The real Mr Mastermind comes out to play

Mr Mastermind, the elusive figure who has featured on the box of the code-cracking board game for 25 years, has been tracked down after a nationwide hunt.

Accompanied by a young oriental woman and with a cat on his knee, the bearded man has peered from the cover of 35 million cardboard boxes. And, just in time for the game's 25th anniversary this week, the real Bill Woodward, 73, has stepped forward.

The retired hair-salon owner, who lives less than a quarter of a mile from Invicta Plastic, which makes the game, admitted his starring role was an accident.

"The advertising agency doing the picture backed on to my hairdressing salon and was run by someone I knew," he explained. "And when a model failed to show for the 1972 shoot I was snapped up. They wanted a mysterious air ... and I suppose with the silver beard I fitted the bill."

Today he will join real Russian spy Oleg Gordievsky, wartime code- cracker Alan Stripp, Mastermind inventor Mordechai Meirovitz and a host of other code experts at the Cabinet War Rooms in London for the anniversary celebrations.

- Amanda Kelly