Starter for 10: An insider’s perspective on University Challenge

By Emilia Brookfield-Pertusini

“Many things might be regarded as the hallmarks of this competition, but the eagerness to embrace change isn’t one of them” – Jeremy Paxman, 2020.

“University Challenge. With your host” … “Bamber Gascoigne” interrupts my father, tea in hand, settling down for some Monday night armchair quizzing. For my father, the host will always be Bamber, whereas I am part of the newly inaugurated Amol generation. We, like thousands of other families, groups of students, and housemates, up and down the country, see each era of University Challenge as part of the Monday night ambience – consistently transmitting throughout the school year, consistently baffling us, and consistently challenging the random pockets of seemingly useless information we have stored away. But how does one graduate from the sofa to the lightbox adorned desk?

The team from Durham University is representing an institution famed for its cobblestone streets, a beautiful array of colleges, and the worst nightclub in Europe. Its recent academics include Joe Ancell, historian, flautist, Greek dictionary, and expert climber; Emilia Brookfield-Pertusini, Elvet Riverside’s noisiest shoe wearer, anti-Dickens advocate, and fashion secretary; Jake Roberts, their captain with a profound ability to store away information on both Dutch masters and long dead physicists; Luke Nash, our physical incarnation of Merlin Bird ID, and enthusiastic social sec; and James Gowers, football trivia coach come step-in Paxman, and reserve player.

 “How many do you reckon you can get?” James asks his grandmother, setting up the competition UC emits into living rooms, each viewer tempted by the allure of the small intellectual victories a correct starter buzz can provide, and “watching to be impressed”, as James reveals, by the spectacle of intelligence and reflexes on display. For a show that has cemented itself in pop culture history for having 14 letter Greek words as answers, being gifted a round that fits your unique knowledge-scape seems almost miraculous – spurring your viewership forward. Post-UC Twitter, a place that has become both coveted and feared by us as our broadcast date draws ever nearer, feeds this excitement, no matter how high or low your score. One thing UC has taught us is to be content with your knowledge and take pride in it. Until a recent shift, the consensus of the show was something, as Luke put, where students in “dodgy fashion and unironed shirts” battled for academic valour with highly classical questions and antiquated answers. Now, however, the academic valour is something to play with, enjoy, and laugh about. Correct answers may not be derived from the most lucid stream of consciousness, you may be reeling the answer in from a vault of facts originated through 1am doom scrolling and not from a sophisticated book, however, “does it really matter where knowledge comes from?”, mulls Jake, “if your answer is still right?” When we, from Jake’s living room during Monday evenings in deep January, buzzed in with a correct answer, we still got to experience that pride and satisfaction that we’ve felt for years watching the show, even with our filming date looming above us. Knowing that your answer to a question derived from an offhand comment from a lecturer, or that the composer of the music round bonus came to you from a Wes Anderson soundtrack, you realise it doesn’t matter at all where knowledge is gathered as any knowledge is celebrated here.

Quizzing prowess is often celebrated in this country with jackpot prizes, rounds of pints, scampi fries, and bragging rights. “It’s quite easy to get yourself involved” according to James. After all, who doesn’t love a pub quiz? The arguments over a sticky pub table over the right answers are “fundamentally intertwined with British pub culture”, says Luke. Mates, UC inclined or simply up for some fun, gather together for some knowledge-based rivalry. The Old Elm Tree became our pre-UC watching haunt, suggested by Luke due to its boast of hosting a challenging pub quiz that confuses both students and professors. For the rest of my team University Challenge wasn’t a graduation from South London pub quizzes, but the next step in their quizzing journeys. Luke and Joe had both been part of competitive quizzing teams at school and met James and Jake at Durham Quizbowl. Imported from America, Quizbowl is a place where the questions are cryptic, varied, and rapidly fired at contestants. Universities face off at large-scale tournaments that attract hundreds of quizzing students, who can be recognised from a UK quizzing leaderboard, featuring alongside Chasers from ITV’s The Chase. “Sport-like quizzing”, as Jake put it, seemed to me like UC on steroids, a far abstraction from the pub quizzes I was familiar with. However, my first visit to Durham’s Quizbowl practice as part of my preparation for the show was a warm welcome into the quiz-world that UC, in part, has helped cultivate. 

When telling people about my imminent airing I’m often eagerly asked “did you win?” and “what do you win?”. Whilst a BBC contract guards the answer to the first question, the latter is nothing, which is often met with confusion. UC offers simply bragging rights, your lightbox nameplate, and a trophy for your institution. Whilst the quiz being televised for the scrutiny of the nation, or your university being reigning champions at the time of filming, does set some lofty expectations, the stakes themselves aren’t high; it’s all for some light entertainment and a good story at the end of it. Quizbowl echoes this friendly form of quizzing, even when the questions are harder than UC ones (difficult to imagine, I know). We laughed over clues that were painfully directed at American players and were nonsense to us, we poked fun at the absurdity of some of the bonus round categories, and we traded tips on how to learn more random points. During filming Jake and Luke recognised many of our competitors, both in the greenroom and on the airing series, from Quizbowl – showcasing the breath of this community, both in knowledge and location. As a nation we love quizzing, and from pubs, schoolrooms, studios, and unoccupied seminar rooms, we know how to have fun with it – something the Amol era of UC has nurtured.

“You are people of ignorance too” responds Paxman to a slightly bemused, slightly terrified team of KCL’s brightest. Paxman approached the “smart ass” teams he was presented with with the contempt of a Victorian schoolmaster. Unapologetic. Scathing. Formidable. The Paxo era is noted for its presenter’s brazen approach. Being fans of the show, we were unsurprised to hear he would be stepping down, yet looking back, we were all at a loss for who would take his place. No one would be like Paxman. But, the show didn’t need another Paxman. During his later series, more and more questions began to reflect the more diverse university courses on offer, like animation or game design, allowing more students to be included in the game than before, keeping UC in the quizzing zeitgeist.  “Paxman’s snobbery was part of the appeal” confesses Luke. But, “Amol was definitely more welcoming” admits Luke, with Jake adding that “he didn’t have to be so friendly during filming…”.  The show is still fiercely mind boggling, but what we came to realise as our anki-decks piled up by the thousands, is that it is just fun and games – especially when the history of house music round briefly became memed and remixed. Amol asks about mascots and adds in quips about his own favourite musicians and philosophers during filming. Off-camera he talks about his lunch and jokes around with us. The days of stuffy Oxbridge teams in St.Michaels jumpers gifted by their grandmother’s Christmases ago are firmly behind, instead, one could even describe the new UC look as cool, with contestants and presenter alike having as much fun as possible when faced with difficult questions, 5 different cameras, and Roger Tilling’s voice booming around the studio.

***

I signed up for University Challenge, partly, as a joke. During my rather structureless gap-year, University Challenge’s consistent Monday night slot became a weekly marker and something I looked forward to returning to after work. My good friend Olivia had started English Literature at Oxford, and I received an enviable text, ‘Just did the University Challenge application test, I got 11…’. I never anticipated that my desire to send a similar text back, and to laugh about our lacklustre performances of academic rigour, would lead to me texting her ‘I MADE THE TEAM????’. We found out we made the team in the last week before Christmas, each nursing various stages of hangovers and being unable to contain the excitement. “UC kind of felt distant, [something] that just happened on TV, and that other people did” recalls Joe, my fellow Fresher on the team; it had never occurred to us that this is something that people actually applied to do. But now we, being newly inaugurated university students, could be challenged, and so we applied for the written test. Our first challenge would be to find these testing sites. “I couldn’t actually find my way to Mary’s and bumped into Jake who was also a bit lost” admits Ancell. This would become a theme of ours as our team would learn to navigate Manchester train stations, the maze of Media City, and the eternal corridors of the studios whilst all being a bit lost and clouded by the excitement and fear of the questioning that would come.

The “distance” of UC kept us in a perpetual state of amazement. Post-dinner revision slots  in the tucked away desks in St. John’s library, I would look out at the dark Durham sky, depressed with the blues of January, and catch my reflection. An array of flashcards in front of me, of which our collective pile of cards and Ankis reached 8000 –  “is this really happening to me? Am I now a person who is on a show like this?” I still can’t believe it, and neither can the rest of us realise “how the hell”, as Luke put it, got to this point. I probably won’t until I see myself on the TV; the same TV that has projected all those “distant” UC students and stars on a Monday night, will soon bare my face too, and maybe that will make it less distant. The Media City Holiday Inn, our refuge during filming, echoed this distant, start-struck bewilderment down its corporate corridors. We couldn’t believe that Amol Rajan and Roger Tilling (an actual man not just a voice) were eating breakfast on the table across the room. The evening before in the bar we scouted out other suspiciously studenty groups of 5 that appeared, a sort of celebrity gracing the air, as we realised these people were here, taking time off uni for a reason that had to be kept secret, now part of the same club as us.

Before filming you aren’t told who you’re playing, you have a time and that’s it. The team you just brought a drink with could very well be the team who thrash you the next day for millions of people to watch. This “distance” between you and the people of University Challenge never really leaves, even when Amol is joking with you behind your respective desks during a filming break, or when you buzz in and hear your name, or when the iconic theme tune blares through the studio to count the cameras in; you can’t help but laugh with complete amazement.

Keeping the team a secret has been “almost impossible” admits Luke. Seeing five students tapping a table in the SU cafe and blurting out answers to questions read from a brain-sized book probably did look slightly suspicious. For once we weren’t allowed to give the correct answers, having to hastily reply “quiz” when people would ask how we all knew each other when we bumped into each other in Jimmies, or were asked by friends at the Trevelyan College pub quiz. 8 months since filming we can now share our starters for 10 with you on Monday the 7^th of October, BBC 2, 8:30pm. For now, it’s goodnight from the Series 31 Durham Team, goodnight, and goodnight from me too, goodnight.