeed, the mild-mannered Indian couple looked like ***** cats compared to other tiger mothers in the show.
Take chess prodigy and fellow contestant Josh Altman, nine, who sat meekly as his mother told him he needed 50,000 practice hours to become a chess grandmaster by the age of 13.
He later writhed in discomfort as she told him to keep going to the next round, despite the fact he had hardly scored a point and complained to her that he felt ill?
Supreme Tiger of all was Sarah Gyles, 34, mother of nine-year-old Connor who announced without a shred of embarrassment: Of course, I want him to do well. I want to show off. Is that bad? And: I want to go around and say: Look how clever my son is. Arent I great?
Shrinidhi, however, seemed to trundle through the competition in her own sweet way. Of all the children who appeared in the series, Shrinidhi, the current Under-12 World Scrabble Champion, seemed the most naturally gifted and the most rightful winner.
Compared to Josh, Shrinidhi plays about an hour a week to retain her Scrabble title.
She would love to spend more time playing it online, but finds that other competitors get abusive and accuse her of cheating if she gets more than three bonus words in a row.
Blessed with a brain that is an amazing magnet for words, even before Child Genius came along Shrinidhis favourite book was her bumper edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.
As she worked her way through the literary classics, she looked up the words that interested her and jotted them down on her iPad.
Perhaps after all this hot-housing, this then was the secret. While other youngsters faltered in tears with nerve-induced nausea and anxiety attacks, Shrinidhi was under less pressure and so managed to keep her head. Yet as charming as Shrinidhi is, dressed today in her too-small dungaree dress, its hard not to wonder if her gifts come at the expense of other areas of her development.
She is, to be blunt, sweetly unaware. Her confession that she loves to sniff and even lick the books she describes as her friends will go down as one of the oddest remarks on a reality TV show.
And mother Suja, 36, a stay-at-home mother who also has a three-year-old son Sachin, is honest enough to admit that while her daughter is far ahead in some areas, she lags behind in others.
Where Shrinidhi is lacking is that she is not street-smart. She is a bit innocent for her age. Its difficult for her to attach herself to a group, because her interests are on a different plane.
Is this the brainiest child in Britain? Proof you DON'T need to be a pushy parent to make your little darling a success | Mail Online
