Blimey, this is relentless.
Trying to keep up with my boxset viewing so I can post about a new show
every week is taking its toll, so I’m having to trawl the archives again. I’m spaffing the best part of an hour a night
on Big Brother, plus Netflix has distracted me
with new series of Bojack Horseman and Making A Murderer.
These aren’t just first world problems, they are
overwhelmed-with-content first world problems.
This will be the greatest challenge of our modern age (after Brexit,
Trump and global warming): there’s too much to watch.
Luckily, recent events have reminded me of a whole category
of televisual programming that has been entirely absent from Just One More Episode: quiz
shows. Everybody loves a good quiz,
especially me. My college years saw me
develop an unhealthy addiction to quiz machines, touring townie pubs under the
mistaken view that the local clientele’s sub-par intelligence would be no match
for our 18-year-old brains. The machines’
algorithms were calibrated in our favour, we thought arrogantly, until we lost
all our pound coins and finally realised that seasoned drinkers are some of the
greatest treasure troves of trivia in British society. My grad years in London saw many weeks
punctuated with a good old pub quiz. I
think we once won the jackpot at The King William IV in Hampstead, where the
quizmaster was a drag queen devoid of any sense of humour, though we never
repeated this success at The Flask around the corner. Each week, a band of elder gents calling
themselves The Drinklings clinched the title, though they too looked thoroughly
miserable about it. So, does this mean
that quizzes bring no joy?
Heck, no. A friend’s
birthday at the weekend included a quiz as part of the organised fun. We all transformed into competitive monsters,
none more so than I during the Beat The Intro round. I’m genetically pre-disposed to a few things,
such has having bits of ginger in my beard or feeling travel sick in automatic
cars, but one of my favourite DNA traits is being able to identify any known
song from its first beat (and by known, I mean known to me – I have no hope,
obviously, if I’ve never heard it). In
that single second, the whole song plays to me instantly in my mind’s own radio
station (where nobody judges the playlist).
Science has proven that this is genetic, as my dad and sister are the
same, whereas my mum claims to have lost interest in music in 1983 (when my
sister was born), so we know this is a dominant Honeywood gene, alongside
tolerating comments about our surname and still laughing out loud at You’ve Been Framed.
Hang on, we’re three paragraphs in and I’ve not even reached
the show in question yet. To chime in
with this recent quizzical development in my life, I’m taking on University Challenge. Don’t worry though, as we’re not going to
dwell on every tedious detail since the show first broadcast in 1962 or the
fact it’s been on both ITV and the BBC (a bit like The
Voice UK, but in the other direction).
Doing that wouldn’t allow enough time to talk about me (in addition to
the first three paragraphs) so we’re just going to focus on my interactions
with it and subsequent one-sided opinions.
I’m assuming this is entertaining for you, but there are gifs throughout
which you can look at if it’s not.
I’ll confess to the fact I never really knew what the show
was until I got to university. People
seemed to think it was acceptable during Freshers’ Week to talk about an
intellectual gameshow, a format that was already 41 years old in 2003. It’s worth clarifying that our Freshers’s
Week lasted a matter of days before the first essays were set and the fun was
killed off – welcome to Oxford, bitch (a throwback to a previous post on The OC; swap Californian sunshine for bone-chilling
frost, surfing for swotting and enjoying your teenage years for a higher volume
of work than a person can ever realistically deliver, and they’re basically the
same thing.) New fellow students asked
if I had seen how our college had done (getting beaten by London Metropolitan
University in the first round, but making it through to the quarter finals on a
highest losing score loophole). I hadn’t;
I was probably watching Little Britain or Celebrity Big Brother instead.
Fast forward a few years, and I was an impoverished graduate
sharing a flat with four others above a Costa in Belsize Park. Income was low, but London was (and is)
expensive, so communal TV viewing became a mainstay of our pastimes (alongside
the pub quizzes mentioned before). On
Monday evenings, in particular, none of us were out and about. Thus, University Challenge soon became our
favourite programme. And this was
because we didn’t just watch the show, we watched it competitively. The trick was to shout out answers before the
contestants did, or, better still, before Jeremy Paxman even finished
the question. To this day, even if I
find myself watching Uni Chall (my affectionate abbreviation… that’s never
caught on), I still call out answers to nobody.
Maybe the neighbours upstairs, when not trotting about in heels on
wooden floors, are impressed.
“Woah!” I hear you readers cry, “What do you mean you knew
the answers!?” Indeed, let’s dwell on
the fact that this is TV’s most academically challenging quiz. This isn’t The Weakest Link, where
questions come directly from the GCSE syllabus for double science, nor is it National
Lottery In It To Win It, where Sally from Ashby de la Zouch is counselled
through deciding whether Rome, Paris or Madrid is the capital of France by a wonderfully
patient Dale Winton (RIP) before plumping for Rome because Pat off of next door
once went there and said it was well good.
No, these are the hardest questions ever, veering from chemical formulae
to mathematical equations via obscure literature, forgotten painters and niche
geography. Yes, there can be music
rounds, but this isn’t Beat The Intro on the biggest radio airplay hits from
2000 to 2010 (my specialism), this is opera and classical and all that jazz,
including, funnily enough, jazz.
Therefore, if you’re getting between one and three answers in a
thirty-minute episode, you’re reaching the upper echelons of British intellect
(although this is against a low base of people who’ve voted Conservative and
for Brexit).
Each university that is being challenged puts forward four
of its brightest minds. Oxford and
Cambridge, however, divide themselves into their constituent colleges, so the
70 or so students of St Benet’s Hall, Oxford can take on a team representing
the 28,000 undergraduates and 13,000 postgraduates of the University of
Manchester. A starter question, worth
ten points, is read out, and anyone can buzz.
Get it wrong, and you’re punished with a deduction. Get it right, and you freeze out the other
team, unlocking three questions, worth five points each, on a single subject,
though the answers must come through the team captain.
Play then ensues and often features the following
highlights:
Jeremy Paxman telling off the contestants
Paxman by name, man who packs a lot in, by nature. Does that work? Never mind.
In short, Paxman ain’t got time for your shit. If the conferring goes on too long, viewers
are treated to a gloriously withering, “Come on, Emmanuel, let’s have it,”
wrong-footing the captain into giving a clanger of an incorrect answer.
Jeremy Paxman laughing at you for being wrong
Further derision from Paxman greets each clanger. Nothing consolatory is ever said, as
stupidity is a sin at Uni Chall. “No!”
he’ll chuckle before shuffling his question cards. Easy for him to hurl out abuse, what with the
answers written down for him.
Contestants’ faces during a music round
While some unknown concerto fills the studio, it’s hard to
know what expression best befits the situation.
Poised to identify the sixteenth century composer, our academic
challengers inadvertently strike something between a baby’s poo face and the
nose wrinkle you make when walking straight into a dangerous fart.
The Shakespeare strategy
I’ve made this up, but the three five-point questions are
always on a theme. If you even understand
the question, which can be demanding in itself, you might as well guess the
answer, as you’ve got three changes for it to be right. Therefore, if Jeremy asks “Which Shakespeare
play…?” just keep shouting Macbeth and, chances are, you’ll pick up five points
eventually.
A slightly embarrassed mature student
There’s no age limit, so don’t be surprised to see a
silver-haired sexagenarian studying for a doctorate in anthropology and
aromatherapy cringing in their cardigan each time a greasy teenager exposes
their lack of knowledge about the Byzantine Empire.
Some personalities
Over the years, controversy has swirled around the
show. Debates have arisen over whether
female contestants’ appearances are subjected to unfair criticism, something
the men are spared (though should also experience based on some of their jumper
choices). Student life is a time to try
out being an adult with no obligation to buy the real thing, so if a young mind
is more focused on the deep study of Renaissance architecture than on how often
human hair should be washed, then more power to them. We scoff at their jumpers and hairstyles to
cover our own insecurities. We don’t
know any of the answers, but these bright young things will go on to earn more
than us, or their further studies will add knowledge to human life and provide
a benefit to us all that we simply can’t see yet. So yes, chuckle now at the double-barrelled
pipsqueak going cross-eyed doing on-the-spot geometry. His thesis will render your whole industry
obsolete, probably.
University Challenge is a safe space for the intellectuals,
holding out on primetime TV while we race to the bottom of human achievement
with the likes of Love Island and Ex On The Beach.
It’s as British as being splashed by a bus driving through a puddle,
only we’re showered in useless knowledge instead of murky rainwater. May Uni Chall last another 56 years,
brightening our Monday evenings with the sight of young geniuses getting
berated for not knowing their Boticelli from their botany, their Galileo
Galilei from their Gail
Trimble and their network topology from their Netflix.
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