Benedict Cumberbatch made an appearance in yesterday's English Language A Level exam

Picture this: you're in an English Language A Level exam scribbling line after line about some poet or other. You take a deep breath, turn the page and guess whose face is staring back at you?

BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH.

The British actor was the subject of a question in yesterday's AQA exam and – it's fair to say – students were delighted to see him...

The question featured Benedict Cumberbatch's biography and asked students to compare it with a much older text. An AQA spokesperson confirmed to RadioTimes.com: "We always try to make our exams engaging and relevant for students by including questions like this. It sounds like Benedict was really well-received, which is great to see."

He certainly was, although some pupils appear to now know more about Mr Cumberbatch than English Language:

HIs star sign is Cancer, in case you were wondering...

And of course there were those who struggled with the challenge of spelling out C-U-M-B-E-R-B-A-T-C-H over and over.

Fingers crossed Benedict Cumberbatch can add 'helping English students achieve A* grades' to his growing list of achievements.