The winners of the snowball
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It’s an evening of near misses tonight. We used to frequently win the beer round, but it’s been years since we last claimed the 15 pounds. Tonight we almost do it, correctly answering five questions, but slipping up on the tiebreak. Demoralised by this, we finish fourth in the quiz, the legendary “just outside the money”. Demoralised by that, when my number is drawn in the snowball for only the fourth time in almost five years, I don’t know the answer.
The question was which author killed his wife by ill-advisedly trying to shoot an apple off her head. When we bought the snowball tickets, I bought Stu’s because I owed him a pound. I decided which of the two tickets I had bought I was going to give him, and so it could just as easily have been Stu going up for the chance to win £500. And naturally, while I have no clue about the answer, Stu is one of the few people in the pub who does actually know it. If I was him, I’d probably never speak to me again. Luckily Stu is more magnanimous than I am.
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What’s you opinion of the recent University Challenge debacle?
Definitely a debacle! I think it was probably a bit harsh to disqualify them (even though they were Corpus Christi). When we were on, they clearly said that the rule was you had to expect to be a student at the time the series would be broadcast – not that you had to actually be a student necessarily. By that rule, he would have been fine, if he genuinely expected to get the PhD place.
My own situation was actually somewhat similar. When we applied to go on, I was in the middle of my PhD with no firm idea of when it would finish. As it turned out, I completed it after we’d filmed the first two rounds, although I didn’t get the official confirmation until after we’d filmed the rest.
Bamber Gascoigne’s right – it’s silly to film a student show over two academic years. There could be no problems like this if it was filmed sensibly.