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Indian girl sweeps Hard Spell, wins laurels
NRI Gayathri Pannikar has been crowned the best young speller. In an immaculate performance, she scored over 100,000 competitors.
At the age of five when she came to Britain she could hardly speak English. But Indian-born Gayathri Pannikar, now at the age of 13, has been crowned the best young speller in Britain. She also won £10,000 and computer equipment worth £15000 for her school, Taylor's School for Girls in Liverpool.
She gave an immaculate live performance on television's hour long Hard Spell final programme scoring over 100,000 hopefuls auditioned all over the country for the prime-time BBC 1 Quiz Show. The show challenged children age 11 to 14 to spell arrange of words from acquiesce to zephyr.
The hour-long final telecast on Sunday began with five contestants who were whittled down to three for a spell-off round. Gayathri had to see off Nisha Thomas, 12, and Mark Kackson, 13, from Cambridge. Mark was knocked out, failing to spell toxophilite. But Nisha and Gayathri went head to head until Nisha lost out over the spelling of dachshund. Gayathri won when she correctly spelt chihuahua.
Gayathri's feat was more remarkable because before she came here she could speak only Malaylam. Her parents Suresh, 41, who is a GP now and mother Priya, 37, an anaesthetic had moved to England in 1992 from Kerala, leaving Gayathri behind with her relatives. She came four years later when her parents decided to settle down here.
"She picked up the language very quickly. Even so I couldn't believe she could spell so many words," said her father very proudly. She told him she remembered the words from the novels she read.
Gayathri who hopes to be a novelist speaks fluent French and Spanish. Her headmistress said Gayathri "has a natural determination to succeed and the ability to succeed under pressure".
The programme organisers warned future contestants that Gayathri has a three-year-old brother Rahul who is already showing signs of being god at word games.
