UniversityChallenged

GASP! As any regular reader will know, I am extremely biased in favour of arts colleges, and the sight of a music college at the start of this week’s show caused my heart to double-time. Honestly, I haven’t been so excited since Courtauld’s magnificent run two seasons ago. 

DUNDEE: 145 ROYAL NORTHERN COLLEGE OF MUSIC: 135

Team Vibe: Dundee: a dinner party, with a Spotify playlist entitled Chilled Out Weirdness, featuring lots of mid-price wine, with polite goodbyes

Royal Northern College of Music: a dinner party, with a Spotify playlist entitled Weird Vocal Shit My Opera Teacher Won’t Like, featuring lots of mid-price wine, descending into the ad-hoc multi-person performance of Eight Songs for a Mad King with additional piano

Grandad Count: RNCM the slightly older with an average age of 24. Who cares! They’re MY PEOPLE.

Diversity Count: Not the worst, but not the best. 

Style News: Dundee the clear winners here, bringing two bold images in the form of strawberry knitted tank top (Russell) and fishy – carp? – print shirt (Spurrell). RNCM, I expect more from you! Plain-coloured tops WILL NOT DO.

Cult Hero Of The Episode: I was dreadfully tense for this episode, because musicians (including one composer, Wills, who looked familiar, and two vocalists, my specialism) on UniChall is basically the same as me being on there. It was a shaky start, and it looked like the casually confident Dundee were going to punish them (I did like Captain Stonier’s unflappability), but minute by minute, RNCM clawed their way back. The last time I was so heartily shouty at the telly I was watching the Euros final. YES! Musicians CAN know stuff about pickled plums and Russian physicists! I’m giving it to all them, because though they were just pipped to the post, they might hopefully come back as a high-scoring loser. 

Handsome Person of the Episode: Captain Chrisp was giving me Anya Taylor-Joy in The Queen’s Gambit vibes. But mmm, Carew. Except for the tattoo of some music on your arm (if this must be done I insist it must be in 5/8 and be serialist), you had me at ‘Sega Genesis?’.

Horror Bonus Round: (Jez, reading this in one breath, the timbre of his voice descending with increasing gloom): ‘Astrophysicists uses the abbreviation CDM for the universal material that is assumed to exist with little or zero relative velocity under the  under the standard cosmological model. CDM stands for ‘Cold what?’

Regular Music Fail By Composition PhD-owning Composer, Kerry Andrew:  ‘The X-Files!’ I yelled, in terror, after 1.234 seconds of the synth-based TV theme round, when I have watched all of Stranger Things (the correct answer) twice because I loved it so. ARGH! Wasn’t quick enough to get Bladerunner or Assault on Precinct 13, though did get Twin Peaks in a heartbeat, because we watched it after Girl Guides in 1990. Good God, I’m old. Props to Carew for getting the Beethoven piano question in no time at all.

Dream Bonus Question Round: 2/3 in the screenwriters round, 2/3 in the Women’s Prize for Fiction, 2/3 in the British coastal geography (’Scarbados!’ I shouted), 3 out of 4 in the John Le Carre film adaptions. Standard.

Jezza-Watch: It’s time for Let’s Guess What’s On Jezza’s Tie! What was it tonight? Owls? Snails? Answers welcome; I need to know.

‘Low temperature fusion?’ guessed Dundee’s Captain Stonier. ‘No, it was cold fusion,’ said Jez, stony-faced, in the manner of a terrifying 1970s headmaster from a children’s horror novel. ‘We asked for a two-word term and you gave a three-word term.’ ‘OK. Sorry,’ said Captain Stonier, meekly, bearing the brunt for all of us.

‘Who’d have thought time-wasting would be so useful?’ Jezzo said, after the gaming bonus round. Oh Jeremy, you don’t even BELIEVE in your own curmudgeon-li-ness. You’re not fooling anyone, you know...

Kerry and Andy’s Score: 25, with Andy doing the majority of the leg-work.

Brain Food: Hearty vegetable soup. WINTER IS COMING.

Tweets of the Day:

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YES, I'm still alive, just been busy working on my health. So, what's new? The plexiglass is still up, everyone's still conferring fantastically loudly, Jezzo P is a legend for going public about his Parkinson's diagnosis and carrying on regardless, and I'm still getting basic questions about composers wrong.

ST CATHERINE’S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE: 130 UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON: 120

Team Vibe: St Catherine’s:

University College: ‘Why does it just say University?’ I said. ‘It doesn’t say what college they are!’ ‘It’s University College, Oxford,’ said Andy, demonstrating yet again why I didn’t go to Oxbridge.

Grandad Count: University College had the greater age average; I’m guessing it was Buizza, but the moustache may have foxed me.

Diversity Count: 

This is the first time ever I can remember white boys being in the minority.

Style News: Hmm, what do I think about three members of Catz choosing to wear college jumpers? Yes, it’s homogenous, but people, this isn’t a school adventure holiday trip to Wales to do abseiling! We want flamboyant print shirts and statement jewellery, and not just from Jezza!

Meanwhile, I am here for University College’s Karas, with a very maximilist collar and Midsommar-vibes hair-plaiting.

Cult Hero Of The Episode: I really enjoyed the chatty ebullience of Catz (I was probably just delirious at having three lasses in the team), and they seemed like a really egalitarian team. University College were very solid, too, and it remained pretty tight, until Captain Scott bossed the last starter question before the gong to get them an extra ten points. Chapeau!

Handsome Person of the Episode: University College’s Buizza, because that moustache will get you anywhere, sir.

Horror Bonus Round: ‘Name two digit numbers that are reversal pairs, for example 45 and 54. In each case, give both numbers from the description. All six answers are primes. ... [Secondly:] The atomic number of chlorine and the year in which the Romans built a fortress at the site of present-day York?’

Regular Music Fail By Composition PhD-owning Composer, Kerry Andrew: I did get the JS Bach question, because when in doubt, vote Bach. I was dreadful in the disco round, apart from the Donna Summer. MUST DO BETTER.

Dream Bonus Question Round: 4/4 in the who-played-Jane-Eyre round (yes, I am a predictable lover of classic fiction adaptations, don’t @ me); 2/3 in the Canadian provincial birds round (a double-whammy of my specialisms here); 2/3 in the silence in television round. Very spookily, I’d watched the Inside No. 9 episode mentioned about three hours beforehand. And ‘in what American fantasy series was the epi –’ ‘HUSH!’ bellowed I, contrarily, for this episode of Buffy is one of the best bits of telly ever.

Jezza-Watch: He’s been bringing excellent glasses game these days. And his ties are getting more rococo - tonight’s print looked like pink space invaders! QUESTION: is this his own doing, or is there a canny stylist lurking backstage, wishing they were doing Bake-Off?

Kerry and Andy’s Score: 18. Andy only joined halfway through, so I was floundering alone for a while.

Brain Food: A really healthy smoothie followed by a massive packet of crisps. Hmm.

Tweets of the Day:

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Team Vibe:

Glasgow: Ooo, a Scottish uni! I always get excited for these, because Scottish men make up for them being men (because they are Scottish). Glasgow brought four men, and none of them Scots.

King’s: 

Grandad Count: Glasgow had an average age of 26, UGH.

Gender Diversity Count: ARGHGHGHGHG. Though a point to the producers for getting in a question about toxic masculinity, tee hee.

Style News: Just realised that UniChall has been the perfect precursor to Zoom meeting style! You know, Moschino, a slick of Mac lippy and bling jewellery on top, your rolled-down dinosaur onesie on the bottom. Captain Jackson of King’s was in fine fettle, bringing the holy trinity of beard, glasses and unicorn T-shirt. But today can only go to King’s Triggs, because his badger shirt is the best thing of 2020 (and the band I play in for fun is obsessed with badgers).

Cult Hero Of The Episode: Loud conferring for the win! I love the perspex-induced amplified chat, meaning you can hear their every nonsensical mutter. Glasgow were especially good at the mumblecore. But King’s were best, from the unfussy Xu to the gently assenting Weaver. Captain Jackson was on good form, and while I was disappointed to see Triggs rather tamed compared to the last time I saw him (trying to work out whether he’d have seen all the Twittery sneers to his apparent smugness), I’m still giving it to him. Because badgers. 

 Handsome Person of the Episode: Glasgow’s thick-jawed, broad-shouldered Canuck, Greencorn: like the cover star of Mountie Magazine, the Christmas Edition.

Horror Bonus Round: Russian constituent sub-national political divisions? What fresh hell is this?

Regular Music Fail By Composition PhD-owning Composer, Kerry Andrew: Aussie musos, OOO! ‘CROWDED HOUSE,’ I said. ‘There’s going to be Crowded House. And Kylie.’ There wasn’t, but I got Nick Cave and, because being born in 1978 now equals ancient, The Seekers. A later starter was like a easy-peasy GCSE music question: Couperin, Telemann and Lully are Baroque composers, YES. I think all the music questions should be like that one.

Dream Bonus Question Round: 2/3 in the Berlin Film Festival presidents.

Jezza-Watch: I still can’t get over his AWFUL hair, but I guess it’s here to stay. ‘We all know the rules and it’s too boring to go into them, it’s just a waste of time,’ he said, sourly, in the intro. Ahh, that’s better, there’s the Jezzo we all know and love!

Kerry and Andy’s Score: 22. I was poor AF, though perked up later.

Brain Food: Lamb coconut stew. It was right nice!

Tweets of the Day:

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Team Vibe:

Linacre: sort of humdrum, to be honest. Grads, you know.

Edinburgh: ahhhhh, they’re gorge. I stan.

Grandad Count: Linacre are a graduate college, hence having an average age of 28. Big up Edinburgh! I just can picture them in fluffy animal slippers watching Rugrats (whilst Jeffcoat makes them waffles).

Gender Diversity Count: One a-piece, like this is a boardroom or something.

Style News: Tonight was all about Jeffcoat of Edinburgh’s tie! Woollen, two-tone, very fine indeed. Nice haircut, too. ‘He’s basically like us, but on the telly,’ I said.

Cult Hero Of The Episode: ‘Hi, I’m Fricker, and I’m from 1872,’ said Andy. Yes, he MAY look like a pale Victorian ghost (to quote from Sex Education), but he just pipped it for me. I do like this noisy conferring lark.

Handsome Person of the Episode: I wouldn’t say no to cruising on the back of Dorrington of Linacre’s motorbike on Highway 101, circa 1974. Jeffcoat is quite alluring. And there's beguiling Captain Clark of Edinburgh. Just adorable!

Horror Bonus Round: ‘Ignoring additive constance, what is the indefinite integral of sec squared x with respect to x?’

Regular Music Fail By Composition PhD-owning Composer, Kerry Andrew: Oh gosh, I was bad on the Italian terms round, described in long-winded Italian. 2/4, I think, as my brain had gone all rusty steampunk on me. Loved the 4AD artists round, as did Edinburgh’s Jeffcoat, who sprang into life here; he got The Pixies after 0.000012 seconds. ‘Violent Femmes,’ he murmured (though incorrectly) to Captain Clarke. ‘Violet who?’ said Clark. Ahhh. I was triple proud to identify Scott Walker after hearing a single inhale, though, WHOOP. Jez is revealing more of himself as this show goes on. ‘Thank heavens we didn’t have to hear any more,’ he grumbled. WHAT, MAN? Do you just want to listen to ‘Does Your Mother Know’ on repeat? NOT COOL, JEZZO.

Dream Bonus Question Round: San Francisco-set films. Robert Rankin novels. Andy was FUMING that the gong went before the start of the bonus round on Anthea Bell’s translations of German literature because that is literally all he reads.

Jezza-Watch: Still trying to get used to the hair. It’s really doing my head in. Also displaying flagrant Oxbridgey bias at the end, telling Linacre they lost because of the 'happy fall of questions' Edinburgh received. They were just better! It's possible, Jezster!

Kerry and Andy’s Score: 19 today, so:

Brain Food: Experimental sausage, leek and mushroom stew with fennel and caraway seeds.

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It’s BACK! With a seamless transition between the first round, filmed months ago, and the highest scoring losers bit, filmed very recently. You’d hardly know the difference, apart from:

Something strange having happened to Jeremy P (see below)

Huge plastic screens between teammates

Contestants wearing earpieces so they can hear each other, and thus conferring REALLY LOUD INDEED

I got totes emosh, actually (it doesn’t take much: I lost it during the Strictly opening to see dancers like, dancing together); Jezzo gave a lovely introduction which highlighted the fortitude and badassery of all students everywhere. It was quite ‘we happy few’, except conjuring not lusty Henry V battle scenes but images of students trapped behind campus corridor windows with handwritten signs drolly demanding BEER for their survival. SOB.

Team Vibe:

Imperial: quite FUN and LIVELY

Exeter: quite SWEET and SHOUTY

Grandad Count: Average ages of 20 on both teams. I probably had half the knowledge, aged 20, that I have now, which means that when they were 10 years old, they still knew 20 times more than me.

Gender Diversity Count: Not good enough, but I’m just happy to see students going about their business this week like screens and earpieces are normal, so all is forgiven.

Style News: Pretty good this week! Am I right to think non-Oxbridge teams bring out more festive-wear? Captain Kohn of Imperial had a good shirt, Wong brought the tie-dye, and Captain Gravett of Exeter had a lovely yellow top or dress with bold power-sleeves. My fave, though, was Marrow’s minimalisty graphic T-shirt:

***STOP PRESS! I was wondering why her surname was so familiar - she’s only the twin sister of Marrow from St John’s, Cambridge! So. Damned. Cool.***

Cult Hero Of The Episode: Captain Kohn, my goodness! Answering questions before Exeter had breathed, before I had blinked, before Jeremy had tossed his hair out of his eyes, etc.

Handsome Person of the Episode: I dug Marrow’s unadorned beauty but Parker of Exeter was D.R.E.A.M.Y.

Horror Bonus Round: ‘Your bonuses are on astronomy: if the diameter of the earth is 12,000, the unit is kilometers; what unit is being used if the diameter of the sun is 4.64’?

Regular Music Fail By Composition PhD-owning Composer, Kerry Andrew: ‘Indicating a slow, dignified tempo, what five-letter musical direction links the second movement of Dvor–’

I was still counting ‘A-D-A-G-I-O’ on my fingers while Kohn answered ‘Largo.’ Hahahaha.

I loved the topic of the music bonus round – band’s songs sung by someone other than the main vocalist – but Kohn was so speedy that we couldn’t get there before him: ‘ABBA?’ he said, to the starter, after 0.6333 seconds of ‘Does Your Mother Know’. Jez looked quite put out. ‘There’s no need to say it so dismissively!’ he pouted. ‘It’s great music!’ Jez used to go regularly to Inferno’s in Clapham on Ladies Go In Free Night; you’d see him twerking to ‘Money Money Money.’ Fact.

Dream Bonus Question Round: 2/3 musicals, discombobulatingly. Andy was hot on the bodies of water round. Mockumentaries, 3/3.

Jezza-Watch: ‘He looks . . . weird,’ I said, before realising that this was the new batch of filming. Now we all know what he was been up to during the yawning maw of lockdown: GROWING HIS HAIR, presumably while bingeing ‘I May Destroy You’ or making sourdough whilst listening to ABBA deep cuts. It flopped voluminously either side and frankly made me worry that he’d let himself go a bit. He also had fresh glasses; he looked like the picture you upload of yourself on a cheap glasses website to virtually try on frames, except IRL.

Kerry and Andy’s Score: 29! 

Brain Food: Homemade collard soup. I know how to party.

Tweets of the Day:

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I don’t really read the news (tip: this is good for sanity), but am faintly aware of students being holed up in their quarters, possibly over Christmas, possibly forever. I’m trying to imagine what the would have been like back in the olden days at York in my first year: it was tricky enough, thirteen of us fighting over one Baby Belling oven (literally two hobs and a grill), two showers and one bath. Being pre-mobile phones (yes, I belong in the Grandad Count), I’d have written messages to my friends on their doors, stocked up on tinned hot dogs and Cinnamon Toast Crunch and settled in to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer on my black and white telly whilst ignoring essay deadlines. Hmm, I basically did that anyway. Hang in there, studes, we love you!

Team Vibe:

Edinburgh: gone for a Sunday morning stroll up to Arthur’s Seat, feeling well hungover, but EXHILARATED

Manchester: still fuming over their argument over whether it should have been wine bar or pub last night (pub won).

Grandad Count: Manchester were the older tonight. But nowhere near as old as me.

Gender Diversity Count: Just the one, captaining Edinburgh. I want to pluck out my eyes every time I see a team of four boys. REALLY, UniChall producers, you must stipulate gender equality and diversity as a requirement for entering if the institutions can’t manage it themselves. Swiftly, students will see contestants who look like them and feel more emboldened to enter! 

Style News: Jackets! Jeffcoats of Edinburgh really didn’t look like he belonged on University Challenge, but rather on the set of Life on Mars, hanging round in the 1970s police department, smoking fags and talking about birds and boozers. But I dug his look! Manchester’s Captain Spacey was the most dapper tonight, because even if I do have a deep phobia of paisley, he is forgiven for sporting a matching pocket handkerchief.

Cult Hero Of The Episode: Manchester were evenly good, and though Jones-O’Brien gave good slouch, no one otherwise stood out for me. Kudos to Jeffcoat for giving a cheeky wink to his compadres after an answer, but I rather liked Edinburgh’s Fricker, who kept his team (probably) in the competition as one of the highest-scoring losers with some fresh and fierce starters.

Handsome Person of the Episode:

‘Hi, I’m Niamh Clarke –’ said Captain Clarke of Edinburgh.

‘Ahhh,’ cooed Andy and I.

‘I’m from Hollywood, Country Wicklow in Ireland –’

‘Ahhhh,’ cooed Andy and I.’

‘And I do Physics with Meteorology.’

‘AHHHHH,’ cooed Andy and I.

Horror Bonus Round: ‘Born in Manchester in 1852, which physicist gives his name to the vector that describes the rate and direction of the transfer of energy per unit area of an electromagnetic wave?’

Regular Music Fail By Composition PhD-owning Composer, Kerry Andrew: I was still riding high on the jubilation of getting the opening starter (‘Bildungsroman, governess, Victor–’ ‘JANE EYRE,’ said I, BOOM) that I hardly listened to the subsequent bonuses on composer statues. Was pleased to identify Fred Astaire later on. The bonus round on other singers of songs with lyrics by Dorothy Fields was tricky! Ella is my fave singer evs, so no problem there; but I literally guessed Lou Reed instead of Willie Nelson, and I grew up listening to Willie Nelson. 

Dream Bonus Question Round: Jesse Armstrong round, yes! 3/3, for we are big fans of Peep Show and Fresh Meat, and Andy’s just binged Succession. British sea birds are my aesthetic, as regular readers (errr, anyone?) will know, so was FURIOUS not to get fulmars.

Jezza-Watch: OMG! AKA WTF (as I saw on someone’s jumper in the park today)! Jez was sporting glasses! They weren’t half bad either, though sat a bit wonkily. ‘He looks great!’ I said. ‘He looks like he’s wearing a glasses-and-nose fancy dress prop,’ said Andy. Otherwise it was business as usual, Jez scoffing at students not knowing where Eastbourne is, even though everyone knows that no one under the age of 72 lives there.

Kerry and Andy’s Score: Not the dizzying heights of last week’s record, but a very solid 25. 'You’re on fire tonight!’ said Andy.

Brain Food: Andy’s homemade chicken curry

Tweets of the Day:

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You know sometimes when you are playing pool ( I mean, in the olden days), and even though you’ve got zero hand to eye co-ordination, somehow the second pint of cherry beer gives you the confidence to just go for it, and you have a streak of brilliance and beat your opponent in ten straight moves and think about joining some sort of exclusive league? The UniChall equivalent is when you start well, and just keep correctly guessing indecipherable algebra questions and integers and the names for swellings on the throat, and tonight, friends, THIS WAS US.

Warwick: 255

Wolfson, Oxford: 105

Team Vibe:

Warwick: I am daring to believe that they are a little more naughty than they look.

Wolfson, Oxford: much less naughty than they look, and they don’t look the slightest bit naughty.

Grandad Count: Warwick brought a composite age of 24 and three-quarters. Composite, not average. Honestly, how were two of those young waifs doing PhDs? They’ve only just finished prep school and are off down the newsies to get a bag of pick-a-mix and a Beano!

Gender Diversity Count: 8 chaps. 

Style News: FFS. I can’t even. Tonight’s episode was literally the rail in the darkest corner of Next on every chain-infested high street in the country, where men just buy things without trying, because they hate shopping and would rather read their 1,000 page history of the Second World War in Costa Coffee before heading into Millets for some padded gloves for the winter.

Cult Hero Of The Episode: Go, Warwick! I’m always biased in favour of the non-Oxbridgeys, as anyone who blinks at this blog will know, but my step-nephew goes there, and the team did steam ahead. Braid did it for me, what with his adorably-delivered knowledge of Nigerian writers, Renaissance painters, Lowestoft, the boiling point of water, the meaning of the universe, etc. I still sniggered with Jez’s ‘Your bonuses are on personality, Warwick,’ because I am very naughty (unlike these eight fellows).

Handsome Person of the Episode: Shirt-jumper blunders negate handsomeness in my sort of algebra. I pinned all hopes on Wolfson’s Moore, because at least his jumper was a roll-neck and his hair was quite raffish. 

Horror Bonus Round: ‘Giving the name of a US state using a simple 7-segment display pocket calculator, the capital of which state is effectively spelt by entering the number 35108 and inverting the screen?’

Regular Music Fail By Composition PhD-owning Composer, Kerry Andrew: ‘Mozart,’ said Andy, correctly, after literally 0.0065 seconds of the starter. We failed to get any of the bonuses on Classic FM’s Revision playlist, but that's because our revisions playlists consisted of Radio 1’s Mark and Lard show circa 1996 (me) or Sepultura in 1995 (Andy).

Dream Bonus Question Round: 2/3 BAFTA Rising Stars, 2/3 in the Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty!

Jezza-Watch: ‘So you’re storming your way to 5,’ Jez said to Warwick, with ill-disguised snarkiness, on eventually getting themselves a set of bonuses, and with Wolfson on 50. Warwick’s response was, rightly, to bounce ahead and march onwards to a magnificent score.

Kerry and Andy’s Score: *drum roll* THIRTY-FOUR! And yes, this is answering before the contestants. Andy turned into a scientist for the evening, and there was additionally some excellent team-work: ‘JOHN!’ I shouted. ‘Wyndham,’ he completed. “JOHN!’ I shouted. ‘Boyega,’ he completed. Yes, OK: I basically just shouted ‘John,’ the whole time. 

Brain Food: Homemade vegetable soup, hummus, sardines

Tweets of the Day:

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When I was 17, it was my ambition to study composition at the Royal Academy of Music. My A-Level music teachers gently suggested I might like a university to get a broader education and not limit myself. Reader, it worked! This year I got asked to do Celebrity University Challenge again, surely for my incredible brain and not for the 0.000045 degrees of ‘celebrity’ that having three thousand Twitter followers might get me. Sadly, I’m still too ill, but hey! At least it gives me another one/two years to cram French Renaissance painters and mineral compounds!

Tonight’s episode comes with me flying solo.

Royal Academy of Music: 50

St John’s, Cambridge: 220

Team Vibe:

Royal Academy of Music: just hanging around outside the Albert Hall, gloating at being at the front of the Proms queue, before realising that there are no audiences this year and in fact the Proms have ended and that they were supposed to be playing a lunchtime concert an hour ago.

St. John’s: Standing in a socially distanced queue outside the Royal Academy of Music for a concert that the Royal Academy team were supposed to be playing, merrily debating the composers on the programme, and politely saying ‘no, after you,’ to each other three thousand times.

Grandad Count: I didn’t quite catch it, but they all looked Gen Z+++ enough.

Gender Diversity Count: Equality rules over at St John’s! Not so good over at the Royal Academy of Music. I would like to politely inform the world that musicians of other genders DO exist and DO know stuff.

Style News: Let’s face it: if girls were on the show sporting white shirts under navy pullovers, I would rejoice. But this is not the world we live in. Thankfully, Malcharek of St John’s had a fantastic jumper, like a hot pink chandelier had melted on her shoulder, and Marrow reminded us that cord dungarees are VERY 2020/21.

Cult Hero Of The Episode: Ah, Royal Academy. I wanted them to do well – honest, despite my bias against colleges, because musicians must stick together and Captain Eden Lavelle (surely a YA fantasy hero name) looks faintly familiar. But they just didn’t. STILL, it wasn’t as awks as watching Wolfson crash and burn last week; I only squirmed in my seat, rather than dying inside!

Never mind lads, here’s St John’s to show you how it’s done. They were a good all-round team, even if they did dither and dather on the bonuses, mumbling to each other so decorously I occasionally wanted to shake my telly. The gong this week should go to Captain Musgrove for getting a surfeit of starters, though kudos to all four’s surnames for sounding like a Victorian private investigation firm, solving mysteries involving stolen penny-farthings.

Handsome Person of the Episode: Marrow = delicious! But I feel I must give something to our boys, and Bain was rather lovely. I can just imagine him standing in a poky practice room practising those insanely quiet Scelsci violin solos, looking ghostly and mournful. 

Horror Bonus Round: ‘Phew,’ the RaM must have thought, ‘we’ve FINALLY got into a bonus round!’ ‘Your set of bonuses are on operas by Verdi,’ said Jez. ARGHGHG! No matter, RaM, I know diddly-squat about them either. 

Regular Music Fail By Composition PhD-owning Composer, Kerry Andrew: The music starter was a dream. Literally no one in the entire universe (especially if you are a fan of Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom) could fail to recognise the opening narration of Benjamin Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. Oh no, wait! Here come the Royal Academy of Music!

Yesss, I thought, gleefully, rubbing my hands. A whole set of bonuses on narration in classical music! Literally my PhD was about words and music! I make music and write and use loads of spoken word! This is my everything! Naturally, I got none of them.

Dream Bonus Question Round: Long-distance walks, woo hoo!

Jezza-Watch: Jez displaying Janus vibes tonight. Which do you prefer?

Exhibit A: distinctly unimpressed by RaM’s Verdi fail. ‘Nabuko?,’ he sneered. ‘No. Certainly not.’

OR!

Exhibit B: cheerful, avuncular uncle. ‘Yes, it IS Squirrel Nutkin!’ he said to St John’s, jovially, in the Beatrix Potter bonuses. Imagine Jezzo tucking you in and reading you a bedtime story! Hmm, I’ll stick with Exhibit A.

Kerry and Andy’s Score: 14, y’all! An even spread across the humanities. ‘JEMIMA PUDDLEDUCK!’ shouted I, exuberantly.

Brain Food: Roast vegetables, homemade hummus, homemade salsa

Tweets of the Day:

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How do you film socially distanced UniChall? One of my insider snouts informs me that the first round was filmed pre-plague, but Round Two onwards will be delayed. Will the teams be in a bubble for two weeks beforehand (good way of cramming in extra revision on metal alloys and Brueghel the Elder)? Or will Jez point accusingly at contestants for removing their masks to confer? I await with bated breath (which I will not exhale on anyone).

***STOP PRESS! See a tweet from legendary announcer Roger Tilling below!***

Anyway! I couldn’t resist this one, because – GASP! – it was my alma mater (York) versus husband Andy’s most recent alma mater (King’s). I stood in front of Andy, fists clenched, leaping on my toes in prancey boxing-style and roaring lustily about bands of brothers, before remembering that it’s only a game and none of it matters (except it DOES).

York: 100

King’s College, London: 170

Team Vibe:

York: adorable little Yorkshire puddings

King’s College London: hanging out at the South Bank, reading Sebald and eating poke

Grandad Count: King’s had a couple of olds, taking Andy right back to being nearly twenty years older than many of his Masters peers in 2018 and trying to fit in by saying ‘lit’ and ‘savage’ (he didn’t really do this).

Gender Diversity Count: 2/8, aka:

Style News: No contest here: even if I wasn’t completely biased in favour of music students from York, dear Ridout would have run away with it. Killer shirt! Awesome necklace! Beige turtleneck! Singular hair! Hipster glasses! If I didn’t know better, I’d have assumed it was open mic night in Kreuzberg, Berlin, 1998.

Cult Hero Of The Episode: Today’s love-to-hate figure is Triggs, of King’s! By love to hate, I mean all the dopes who get riled into Twitrage if someone doesn’t smile politely and answer neutrally, with no character or individuality. Triggs (who also brought good shirt/T-shirt game) had a whole slouchy, grouchy insouciance going on, buzzed in several confident wrong answers as well as many correct ones. I, naturally, love him with nary a whit of hate, because those who doted on Imperial’s Brandon last season know that contestants are shitting themselves underneath any apparent swagger (see Tweet evidence below). He also had a very similar-to-Brandon Thinking Man pose!

Handsome Person of the Episode: York’s Walker had VERY dreamy eyes, but I’m giving it to lovely Captain Parsons, for her wide-eyed answers and fine cord dungarees.

Horror Bonus Round: 'Your bonuses are on Central Asia. In each case, name the country in which the following cities are located.’ It’s the ‘-stan' pot-luck round that comes around every five episodes! Sadly, we guessed Turkmenistan for each one.

For Captain Jackson of King’s, the horror round was definitely the Dickens one, in which he answered, confusingly, ‘Martin Chizzlewick’ three times running, ah hahaha.

Regular Music Fail By Composition PhD-owning Composer, Kerry Andrew: Singers crooning in different languages, ooo, spicy! Stevie Wonder I got, though I can honestly understand the discombobulation of hearing him sing in Spanish. Got The Supremes, but not Martha Reeves or the Temptations, because I changed my mind and blurted The Four Tops instead. Fantastic lack of classical music questions, yay! No one likes them (especially moi).

Dream Bonus Question Round: Producer Rick Rubin, yasss! We got Red Hot Chili Peppers, Johnny Cash and Metallica betwixt us. As an aside, it’s about seven and a half years and lots of whisky before Captain Jackson becomes Rick Rubin:

Jezza-Watch: Grumpy old goat versus unreadable millennial! ‘Milton?’ buzzed in Trigg, casually, correctly, with a vulnerable half-scowl. ’You always look as if you can hardly be bothered to answer,’ Jezzo groused. It’s literally the world encapsulated in one exchange.

Kerry and Andy’s Score: 19 points, fairly equally.

Brain Food: Salmon, pea puree and a potato waffle, YUM

Tweets of the Day:

Please feel free to share, retweet, shout about this blog!

Kerry on Twitter

Kerry on Instagram

UNICHALL FINAL, BRAP BRAP! An Oxbridge versus a Russell Group! Boys! Shirts! ’What will we do on Monday nights?’ said Andy, bewildered. I didn’t know how to answer him.

‘Well, I hope you enjoy it,’ said Jez, with the same grim smile as a man about to make eight chaps walk a plank into a pool of sharks.

Corpus Christi, Cambridge (CCC): 105

Imperial College: 275

Team Vibe: Corpus Christi, Cambridge:

Imperial: 

Grandad Count: Imperial were slightly the older, with an average age of 23.

Gender Diversity Count: Yes, well, I knew it was coming. 8 boys (at least some racial diversity in there). Props to Captain Wang for this:

Style News: Quite a few jackets and open-necked shirts in there, like they’d all got an invite to their first party with their lecturers to drink mid-priced white wine and chat about trans-dimensional strings. Not Brandon of course, bringing in another of his delightful sweatshirts - this one had an iconic Greek NYC deli advert on it – plus, of course, his ‘NOT HERE TO MAKE FRIENDS’ badge. Captain Wang of CCC also brought a bouncy knitted star-patterned jumper which was Very Good.

Cult Hero Of The Episode: HOLY GUACAMOLE! Here we were, lazily going on about Brandon vs Wang, only for Brandon to have a relatively quiet one and literally the whole of Imperial coming out with all guns blazing. I think the whole series was a hustle for them – pretending that Brandon was the one to fear, and then BOOM! Brooks gets the first starter, McMeel gets several and they all confer utterly equally. Poor CCC didn’t know what had hit them; despite answering the film and music bonuses at the speed of light, it wasn’t enough to keep up. ‘You get three bonuses on physics,’ said Jez, and Imperial all looked so delighted. But goodness, this episode’s A-Lister was Captain Caleb Rich: he was all over the early bonuses, and bagged almost every starter going in the second half. He was like a quiet, deadly assassin disguised as a South London hipster, killing everyone with his knowledge of poison ivy, symphonic suites and postcolonial theory. I was AGOG.

Also, love this: 

Wang & Brandon being shocked by Rich's buzzer #UniversityChallenge pic.twitter.com/W4CA0hNooA

Captain Rich now has an even more marvellous beard, making him look the absolute spit of avant-garde singer-songwriter David Thomas Broughton, and which you can fawn over on Bobby Seagull’s YouTube interview with the Fab Four here! 

Handsome Person of the Episode: An even match between beaming Gunasekera of CCC and calmly impassive Captain Rich of Imperial, both wearing under-par shirts. Let’s give it Captain Rich, because he deserves everything today!

Horror Bonus Question: ‘Your bonuses are on experiments performed on board the International Space Station: the STPH5EHD experiment tested a cooling system in which cooling fluid is pumped without the need for fragile mechanical parts; for what sub-field of physics do the letters EHD stand for here?’

‘Electrohydrodynamics,’ said Andy, nonchalantly.

Regular Music Fail By Composition PhD-owning Composer, Kerry Andrew: ‘Your bonuses are on popular music in the irregular time of 7/4,’ said Jezter. ‘YASSSSS!’ trumpeted I, with a fist in the air. I got 2/3 because CCC’s Stewart is the sort of person who knows Peter Gabriel singles and I am not. Brubeck and Pink Floyd’s ‘Money’, phew, answered just about at the same time as Wang, ie in 0.0000023 seconds. Elsewhere, CCC’s Gunasekera was even faster with the tone poems. I got the Rimsky-Korsakov starter and the Mallarmé, hooray.

Dream Bonus Question Round: Crusades journey maps, 2/3! I have recently listened to a (much-recommended) You’re Dead to Me podcast, and the Eleanor of Aquitaine episode helped me out here. 2/3 in the Sight and Sound best ever films – was stoked to get Tokyo Story by Ozu.

STOP PRESS! I have just seen that Captain Wang, definitely the cineaste of the series, writes on film - here is an article of his in fabulous alt-culture bible The Quietus. 

Jezza-Watch: Pretty nice again! I think he wore out all his insults on the Courtauld Institute of Art.

Bonus Trophy-Giving Feature: Andy and I had made a bet on who would appear to give away the (hideous) trophy in the always-awks ceremony at the end; I went with Mary Beard and he went with Simon Armitage. Instead, Jezzo introduced a tall, bland-looking chap called Andrew Wiles. ‘Who the fuck is that?’ I said. ‘Pttth,’ said Andy. But then we are rather humanities-biased. ‘They say maths is a young man’s game. I’d say University Challenge is a young man’s game,’ said Andrew Wiles. Hmm, yes, it does still seem that way, bruv.

The best thing of course is seeing what a) the bottom half of contestants looks like and b) how tall they are. Brooks is wearing well skinny jeans! Stewart’s huge, like a glossy champion horse! Brandon is teeny-tiny!

They underscored the ceremony with some slushy orchestral music, as if we were watching the end of a particularly weepy love story. Perhaps we were.

Kerry and Andy’s Score: 21, divided equally (we shouted ‘LEILA SLIMANI!’ at exactly the same time), or 105 points.

Brain Food: Leek and chard soup and salad

Tweets of the Day:

‘The end is nigh,’ intoned Jez at the top of this second semi-final. How right he is. In Lockdown Heights, South London, our virtual quiz was a great success, if rather fiendish. But we DID do a picture round featuring naked posteriors in art; I would give extremely good money to see Jeremy saying, as I said, ‘your bonuses are on bums in art’ in his usual po-faced style.

Anyway! Two matches of the season to go, and as hoped/predicted, it’ll be a doozy of a final.

Imperial College: 235

Trinity College, Cambridge: 80

Team Vibe: 

Imperial:

Trinity: 

Grandad Count: Imperial the slightly older, with an average age of 23.

Gender Diversity Count: YES! Trinity College Cambridge! NO! Imperial!

Style News: Trinity’s Hughes has come out of the woodwork in his last two episodes, hasn’t he? Last time he was resplendent in a pink jumper, tonight he brought one of the finest shirts of the series into play (also highly pink). He also, in a first for UniChall, co-ordinated correct starter answers to his look: ‘louche,’ he said, louchely, on a lexicology question. ‘Monte Carlo?’ he buzzed in later, looking like he was fresh from a louche cocktail party on his ginormous yacht.

Cult Hero Of The Episode: I was intrigued to see how this semi-final played out, seeing as Trinity have been very high-scoring in the past. But they were no match for the dash and might of Lord Commander Brandon; I did want to give it to another member of his team, but when he’s answering two-thirds of all starter questions, it’s impossible. There he was in his famous ‘Thinking Brandon’ pose, before insouciantly buzzing in with ‘Hadrian’, ‘Rob Roy, ‘Bruckner’, ‘Djibouti’, ‘Aardvark’ as if reading the ingredients on a cereal packet. Clearly there are lots of educated, mostly correct guesses in there amongst all the knowledge, but he’s just so confident. ‘It’s not gonna come to me,’ he said, later, in the manner of an angry medium. Points as always for his apparel, too – a jumper that (HA!) I thought was Danny DeVito as the Penguin in Batman but is actually:

And his BADGE, too:

Also, watch this delightfully-delivered answer.

#Brandon4evs

Handsome Person of the Episode: Darling Houlihan of Trinity: a VISION

Horror Bonus Round: QUESTION: ’Designed to search for the imprinted primordial gravitational waves, a series of instruments cited at the South Pole are known by what acronym, one letter short of the name of the specific muscle of the human body?’

ANSWER: ‘Background Imaging of Cosmic Extra-Galactic Polarisation.’

Also: ’This picture is the title of a play in its original language,’ said Jez. ‘It’s Tom Stoppard,’ I said, not having quite grasped the idea. ‘I don’t know why, I just feel that it’s by Tom Stoppard.’ ‘Aristophenes,’ answered Brandon, correctly. Pa ha ha.

Regular Music Fail By Composition PhD-owning Composer, Kerry Andrew: ‘Your bonuses are on three operas,’ said Jez, literally my least favourite sentence in the world. But I got them all! OK, so I scratched about for Delius (‘Like Delibes!’ I said to Andy. ‘But more British!’) Next up was March of the Women, which I played on BBC Radio 3 once (Ethel Smyth, brap brap). And ‘tone poem’ always makes me think of ‘Finlandia’, the dirge-like wind band version of which I played ad nauseam as a teenager.

Dream Bonus Question Round: OPERA, flabbergastingly. Also, I said ‘Tang’ in the Chinese dynasty question, and for once IT WAS RIGHT.

Jezza-Watch: STOP PRESS! Jez was really nice again!

Kerry and Andy’s Score: A mere 12, with 6 each, and 60 points between us. Urgh.

Brain Food: Black-eyed bean stew and salad

Tweets of the Day:

Andy and I have started devising an indoor pub quiz for our friends, to be done over Zoom at the end of the week (totally pinched from Monkman and Seagull, who did this last week). It is ten times easier than UniChall and we are only asking questions that we personally know the answers to. A Fisher-Price My First UniChall, if you will. When coming up with nature questions, I thought back to the lovely Orkney-based history programme I watched the other day. ‘Ooo, can I ask something on the Orkney vole?’ I said, now equipped with this excellent knowledge. ‘It’s a bit too obscure,’ said Andy, and I sadly put that little nugget away, never to be useful again…

Meanwhile, onto the semis!

Corpus Christi, Cambridge: 185

Durham: 130

Team Vibe:

Corpus Christi: 

Durham: 

Grandad Count: Teeny-tiny little pudding-pops! Average ages 21 and 20!

Gender Diversity Count: Very boy-heavy. By which I mean:

Style News: Hmm. Poor. I’m going to have to give it to Corpus Christi’s Captain Wang for rocking his denim jacket like he’s at a Bruce Springsteen/Wham! double-bill in 1984.

Cult Hero Of The Episode: Ah, lovely Durham. They’re adorbs, and I’m sorry to see them go, especially for representing the non-Oxbridge contingent, because as anyone who reads this blog knows, NO ONE WANTS AN ALL-OXBRIDGE FINAL (OK, it’s just me). But they weren’t quite a match for Corpus Christi, another beautifully even team, who are so gentle with each other, and could easily fill a whole hour with a single confer:

WANG: ‘Oh, no, I thought it was going to be Indonesia. Er, Saramaccan, what does that, what does that sound like?’

STEWART: ‘It could be, I mean, Brazil is just huge.’

WANG: ‘It could be, yeah. And they have a lot of indigenous languages in the Amazon.’

RUSSELL: ‘It could be –’

STEWART: ‘What are you thinking?’

RUSSELL: ‘Well I – Guyana? But I –’

STEWART: ‘It was owned by – it was owned by the British and they used the term Creole, but –’

WANG: ‘I think they have Creole everywhere.’

STEWART: ‘I suppose, yeah.’

WANG: ‘What do you wanna go with?’

GUNASEKERA: ‘Um. Brazil? Probably?’

STEWART: ‘Just because it’s huge. Sorry, I know it’s not very inventive.’

WANG: ‘OK. Brazil.’

JEZ: ‘It’s Surinam.’

I have a soft spot for the serene foppishness of Stewart, but today should go to Gunasekera, for getting this fiendishly weird maths starter question: ‘what is the sole three-digit integer with the following characteristics: firstly, that reversing the order of its first two digits gives its square root, and secondly, its last digit is also its cube root?’ There was a long pause, in which you could see Gunasekera’s brain working like he was in A Beautiful Mind, before buzzing in and saying ‘729?’ with the same sweet humility that one might admit to taking one extra Rolo.

Handsome Person of the Episode: YES! Gunasekera has a saintly scrumptiousness, and YES! Arthur Raffle of Durham reminds me of my first boyfriend, but I would be perfectly happy snuggling up with Durham’s Captain Cooper whilst he gently murmurs the American states in alphabetical order (I assume) in my ear.

Horror Bonus Round: ‘Named after an item of headwear, what alternative name is given to the rectangular function that has value one between minus a half and plus a half, and zero elsewhere?’

Regular Music Fail By Composition PhD-owning Composer, Kerry Andrew: ‘Next, the music round,’ intoned Jez. ‘Yaaay!’ trilled I. ‘You’re going to hear three more symphonies –’ ‘BOOO,’ grumbled I. Actually, it was a very cool round: guessing composers and their pupils via two extracts, and sneaking in a cheeky Boulanger. Obviously I only managed 1/3, the Ravel and Vaughan Williams. I did also love Captain Cooper, on hearing the question about P-Funk, saying ‘it’s something Clinton… not Bill…’ before remembering that it was George.

Dream Bonus Question Round: 2/3 in the rain-based paintings and 2/3 in the 1970s films. ‘Your bonuses are on endemic animals of Scotland,’ said Jezzo and my heart LEAPT. ‘Endemic to Orkney –’ he said and I jumped about ten feet in the air and jubilantly shouted the words that no one has ever shouted before in their lives, or probably will again, whilst running around the room in a circle. ‘IT’S THE ORKNEY FUCKING VOLE!’ I love it when a plan comes together.

Jezza-Watch: Oh, he’s all charm now that teams are beyond reproach by getting this far. He even gave Durham lollies and stickers at the end!

Kerry and Andy’s Score: 18, with me getting 10, and 105 points between us.

Brain Food: Andy’s homemade smoked aubergine curry, MMMM

Tweets of the Day:

Right! THAT’S IT. When this corona-nonsense starts to affect even the things we hold dearest, something has to got to give. Francis Hamlyn on Twitter pointed out that the upcoming season on University Challenge usually starts filming around now, and so perhaps there wouldn’t be one next year. I will not have this! I am forthwith sending my 2019/20 FantasyFootballUniChall team to solve the crisis so that Jez can get on with doing what he does best, i.e. wearing a very humdrum tie whilst pointing an accusatory finger at a sweet, clever young person for mis-pronouncing a 19th-century botanist.

PS: Here’s my FantasyUniChall team:

Trinity, Cambridge: 285

Jesus, Oxford: 75

Team Vibe: Trinity, Cambridge: SCIENCE GOD WE LOVE SCIENCE. AND MATHS. AND 80S POP MUSIC.

Jesus, Oxford: wait wut

Grandad Count: Whippersnappers, the whole damned lot of them

Gender Diversity Count: GASP! Two a-piece! 

Style News: Here comes Jesus’ Clarke, sweeping in as if actually attending the Mercury Awards nominations after-party and not the last quarter-final of the season, with a glam black number, long ostentatious earrings and the return of the fluffy ear headband! Clarke is THE BEST.

Cult Hero Of The Episode: Oh, sweet Jesus! I was gunning for them but Trinity swept away with it from the off. They were another very even-handed team, great on everything from stars to female mystics. I much enjoyed their little giggles when Jeremy introduced the ménage à trois round, *TITTER*. Everyone was on point, but Hughes clinches it for a) wearing THAT delicious pink jumper and b) getting that Bach, Beethoven and Brahms starter like a boss right at the end.

Handsome Person of the Episode: Jesus’ Captain Cook is extremely fine, but for me this week it’s Trinity’s Houlihan, bringing her 1970s-lens-flare Irish loveliness to the occasion, along with much excellent knowledge!

Horror Bonus Round: ‘You get three bonuses on probability theorems. Which theorem establishes that the mean of almost any set of independent and randomly generated variables rapidly converges to a normal distribution?’

Regular Music Fail By Composition PhD-owning Composer, Kerry Andrew: Roxy Music! I would have got this had Trinity’s Hughes not buzzed in after 0.000325 seconds; he was then all over the 80s art-pop bonuses, unlike stultified me. Hildegard, phew!

Dream Bonus Question Round: 2/3 for county flowers was the best I could do, urgh.

Jezza-Watch: An extremely pregnant pause after an incorrect guess by Clarke, as if announcing who was getting kicked off Britain’s Got Talent or I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here!, before drawing out the word ‘nnnnoooo’ as if warning a child not to pick the lolly out of the jar by the open gas ring.

Kerry and Andy’s Score: 13, with me getting just 4, UGH. 90 points betwixt us.

Brain Food: Chilli mackerel, pea mash and sweetcorn

Tweets of the Day:

Please feel free to share, retweet, shout about this blog. I’m mostly a musician but a writer now too, and every little helps. 

For a cheery-uppy bonus, check out my STRAWBERRY SHORTWAVE RADIO SHOW episode, based on the theme of (comm)unity to spread the love at this time. Features everything from minimalism and a cappella folk to 80s art-pop, probably.

How’s everyone doing? Is it:

systematically clearing the supermarket shelves of random things you never eat, like tamarind, marrowfat peas and low-fat cheese spread?

using this time to finally start the puzzle/tapestry/badge-making kit that you bought on whim in 2009 and has been since lurking in a cupboard waiting for this moment?

suddenly realising the only thing you want to be doing is larking about outside with your friends and not spending every waking hour on social media?

spending every waking hour on social media?

finishing Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light (spoiler: he gets it), reading Lucy Clarke’s Guardian article and wanting to punch all Twatface abusers in their cold, dead hearts, listening to the Guardian’s Long Read on quizzing and watching UniChall like NOTHING IS HAPPENING?

You can guess which one I’m doing.

Wolfson College, Oxford: 45 

Durham: 205

Team Vibe: Wolfson, Oxford:

Durham:

Grandad Count: Wolfson’s Perrin, wearing a blazer for extra emphasis!

Gender Diversity Count: TWO! for Wolfson! NONE! for Durham! 

Style News: UGH. What is WRONG with people? Do I have to give it to Durham’s Tams, for boldly rocking a thick cardigan like he’s at an over-70s ski club in Switzerland in 1957? No. I shall give it to Wolfson’s Caple, because glasses and a slick of lippy do wonders.

Cult Hero Of The Episode: I had high hopes for Wolfson making the final, but it was not to be. Instead, I must give it to the four ladz from Durham, because really, they’re the most even team of the tournament, and so jovial! ‘I should know this,’ tittered Captain Cooper as they gazed at the baffling compounds picture round; ‘we should really pay attention, shouldn’t we?’ giggled Tams, after they didn’t take in the year mentioned in a question on Islamic caliphates, They went on to discuss Chinese dynasties with the same gleeful perkiness with which most people would discuss Love Island.

Handsome Person of the Episode: Alas that the extremely dashing Captain Jones didn’t get to shine as per usual! Andy is a very gentle feminist sort and felt bad about his previous swooning, so kept schtum, but I am still gonna say that she is HOT. 

Horror Bonus Round: ‘For your picture starter, you’ll see a simplified diagram of a metabolic pathway that takes place in the human body. For ten points, I need the name of the specific compound highlighted in red.’

Regular Music Fail By Composition PhD-owning Composer, Kerry Andrew: English Folk Song Suites! ‘Vaughan Williams,’ Andy said, before Jez had finished the question, getting in before me despite the fact that I have a) played in these as a teenager and b) set one of the tunes. Bonus round on classical arrangements of folk songs!!! I am a trained classical composer who also specialises in folk music, so obviously I got the first one wrong. Holst and Mendelssohn were both correct educated guesses, so PHEW. Webern, yes! 1980s operas, HALLEFUCKINGLUJAH! Like all my Christmasses come at once.

Dream Bonus Question Round: The above, plus 2/3 in the American literature round and 2/3 in the Scottish ferry port round. I really love Scottish ferry ports. Sadly I failed at the Ireland border counties question, despite my second novel being set there and having driven all along the border and studied a map for two years. Hmm.

Jezza-Watch: Not much doing, he was KIND of kind in the conciliation to Wolfson, i.e. didn’t blow raspberries in their faces whilst going ‘nyah nyah nyah LOSERS’ like he normally does.

Kerry and Andy’s Score: 18 between us and 11 for me, and 105 points.

Brain Food: Homemade nettle (from South Norwood Country Park), broccoli and pea soup with smoked tofu.

Tweets of the Day:

As we all hunker down for the eternal winter and wonder why we didn’t start vegetable patches five years ago, it’s the perfect time to dive into the quarter-finals and pretend everything is fine outside!  It’s all filmed a few months in advance, so we can gaze on the contestants who are only frowning about heritage sites and Nobel physics laureates and not societal breakdown! ‘For the losers, the tumbrels await,’ said Jez in the intro. Now I know what a tumbrel is, and how we’re all destined for it.

Jesus College, Oxford: 135

Courtauld: 90

Team Vibe: Jesus College, Oxford: 

Courtauld:

Grandad Count: Sweet LORD, they’re all so young! Average ages of 20 and 21.

Gender Diversity Count: TWO! for Jesus College, Oxford! ONE! for Courtauld! 

Style News: Excellent work over at Courtauld as usual, with Captain Prance’s thin tartan 80’s blazer, and any normal circumstances, Collinge would ace this, as she was bringing another glorious '80s shirt adorned with sketch-like figurative line drawings. But Jesus’ Clarke was wearing a headband with little fluffy ears on it, and this trumps everything.

Cult Hero Of The Episode: It should be Jesus’ Clarke, who was right out of the starting blocks with the first two starters and the first three bonuses, and seems to know a bit of everything, from English literature to white dwarf stars (and extra points for pronouncing Kraftwerk in German, titter). She's excellent.

But COURTAULD! Cult Heroes, perhaps? Seriously, since when did you see a bunch of hipster art historians get to the quarters of UniChall? Answer: NEVER. Easily my fave team of the season, because I am an arty-farty sort who wasn’t allowed to do art or art history at school. These guys are LIVING MY DREAM.

All hail Captain Prance, who was great tonight, covering French poets, Penelope Fitzgerald and geography and just so laissez-faire about everything. ‘Shall we say Otto the Wicked?’ he bubbled in the Caroline kings round. And fair play to him for buzzing in first in the maths starters, confidently guessing a random number in the manner that Andy and I do at home, except he has the balls to do it on national telly. He also accidentally pressed his buzzer again after one algebra question had finished. A champ!

Handsome Person of the Episode: Jesus’ Stevens is all kinds of lovely and fragrant, and also grabbed some key starters.

Horror Bonus Round: ‘Answer with an improper fraction as soon as your name is called. What is the value of the definite integral with respect to x between the limits x = 1 and x = 2 of the function y = x squared?’

Regular Music Fail By Composition PhD-owning Composer, Kerry Andrew: Andy jumped in with Saint-Saens while I was trying to remember the name of any French composer, ugh. Yes, key electronica bands, what joy! I didn’t get any, though would have got Massive Attack had Andy not pounced first.

Dream Bonus Question Round: Orchestral fanfares, PHEW! 2/3, plus 2/3 in the artists inspired by music round; I am working on a giant, three-year cross-stitch project of Mondrian’s similar Broadway Boogie-Woogie, yay!

Jezza-Watch: A baffling crypto-systems fictional character starter question: ’Alan and Steve?’ guessed Jesus’ Clarke, with a naughty expression. ‘No, it’s not Alan and Steve,’ said Jezzo, with equal campness.

Kerry and Andy’s Score: I was abysmal, with a paltry 6, but Andy was ablaze with 13; 125 points between us.

Brain Food: Roast golden beetroot and courgette, mackerel and tomato, with coriander pesto.

Tweets of the Day:

The quarters continue! It’s a complicated system to get to the semis. Each team has to win 1.274 games in order to play again, and then they can only go through if they buzz in using their weaker hand and answer questions a) backwards b) in Esperanto c) backwards in Esperanto. Obviously Brandon can do this.

Durham: 115

Imperial College, London: 185

Team Vibe: Durham: 

Imperial:

Grandad Count: Durham! An average age of 20! Gawd bless their little cotton socks.

Gender Diversity Count: Zero. 

Style News: Imperial’s Brandon was wearing a kick-ass jumper with affirmative slogans on the front, though frankly Brandon could wear a tartan harness and still look ferocious. HOWEVER! Andy spotted that his teammate Captain Rich was wearing a T-shirt saying ‘Brockley’, and as fellow South Londoners we must represent, brap brap.

Cult Hero Of The Episode: I do delight in the Durham boys, all robust and jolly and definitely knowing how to get you out of a scrape if caught on the North York Moors without an ordnance survey map and only one thermos cup of tea left. But, though not at all bad, they started to look a little defeated towards the end. ‘Your bonuses are on Italian intellectuals in the 18th century,’ said Jez, and Captain Cooper’s otherwise gallantly cheerful face fell.

Imperial were on fine form, more evenly distributed than in earlier episodes, but: GOOD! GREAT! NICE! JAMMIN’! COOL! RADICAL! announced Brandon’s slogans on his jumper, and lo, it came to pass (again). He’s just the greatest. He utters the words ‘uniformitarianism’, ‘Mauritius’ and ‘Habeus Corpus’ as if ordering from a menu. Plus only an American gets to say ‘outta Jamaica, Queens, New York City’, because saying ‘Hi, I’m Phil, out of Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire’, or ‘Hi, I’m Jessica out of Nether Wallop, Hampshire’, just doesn’t fly.

Handsome Person of the Episode: Still fawning over Imperial’s Captain Rich here, and faintly hoping I might bump into him in a pop-up bakery/printworks/yoga studio in Brockers. Who is cuter, he or the teddy? YOU DECIDE.

Horror Bonus Round: ‘The golden ratio can be expressed as 1 plus root 5 all divided by 2, or as a continued fraction with all the numerators equal to what value?’ Miraculously, Andy got this!

Also a bit irked to not get the Chemical Generation question, seeing as Irvine Welsh and Alan Warner are my labelmates.

Regular Music Fail By Composition PhD-owning Composer, Kerry Andrew: VIDEO GAMES AGAIN? What is this, the 21st century or something? Don’t children play Pooh sticks and have wooden toys anymore? Miraculously, I got the video game score starter question before Imperial’s McMeel, because Final Fantasy is one of the 3.5 games I have ever heard of.

Dream Bonus Question Round: 2/3 in the Erebus round, 2/3 in the bits-of-poems round, and 3/3 in the films from 1969 round, yas!

Jezza-Watch: As ever, wonderful on the conciliation! ’Durham, you’re going to have to come back again, aren’t you?’ he said, unimpressed, while the four boys meekly nodded their heads as if being told off by their House Master for scrumping too many apples after lights-out. I also enjoyed Jezter saying ‘Boop, as in Betty Boop’ with his usual poker-face.

Kerry and Andy’s Score: 16 right, me getting a round 10.

Brain Food: Salmon, carrot mash and salad.

Tweets of the Day: