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 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 rounds, we were a little bit shaky for this one, and buzzed incorrectly many times. I think I lost us at least 20 points, including two successive incorrect buzz-ins very early in the game. One of them was about the documentary which most recently won the Palme d’Or at Cannes. I buzzed too quickly, said Bowling for Columbine and lost us five points. Paxman offered it to Jesus, who said “Michael Moore”. Paxman gave them another chance, which I though was a bit generous, and they got the right answer, Fahrenheit 9/11.
But we slowly inched ahead. The music round helped us - from the music we had to name the composer and the year (to within five) of the classical piece. I don’t know anything about classical music at all so I just sat back and listened. Jesus buzzed in, offering Elgar and 1910, but they were wrong. The question was all ours now, but I gazed blankly into the middle distance, surplus to requirements for the moment. Oli buzzed in, offering Elgar and 1916, which was good enough for Paxman (the actual year was 1919).
We gave away more points with over-hasty buzzing, but so did our opponents. Following a long and complicated question which boiled down to “which element has the symbol Ru?”, Jesus buzzed in with rubidium. I knew it wasn’t that, and given the couple of extra seconds while Paxman gleefully said “No!”, I realised it was ruthenium. The gong went soon afterwards, and we found ourselves the winners by 175-110. We were officially the best UCL team in the history of the programme.
Onward
After our previous two rounds we’d gone out clubbing in Manchester to celebrate. This time we couldn’t, as we’d be filming the semi-final early the next morning. We had to limit ourselves to a quiet-ish night and we were in bed by 4am. The following morning saw some major carbohydrate loading at breakfast, the consumption of a huge quantity of violently strong coffees, and a slightly wired UCL team in the studio to face home team Manchester in the semi-final.
Leave a Reply