A most forgettable day for the memory champion toppled at last by a young pretender

The clash may not have ranked alongside epic contests between Kasparov and Karpov or Ovett and Coe but, to devotees, yesterday's World Memory Championships were a monumental encounter.

Dominic O'Brien, reigning champion of a sport that consists largely of memorising unfeasibly long chains of numbers, was toppled from his thrown by Andi Bell, a young pretender who had never beaten him before.

Mr O'Brien, 44, an author of memory improvement books, lost the title he had won seven times when Mr Bell demonstrated superior ability to recall packs of cards, binary numbers, random words, and names and faces.

They were the biggest draws in a three-day contest in the plush surrounds of Simpsons-in-the-Strand restaurant in London, where nearly 30 contestants from all over the world gathered to prove they could never be blamed for losing the car keys. Mr Bell, 34, was drawn into the sport from a succession of dead-end jobs when he heard about Mr O'Brien's success at the championships, which started in 1991.

After four years of training, he won his first world championship in 1998, with a technique of substituting familiar symbols for words, numbers or cards. He would memorise four of diamonds, three of clubs and ace of spades, for example, as Mickey Mouse using a truncheon to hit a grapefruit. But his victory was muted, because Mr O'Brien, the inspiration for most leading memorisers, had not competed. Mr O'Brien went on to win the title twice more.

Mr Bell, a former warehouseman who left school at 16 with four O-levels, had a ghost to lay to rest, and yesterday the spectre was slain. After two days of gruelling memorising, he set a world record by memorising the order of 23 packs of cards in one hour, as well as recalling 192 words in 15 minutes, 156 names in 15 minutes and 50 dates in five minutes.

He built a lead, but Mr O'Brien could still have won when the two rivals went into the last event. They had to memorise a single deck of cards as fast as possible. Mr Bell's time of 82 seconds was far behind his record of 34.03 seconds, but it was enough, and Mr O'Brien's long reign was over.

After his victory, Mr Bell, from London, promised a shake-up in the memorising world to give the championships the high profile he feels they deserve. "I might be the person to do it because in a way I'm the first rock'n'roll World Memory Champion. Dominic always wore a bow tie, but I wear jeans, trainers and T-shirt and this is the only week of the year when you are allowed into Simpsons with them on. It would be good to break down the elitism a bit."

At yesterday's prize-giving in the Strand, the succeeding event was "Optional Celebration English Tea".