University Challenge - Round One
From Worldtraveller
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 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 the cameras, and wardrobe, to approve of our chosen clothes. Despite specific instructions that stripes were not good, my multi-coloured stripy jumper was grudgingly permitted to grace the nation's TV screens.
Game on
And so we approached the set. Warwick had brought about 100 supporters - we had managed two. So we walked on to polite applause, while Warwick brought the house down. Then came the warm-up, with voice-over man Roger Tilling getting to play Paxman to ask us a few questions. We didn't score a single point. Worried? No. Received wisdom was that whoever won the warm-up would lose the real thing.
So on to the game proper. A strange experience, to be on the set, listening to the theme music, wondering if I'd be crippled by the pressure of the situation. And we started disastrously, with an incorrect buzz-in on the very first question putting us on -5 points. Luckily, despite this we soon got going, and we were running neck and neck with Warwick until about half way. Then we hit our stride, with Plank quickest on the buzzer to identify Michael Jackson's Billy Jean, Pete knowing the technical term for nosebleeds and Oli knowing who founded Pennsylvania.
And, in what I thought was easily the finest moment of the show by far, the second picture round involved naming a famous Australian landmark and the state it was in. On hearing the word Australia, I was ready for action, knowing my team mates would expect me to get it. The picture appeared, and where should it be but one of my favourite places, the Great Ocean Road. No sooner had the picture appeared than I buzzed with the correct answer. 'Wow!' said Paxman. UCL Wesson was pretty happy with that.
I correctly identified three more Australian landmarks for the bonuses, and then it was plain sailing to the end. We had found our confidence, and our rapid buzzing broke Warwick. I got three more answers right in the last few minutes, and the gong went just after I'd buzzed in on a question about metalwork with the right answer of 'filigree'. It was 265-100 to us, a performance Paxman described as 'magnificent'.
Reaction
To be honest I was quite surprised we won, especially by the margin we managed. I really had no idea what to expect, so a win was as much of a shock as losing would have been. Warwick were not a bad team at all, but we had the inspired buzzing of Ivan, who was responsible for eight of our sixteen correct starter questions. Ivan and I had taken part in a University Challenge-style buzzer quiz a year previously, in which he'd been awarded a special prize for the most incorrect buzz-ins, so it was good to see that that form had clearly been a one-off.
With this victory under our belt, I decided that the extra confidence of a good win would be enough to get us through the next round, and that if we made it to the quarters we could probably win that as well. And if we found ourselves in the semis, well, surely we wouldn't slip up just one step from the final. We only had three weeks to wait before we'd find out if this wild optimism was in any way justified.
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