Beginnings
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, all UCL has to show for its efforts this year is a big fat rejection letter from Granada.
November 2003. The old ‘third time lucky’ trick. Once more into the breach, for three rounds of 100 questions, against UCL’s finest trivia bores. An information-sponge for a brain and a sense of television destiny carry me through to the final four for a second time. So who were the fine brains who also made the cut?
Meet the teammates
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 [...read on...]
Round One
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 [...read on...]
Round 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 [...read on...]
Quarter finals
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 [...read on...]
Semi finals
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. [...read on...]
The final
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 [...read on...]
Clips
Here are a few edited extracts from the shows:
All the starters I got right
Paxman getting [...read on...]
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