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 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 happened, Oli said 1994 instead of 1995, and we were down 85 to -5. So far this wasn’t going to plan, but there was plenty of time. Could we pull back and avoid disgracing ourselves? With the score at 105 to -5, Pete managed to work out that the sum of the atomic number of hydrogen, the number of novels Anne Bronte wrote, the number of feet in a yard and the number of fingers Bart Simpson has on each hand was 10, and to an almighty cheer we moved into positive scores.
Things were much more level now, and the gap stayed at 80-100 points as both teams’ scores rose. I impressed even myself by identifying taiga as a type of forest before Paxman even said the giveaway word Siberia, but although we were now keeping pace, we couldn’t close the gap. The final picture round could have helped - I’d be surprised if any team in the whole competition would have had much trouble identifying countries on a map of the Balkans. But Corpus Christi buzzed the instant the map appeared, knowing they would know the answer. We probably should have done the same rather than wait to actually see the map, but I thought it was a bit outside the spirit of the game. I was a bit angry but not as angry as half-Croat UCL Polancec.
Finishing off
The last few minutes of the game saw our score reach respectability. We buzzed often and correctly, and when UCL Hinstridge tried his luck by guessing Cyprus for a Mediterranean island related term and got it right, it seemed things might be going our way. But it was too little, too late, and the gong went with the scores at 250-140.
It would have been nice to win, but really there was no way I could feel disappointed. I’d never expected to get this far, and it was great to have achieved maximum television exposure and to have done better than UCL had ever managed before. I identified three main factors in our loss. Firstly, as well as the usual pre-match listening to Deodato’s magnificently overblown 70s jazz-funk version of Also Sprach Zarathustra, Oli made us listen to a disco remix of Beethoven’s 9th symphony, which wasn’t as funky and ruined my equilibrium; second, my jumper, although magnificently stripy, only had two colours, thus breaking the previous pattern of alternating between two-tone and multicoloured; and third, Ivan still had the shakes from the semi-final and Oli hadn’t fully recovered from his sweat patches.
The trophy was presented to the winners by Pete Postlethwaite, the greatest actor in the world according to Steven Spielberg, and a great guy. After a brief word from him about how good the final had been, the credits rolled and we walked down to shake hands with the winners. In a fantastic display of churlishness the cameras quite clearly revealed me saying ‘Bastard!’ to one of the Corpus Christi team, but that was later bettered by Manchester Mills from the semi-final, who clearly felt badly robbed and told us his team would have done better. Luckily his team-mates were much nicer and we had a great time in the green room afterwards, chatting to Jeremy, voice-over man Roger Tilling, Pete Postlethwaite and all the teams who had made it this far.
Then we went out for the evening, to the sleaziest bar we could find. We invited the Corpus Christi people, but they seemed slightly shocked by the idea of going to sleazy bars and said no. I think Stu invited Jeremy as well, who also politely declined. We had one more fun night out in Manchester before heading back to London with just a hint of regret that we hadn’t made it all the way.
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