Here are a few edited extracts from the shows: All the starters I got right Paxman getting impatient A series of unfortunate incidents Ivan’s starters Pete’s starters Oli’s starters The Comeback

End of the road The long story which began more than three years ago was finally coming to an end, and we’d made it right to the final hurdle. Would we trip, or was national glory really in our grasp? I could hardly believe we’d made it as far as we had and spent most of the few short hours after the semi-final just saying “Guys, we’re in the final! We’re in the bloody final!” to my team mates. They probably already knew this. For the final time we psyched ourselves up in our dressing room, got our faces powdered, and headed for the studio. We waited in the wings until we were announced, and then walked out to take up our positions. Out of all the people who had applied, and the 28 teams who had taken part in the televised stages, we were down to the best two. Our opponents in the final were Corpus Christi, Oxford. Bad start The first few questions went Corpus’ way, and they quickly pulled out a lead. We didn’t buzz in until after the first picture round, and when we did disaster struck. Asked when various events including Princess Diana’s Panorama interview [...]

Under pressure We stared disaster in the face in this round. Manchester had done quite well in previous rounds – in both the first and second rounds they were the only team to score more than us. But their performances were largely a one man effort, whereas ours had come as a result of team-wide ability. At this stage of the series, we expected a challenge, and we certainly got it. Manchester started strongly, reaching 50 points before we’d got off zero. But then Oli got us off the mark, giving the Stanford Prison Experiment as the inspiration for the 2002 German film, Das Experiment. We pulled back to within five points, before Manchester had another good run and led us by 110 points to 60 at the half way stage. Again the advantage shifted our way, and I brought us level by being the first person to work out that ‘grub’ was the word implied by the series of definitions Paxman was reading out. It was 115 points each. A close shave Manchester then got the next two starters right, we were losing by 170-125 and things looked bleak. “Four minutes to go”, said Paxman. Surely UCL couldn’t let [...]

Back to the Travel Inn There was an inordinately long three month break before the final weekend of filming, and autumn was becoming winter when we headed up to Manchester for our third and final visit to Granada studios. And this would be our last trip – the quarter-finals, semi-finals and final would all be filmed this weekend. The quarter-finals were filmed on the Friday evening, and if we lost we’d be on the train home in the morning. None of us wanted that. Our quarter-final was to be against Jesus College Cambridge, and history weighed heavily on our shoulders as we took to the stage. Of the four UCL teams that had previously been on University Challenge, two had made it to the second round and two to the quarter finals. Could we become the first UCL team to make it to the semi-finals? We could take some hope from the disturbingly detailed statistical analysis of Iain Weaver, which showed that over the first two rounds, only one team had answered more of their questions correctly than we had, and Ivan was the second-best contestant overall. Slipping up In contrast to our apparently serene progress through the first two [...]

To Manchester again Before Round Two, we carried on with our pub-based training routine, losing heavily in each of the three weeks we went. Losing at the Prince of Wales had worked very well before the Warwick game, and was fast becoming an important part of our preparations. Feeling confident, we headed up to Manchester for a second time. Journeys on non-smoking trains were always an ordeal for UCL Polancec, but this time I shared that ordeal when the terrifying announcement was made that no hot drinks were available. I got steadily more anxious as we headed north, and by the time we reached Manchester, my caffeine levels were dangerously low. Luckily we were not playing until the following morning. We stocked up excessively on carbohydrates with the complementary Travel Inn breakfast, and for a while I was worried I’d fall asleep during the game. Luckily, adrenaline picked me up a bit, and after the usual poncing about in make-up and getting our clothes approved, we headed in to the studio. To our slight consternation we were on the other side to where we had been in our previous game, giving us a whole different view of the studio, and [...]

Preparations We did not take our responsibility as representatives of our university lightly. Training, discipline, dedication, and total mental focus would be required. With that in mind, we bought a copy of ‘Time Out’ and looked up pub quizzes, and on finding that the Prince of Wales in Highgate was reckoned to host the hardest quiz in London, we headed up there for the evening. We finished second on our first outing – not bad, we thought – but successive weeks saw us humbled by people who were either phenomenally knowledgeable about absurdly arcane trivia, or cheats. We were sure it was the latter, and so come Friday 16th June, we headed up to Manchester, confidence un-dimmed, for our first round of filming. In typical fashion, I was half an hour late for meeting everyone at Euston station for the train to Manchester, but luckily our train was 45 minutes late so all was well. On arrival we headed straight for the studios, where we found out our opposition for the first round was Warwick. But before we could get down to business and play the game, we had to go through make-up to make sure we looked good for [...]

Ivan ‘Plank’ Polancec A fellow reject from the abortive 2002 effort, Ivan’s surname became his nickname via a confused spell-checker. Ivan’s specialist subjects were cricket and popes, on both of which his knowledge was supreme. But take away this man’s tobacco and Rizlas and it only takes about 20 minutes for him to collapse into a gibbering dribbling nicotine-deprived wreck of a human being. Pete ‘Captain Haddock’ Hinstridge Pete had a habit of turning up to selection rounds wearing a suit, which initially led me to mark him down as a bit of a ponce, although he claimed it was because he was working. Pete was the medical specialist, what with him studying medicine and all. By nefarious means, Pete ended up being the captain of the side. Me With a dress sense inspired substantially by Tom Baker as Doctor Who, I provided all the stripiness a well-balanced quiz side could need. Specialising in geography and astronomy questions, my knowledge of which was supreme – but take away my freshly-ground coffee from a Latin American communist farmer’s collective on a rain-soaked mountainside and it only takes about 20 minutes for me to collapse into a gibbering dribbling caffeine-deprived wreck of [...]

November 2001. I enter UCL’s selection process to pick the team for legendary quiz show University Challenge. Despite having been at the university for 5 years and always having been excessively sure of my phenomenal recall of pointless trivia, this is the first time I’ve got around to entering. Unfortunately, after I get through the first selection round, they tell me the second round will take place while I’ll be on holiday in Australia. Given the choice between a shot at TV fame and three weeks in the Australian summer, I head south. While in Australia, I spend an extremely memorable four days travelling along the Great Ocean Road. This will be crucial three years later. November 2002. Let’s have another go at this. This year, I manage to stay in the country through all the university selection rounds, and by the time the prospective contestants are whittled down to four, I am among them. Now to take on Granada, who give every team entering a quiz and an interview to see if they are a) clever enough and b) charismatic enough to look good on the show. Who knows whether we failed on a) or b), but either way, [...]