The Story So Far University Challenge

I always shout the answers out, yes!

University Challenge tournament.

Asking the questions, Bamber Gascoigne.

Mostly we were virgins.

There were fumblings in the bike sheds, and occasional exposures.

But otherwise, it was knickers on, I'm afraid.

I have two types of questions.

Starter questions and bonus questions.

I think the rule is quite clear.

You buzz in, you answer.

-Pembroke, Macfie.

-Canticles.

And they're off. Ten points to Pembroke.

-Private Eye, Hislop.

-On a scale of one to ten of how competitive we were, about ten.

I was attracted to the role of Bamber because it really

-tickled me, the idea of it.

-It was a great answer.

1962, and the news was grim.

Marilyn Monroe was found dead in her home.

In the same year, her old friend President Kennedy was threatening global annihilation.

It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile

launched from Cuba against any nation in the western hemisphere as an attack.

While the world watched in dread as politicians postured over Cuba,

in Manchester a television institution was born.

University Challenge.

Going against the fashion of the time, this show

would have intellectual bite, a far cry from your average quiz.

-Bamber Gascoigne!

-In time, its contestants would go on to become Britain's brightest and best.

Politicians, actors, film-makers and writers and, like the best ideas, its beginnings were modest.

There really were very few quizzes on television.

Later of course, things like Mastermind arrived.

-Otherwise, it was game shows.

-Twist the lever.

-Um, women please.

-Women, they're always good for a laugh.

The whole point of watching University Challenge is it wasn't darts, or the Golden Shot.

It didn't have a man in a big check suit, it had Bamber Gascoigne on it.

He was clever. And he might have known the answers.

The producers' biggest gamble was their choice of presenter.

His name was perfect.

An anagram of "organised BBC game".

Hello, and welcome again to the knockout competition on University Challenge. I was I think

27 when we did the auditions.

It was '62, I was 27.

Of course, the students were only 21 or whatever.

And at that age, six years of difference, I was old man of the hills, so to speak.

I knew everything and they were just undergraduates.

That is a full 10 points for that. Now, second piece.

OPERA MUSIC PLAYS

-OK, fine. Good.

-Carmen, Bizet.

Very good, Carmen's Bizet.

Rather, Bizet's Carmen I mean!

Bamber had a lot of charm.

And also, he was not patronising.

Students at that time were very used to being patronised.

-Very good, ten points to Keele.

-He had no airs or graces.

He wasn't dominating.

And here is your bonus for 20.

And he was the kind of guy lads would like to have a drink with and chat with.

I think that was a key feature of Bamber's personality.

Three girls and one man against three men and one girl.

This is the age of equality.

Apart from he has the name, it's just so great, Bamber Gascoigne.

How do you get to be called Bamber?

What strange accident happened at the font?

The vicar was drunk or something, "I name this child Bamber. Sorry, too late!"

-And there he was, Bamber.

-He seemed the sort of perfect professorial figure.

And urbane, and obviously incredibly well-read and erudite.

But kind of wise and gentle as well.

Kind of an Obi-Wan Kenobi figure.

# ..He's a soft-spoken guy # All so sweet and shy... #

# Makes me wonder why... #

He was gorgeous.

He had very, very blond hair.

It could have been assisted, I'm not sure.

But it was startlingly blond.

And a very cheeky and friendly expression.

Hello again and another needle match tonight.

Seeing Bamber Gascoigne there was like

seeing the god Apollo seated on a throne.

And he was just incredibly dishy.

You sat there going, "Ah, wow."

# I just can't wait, I just can't wait to be held in his arms... #

I think he was cool. We thought it because he was.

He was phenomenally...

Handsome, isn't the word. He was beautiful.

He was indeed pretty sexy actually.

We thought so anyway. I'm not sure if he realised we thought that, but we certainly did.

Talking of fan mail, the story I often tell because it gives me such pleasure, almost the first letter

I received for University Challenge was very far from being a fan letter.

It was the precise opposite and was, I think, the most perfectly

crafted abusive letter ever to be sent through Her Majesty's mail.

And it said, "Dear Sir,

"Professor Lovell calculates in the Sunday Times this morning

"that there must be at least 1,000 other planets in this universe equally as far developed as our own.

"But of one thing I'm certain and that is this.

"That on all these planets there cannot be another single broadcaster

"with an equally pansy bastard strangulated voice like yours."

So I thought my career had come to an end within weeks of beginning.

A bonus of 20 coming. What man has been shared by all these women?

Fernande Olivier, Olga Koklova...

-St Hilda's, Evans.

-Picasso.

Picasso, ten points St Hilda's. 30 seconds to play, your bonus of 20.

We all thought it was a job for three months.

Had anyone known the first run of it was going to last for 25 years, and we are talking about a job for 25

years, I think we'd have all been so frightened we could hardly have read the card.

But Bamber wasn't the only innovation new to a quiz show audience.

For the first time, the public was confronted by a then alien beast, the student.

Hello, and tonight in University Challenge we have what is virtually

a war of the roses because, one of our teams comes from Yorkshire, and the other from Lancashire.

The captain for Manchester is Tony Boyd.

Many people regarded students as very much a race apart.

And very much coming from the upper and middle classes.

And when some of us appeared on the television we patently weren't.

-Manchester, Boyd.

-Equality of mercy is not strained.

-Will you complete the sentence?

-But falleth as a drop as the gentle rain from heaven.

'My accent, my northern accent, you could cut with a knife.

'I think that did impress people that maybe ordinary people could actually go to university.'

I did watch it as a kid.

I sort of didn't really understand what a student was, it seemed a very strange thing.

The only time you ever encountered students on British television was in Brideshead Revisited.

Come on, Charles.

Oh, you're not coming?

Yes, aren't I? Delighted, dear boy.

Well, that's a surprise. I suppose I'll have to go in the back.

I suppose you realise this is going to be one of the most stupefyingly boring balls of the season?

I haven't been to too many balls this season, so that's all right.

-Mottram will lay on a good Jag.

-Nearly lost the bubbly.

You're not going to drive like this all the way to London, are you? I shall be sick?

University Challenge was the flipside of that, I suppose.

There were people with regional accents, it seemed more democratic.

Bernard Austin from West Ham reading politics.

Gordon Masterton from Charlestown, Fife, reading concrete structures.

That idea

really appealed to me, that you could go somewhere and just

learn, that you could go to this place where knowledge was sacred.

The show was an overnight success with 11 million viewers tuning in.

Making their third appearance after two victories.

For many, going to university was as likely as stepping foot on the moon.

In the show's early days, Britain boasted just 30 universities.

To increase the pool of entries, Oxford and Cambridge colleges were

invited to enter as separate entities.

At the time, such favouritism was hardly noticed.

And, if it was, students didn't complain.

# ..The stars up above

# Why must I be a teenager in love? #

Remember, this was the 1960s, and the Sixties really didn't begin until 1967 anyway.

So it was just after the war in many ways, and we were well behaved.

I don't think anybody is as innocent nowadays as a 19-year-old

boy was then, in 1962.

# Why must I be a teenager in love? #

It it just feels like another generation, not just another generation.

It feels like another universe altogether.

Peter Jones from St Essex, reading Greats.

Roger Tomlin of Monmouthshire, reading Greats.

You said, my name is Julian Fellowes from Chiddingline, East Sussex.

And it was sort of, rather thrilling that your village was on television.

It was all a long time ago I'm afraid.

And it was a more innocent world.

Mostly we were virgins.

There were fumblings in the bike sheds and occasional exposures

but otherwise, it was knickers on, I'm afraid.

Knickers may have been on, but exhibitionism was rife.

From the start there was a stampede among students looking for the chance to get on TV and show off.

I was incredibly impressed by the depth of knowledge of these young men, all of whom, when I

first started watching it when I was 13 or 14, seemed terribly grown up.

Encyclopaedic in what they knew.

There was I remember an audition in college for people who thought they might like to

go on the team, and about 60 of us crammed into this room and failed to answer general knowledge questions.

A friend of mine said, "Go on, you do it." It was a dare.

Maybe not "auditions", but "test", for anybody who wanted to be in the University Challenge team.

There was a general knowledge questionnaire.

And I obviously came out among the tops.

Then they had knockout rounds to get down to the team that was going to do the show.

And being the kind of show-off person that you have to be, to be on

University Challenge, I thought, I'll have a go.

Happily, no tape of the show survives. I know that.

When you look at me, I look like an unsuccessful contender in an Elvis look-alike contest with this

yeti wig on my head.

Bamber quickly became renowned for having a brain the size of a small planet.

It was an image he was happy to encourage by cunning use of the tools of the quiz master's trade.

Don't be surprised, I promise you it's right.

He had this extraordinary mixture of quiet knowledge, you knew he knew the answers to the questions.

I'm damn sure he did for most of them because he set a lot of them.

What novel, and I must confess I'm improvising because I see

the second part of the question was, "who wrote it."

I've given you that, so I'll have to improvise.

What novel by Kingsley could maybe be associated with the phrase, "Go west, young man."

-Westwood Ho.

-Five points.

-You can tell he's got a great brain.

He looks like he had, under his hair.

And everything about him was clever.

But there was a lovely gentleness to it.

After all, he was the man in charge of the question cards.

Bonus questions were always on pink cards.

And the starter questions on blue cards.

Each one would have a reference on the back saying where the information had come from.

These were always sent down to Bamber to his home in Richmond where he would make them up into games.

Very quickly, a devilish question especially set by

me for you, but I thought you'd get much more neurotic about it.

My biggest ritual of University Challenge which I could not remotely have dared to do the show without,

and I used indeed to have nightmares of doing a show without questions that I knew about.

On the day before, I would clear my desk, put on all the volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica

and, for the whole day, I would read the questions for tomorrow's show.

He would then adjust them to his own particular style of delivery by scribbling all over the cards

in a very spidery handwriting which I found quite difficult to read.

As a matter of tuning the questions to

what I thought the show needed, and I did spend a massive of time on it.

And it also was trying to keep alive the public's completely erroneous impression that I was omniscient,

which I became rather enamoured of the idea of that which began quite soon.

I didn't want to let them down by revealing gross ignorance.

And so, writing relevant pieces of information on my card was crucial.

We had a question, Which English Romantic poet died young in 1821?

And I wouldn't have had a clue whether the answer was Keats or

Shelley, both of whom died young around then.

So, the answer is Keats.

When one looks up Shelley, to my absolute delight I remember, Shelley died a year later.

It was really very close, 1822.

So you put on your card in brackets, Shelley 1822.

And you secretly hope they will mention Shelley.

Because if they mention Keats of course, you can't say, that's quite right.

And incidentally Shelley died a year later.

But if they mention Shelley, you say, "Oh bad luck, he died just a year later in 1822!"

"No, the answer is Keats." So that's what it's all about.

Bad luck. No, bad luck, very bad luck.

# Walking back to happiness, hoop-la whoa yeah

# Said goodbye to loneliness hoop-la whoa yeah... #

Being asked tough questions by the brain of Britain in front of 11 million people was no light task.

It was enough to panic the most confident of competitors.

My abiding memory of my appearance on University Challenge was I got an answer wrong.

And in my rage and frustration, I let fly with the expletive that begins with F for Freddie.

And there it is on television.

And now I believe it's been lost because it's been wiped.

But it wasn't Ken Tynan who said it first, it was me!

So, lots of support for Keele and now Queen's.

Richard Barber from Shepperton, Middlesex, reading Natural Sciences.

Stephen Fry from Booton in Norfolk, reading English.

It's like going to the Houses of Parliament for the first time.

They really do make that noise, "Hear, hear, hear..." That sort of thing.

-Similarly, it's rather wonderful to be in Granada and see they really do go, "Queen's, Fry."

-Queens, Fry.

Hansel and Gretel.

Correct, ten points to Queen's and a bonus of 15.

And the starter for ten was a classic catchphrase of its day.

Let's go straight into the game, here's the first starter for ten.

A big one coming here, your starter for ten. Bonus of 15 coming. Your starter for 10.

Thursday is named after the Anglo-Saxon god, Thor. For whom is Wednesday...

- Woden. - Woden is correct.

Who was the South African who received the Nobel Peace Prize...

I know this.

Well, I've got all sorts of ideas but I can't think what the answer is.

-You're on your own, no conferring.

-Well, there you go.

-Is it, um, um...

HE BURBLES

-What was the question?

-Um...

-Trout!

-What, did I know that answer?

The interesting thing about a catchphrase is, you never realise you're going to create it.

"Starter for ten" was the first, obviously.

-The answer, it was?

-Pen?

No, Mars. "Fingers on the buzzers" is more interesting.

Early on, I was aware that very often people were not managing to answer the question because some

people were ready with their fingers on the buzzer and others were sitting

about smiling and listening. And then were going like that.

And so I naturally said, to help them all, "Fingers on the buzzers". And that becomes a catchphrase.

Pressing the buzzer was the easy part.

Following up with an answer was another matter.

When you pressed the buzzer, automatically everyone else's buzzers cut out.

In fact, when you're watching television, it looks as if this

person from Manchester University knows the answer to this question.

In fact, probably all of them have pressed the button.

And you have to get the trick of pressing the button when you think you might know the answer.

And I pressed the button instantly and of course the camera focused down on me, everybody stares at me,

some voice screams out, "Simpson, Magdelene."

And then I was left as it were with nothing between me and eternity.

And I made a complete fool of myself on one question, when it was,

"Who is the thousandth descendant of the Emperor...?"

And it turned out to be the Emperor of Japan was the answer.

But I had read that weekend in one of the colour sections that, for some reason or other,

a clown who was popular at the time, Joey the clown, had claimed descent from the Holy Roman Emperor.

So, I thought this was a trick question.

And I pressed the button and said Joey the clown.

And I can remember Bamber Gascoigne looked at me as if I'd gone completely mad.

He just thought, when can I just get rid of these four people and get some sanity back on to this show?

I loved the sense of the excitement, and the notion of really being able

to busk it, and get through on sheer gutsiness and imagination,

I loved all of that. It may have been black and white, and I may have been wearing a dreadful suit

and a white shirt and tie, but I felt this was me, this was where I belonged.

Watching it when I was a teenager, I was aware of two things.

One is how clever these students were, how much they seemed to know.

And the other thing was, how old they looked.

Queen's, Barber.

# Because you're gorgeous

# I'd do anything for you... #

The students may have felt they'd arrived, but the reality of the show was anything but glitz and glamour.

Picture bonus.

The set was incredibly makeshift in those days.

It was like going to a garden shed with cardboard cut-outs.

You sat behind the panel and what you were sitting at was little more

than a workbench basically.

It was very cheap and very thrown together.

It was the antithesis of the slick glossy

money-orientated game shows.

It always felt slightly kind of plywood.

Makeshift and cheapskate perhaps, but University Challenge did have

a couple of technical innovations which became the stuff of legend.

When Challenge went on air, all our viewers were quite convinced

that the teams were actually sitting one on top of each other.

Whereas, in fact, they were sitting side by side in the studio.

And by electronic trickery, we placed one on top of the other.

I seem to remember one of the teams who'd realised they were on top,

showering bits of torn-up paper on to the team below

which of course never arrived on them because it just landed on the floor in front of them.

And another team, when there was a girls' college which was the uppermost one on the screen,

these boys all tended to do this from time to time, as if they were trying to look up their skirts!

Just six years after those buttoned up first shows, times were changing.

By 1968, the Beatles had swapped rock and roll for meditation.

# I am the god of hellfire! And I bring you... Fire! #

And students had swapped books for banners. They were revolting.

On the march and in-your-face, and that was just their hair.

Political, vocal, radical, they were out to challenge authority at every turn.

I think the great change in student behaviour just has to be the international one of 1968.

Suddenly students felt the world was theirs, they could do anything.

That authority was intolerable.

Suddenly, on University Challenge, students coming on

were interested in

not behaving well deliberately.

This is your life, do what you want, you know.

That philosophy entirely occupied the moral ground.

And everyone was going off to San Francisco and smoking dope.

I mean, I wasn't, but there was a cloud of dope hanging over Cambridge.

You could hardly see the sun.

# What did you do there? I got high!

# What did you feel there? Well, I cried! #

There was a pub in Cambridge where you could get drugs if you wanted to, and there was a chemist's shop

which was rumoured to sell you things over the counter if you paid enough money for it.

I never had the money. And I was nervous about the whole idea of it.

# ..It's all too beautiful

# I feel inclined to blow my mind... #

It's often been suggested that one or two students were a little bit

high when programmes were recorded in our studios.

We didn't actually provide drink until after the programmes were over.

# ..Tell you what I'll do What will you do?

# I'd like to go there now with you... #

But I used to tell the teams where the nearest pub was.

And said, "An odd drink is not a bad idea.

"But a surfeit is a very bad thing."

What did we do? We went off and had a drink at the local pub.

When I said, we had a drink, that's probably an understatement.

We probably had several drinks.

The effect of this is our nervous disposition totally disappeared.

# We'll drink a drink, a drink to Lily the Pink, the pink, the pink The saviour of the human race...

We couldn't care less what happened.

We were relaxed, we were looking forward to it. Nothing to lose.

And of course in the context of University Challenge, that

couldn't have been better because, finger on the button, instead of worrying that you had the right

answer before you press the button, we were carefree and careless, pressed it and won the match.

# ..medicinal compound, and now he's learning how to fly... #

We were advised that having a drink before the show was a good idea.

And I needed no second invitation. I had a very hard head even at that age so I had several drinks

in the pub beforehand, mostly barley wine which was a real student drink.

It packed a huge punch per penny.

# We'll drink a drink, a drink, to Lily the Pink, the pink, the pink... #

And the other great thing was you could smoke.

In those days, everybody smoked, you were obliged to smoke, especially on television.

It made you looked very intellectual.

And I puffed my way through a packet of 20 No. 6.

I must have got through the whole packet in the course of the rehearsal and the programme.

And my parents were just appalled, watching this at home.

There was this revolting-looking youth with this terrible shaggy hair.

I looked like a female impersonator, wearing an ill-fitting wig.

Clouds of smoke and half cut as well.

I just don't know how they survived the shame of it.

There was one occasion when one had had the surfeit, and shortly into the programme, his head fell, thump!

With an enormous thwack.

Not to be raised. We had to stop the tape, go in, drag him out, put the reserve in, and start again.

By the early '70s, 18 new universities had opened,

but the rules of University Challenge stayed the same.

Oxbridge colleges were still regarded as separate institutions.

As for the polys, well this was University Challenge.

For some revolutionaries this was provocative evidence of the class system at work.

In Granada's own back yard a group of conspirators began to plot the overthrow of the old regime.

University Challenge at that stage firstly didn't let any Polytechnics

or Colleges of Further Education, who were of course our proletarian brothers and sisters in struggle.

And also, they let all these people from all the different Oxbridge colleges, so that

Oxford and Cambridge had about 40 teams between them, whereas Manchester University only had one.

So this was proof that it was an elitist institution,

a, if you like, a kind or ideological arm of the state

apparatus, and therefore we were entitled to take action against it.

We used to have a remarkable rapport with the students, but there was one occasion

when the University of Manchester caused us a great deal of trouble.

Bamber Gascoigne of course was a legendary figure, for all that he was the class enemy,

and before the programme, I found myself standing next to

him in the gents, so I could attest to the fact that, you know, he was a man just like any other man.

And yet we were going to have to destroy his programme, his baby.

And they'd made this plan as some kind of protest

for the furtherance of the dictatorship of the proletariats at some date yet to be arranged,

that it would help by saying the name of Trotsky and Marx.

Karl Marx?

Che Guevara.

Trotsky.

- Trotsky. - It just seems

faintly irritating because we stopped the show two or three times and said, "Look, don't go on being ridiculous,

"Why don't you just settle down and behave sensibly?" - Trotsky.

-Karl Marx.

-He said something about Pythagoras, we say Che Guevara.

He says something about some Mozart opera and we say Trotsky.

-Trotsky.

-Trotsky.

-Karl Marx.

-Trotsky.

And this went on for some time, but actually we only knew about

five or six revolutionary leaders so we ran out of that after a while.

I remember Gascoigne's legendary patience getting a little frayed

by the end of it and I think he called them childish at some point.

-The extraordinary thing was that it was shown.

-Che Guevara.

Karl Marx.

Highly unpopular in this studio and tends to lead to ejections, so let's stop.

Indeed of course we were aware that if we did continue the show and show it, that actually they would

look quite ridiculous and it was their problem rather than ours.

Now of course, that would be headline news.

It would be the big story on the front of every tabloid newspaper.

Imagine if this happened on Countdown, though it's highly unlikely. Can you imagine that?

It's a wonderful picture, isn't it?

I'll have a...

consonant on behalf of the people, please, Carol.

And I will have a vowel that sees every member of the aristocracy

shot and their blood running in rivers down Park Lane, please Carol.

In 1979 there was a new presence in Downing Street,

and with it came an end to universal grants and hallowed privileges.

# ..Daylight dawns You wake up and you're Mr Clean

# A piece of toast from the one you love most and you leave... #

My first year at university Margaret Thatcher came to power and that really

saw the end of any sense of students being a powerful, influential body, in national opinion.

And more fundamentally I think that what happened with Thatcher was that

it suddenly became important to get a good degree, and I think I was the

last of the student generations for whom it was supremely unimportant to get a good degree.

Where there is discord, may we be bring harmony.

Where there is error, may we bring truth.

Where there is doubt, may be we bring faith.

And where there's despair, may we bring hope.

What is the correct order for the six colours after all the reds have been pocketed in snooker?

Queen's, Fry.

Yellow, green, brown...

Blue, pink, black.

Correct, I wasn't giving anything away while you were saying it...

It was my first experience of being on television

and I was supremely nervous, and you don't know whether you're going to get some awful rush of blood to the

head and buzz too early all the time and keep getting it wrong.

Or whether you're going to be so inhibited that you're not going to buzz at all, even when you know it.

The man who partnered George Burns in the film version of The Sunshine Boy?

Queen's, Fry.

Um, sorry, hang on, just...

It is?

Matthau. Walter Matthau.

You got there just in time.

-All right.

-And the fact that we got to the final, our team at Queen's, and lost to Oxford of all people.

It wouldn't matter if we'd been beaten by Keele or Imperial or Manchester or Leeds or Sheffield

or whatever, that would have been fine, but to be beaten by an Oxford college was just

the most humiliating thing of all so we had a lot of ground to make up.

"...smile, if not why then this parting was well made."

Stephen Fry may have lost that final, but four years later he was back.

Although this time it was in a sketch on The Young Ones and he was being asked questions by Bambi.

At least we're going to smash the oiks from Scumbag College on University Challenge.

We've just got time before my balls drop.

We didn't mind mocking ourselves as being apparent hoorays, you know.

I played a character called Lord Snot.

Well, I've done my revision.

The Daily Mirror Book of Facts - Did You Know?

Do you think that's where they get the questions from?

All the people who got on University Challenge are brainy.

You know that, don't you? Of course you do, you're brainy.

So, we never got the chance to go on.

It seemed perfect for the kind of place where we shouldn't be.

Oh, you love a lot of fur since we last met.

And you're walking on two legs now, I see. But still the same old Bambi.

I loved it. I thought that Griff Rhys Jones was absolutely brilliant apart from his feeble wig.

Is that true, Bambi?

Did you do a Disney nasty?

-So what if I did?

-He's an icon.

And that's because Bamber looks a bit like Bambi.

He's innocent and fresh and has his chin up and is lovely.

We all had a crush on him.

We were deep ingrained, in the veins hetros, but we all really fancied Bamber.

Well, are you going to let us win?

No, of course not. The posh kids win. They always do.

It's the kind of very understandable revenge

of the breeze block and red brick university against the dominance

of the hated Oxbridge cadre, both in University Challenge terms and in comedy terms.

Hello and welcome to another edition of University Challenge.

This week the teams represent Footlights College Oxbridge.

Rah, rah, rah! We're going to smash the oiks!

Our representatives, us ordinary people, and then having the Oxbridge lot on the other side, 'twas war.

'Twas war. It's the English Civil War.

Us, representing the crap, right mate?

And the poshies representing the posh.

It was wonderful. We're getting thrashed!

We're getting completely thrashed! Isn't there some way we can cheat?

The real split screen joke began when The Young Ones did this...

And started pouring water down on the team below to prevent them answering the questions.

And that actually was a wonderfully funny joke.

I'm completely bloody sick of this!

Comedians, hippies and punks - everyone loved University Challenge.

But even this show had its day.

Shuffled round the schedules, modernised and made over, in 1987 it was finally dropped.

After 978 episodes Bamber Gascoigne uttered his last starter for 10.

From our new champions, Keeble, and from me until, may we hope,

another series sometime in the future, that's the end of this one.

Until another time, perhaps, goodbye.

I'll go and say goodbye to the teams and congratulate them.

While the show was away times were changing.

Everyone was into demos, not just students.

Margaret Thatcher made a quick exit from No. 10.

I feel there's a kind of lost generation of people who would have gone on and never got the chance.

And their mascots remain forever unclaimed.

Sit-ins turned into raves. Even polytechnics grew into universities.

After just seven years in retirement the show was about to be reborn.

When I was asked to again I was very busy with an enormous project, which has kept me going ever since.

It's a bold concept - a history of the world on the internet.

Because I did spend so much time reading around the questions,

I just felt that I couldn't combine it with this new passion of mine.

And my wife said, "I've had enough of you being recognised all over the place.

"Why don't you have a peaceful old age and be an ordinary chap again?"

I knew that Bamber wanted to give it up and I couldn't think who could do it.

Chancellor, when are interest rates going to come down?

-"Clark, Conservative".

-Eh...

When economic conditions dictate.

Yeah! Look, I'm not even doing that show.

The first time I saw myself on Spitting Image I thought, who's that supposed to be?

Then I thought, God, it's supposed to be me.

Oh, why am I doing University Challenge?

-"Clark, Conservative".

-Because you didn't get the job on Question Time.

That's right Ken, well done.

When Jeremy got the job I thought, of course.

Hello, welcome to a new series of University Challenge,

the legendary search for the UK's brightest student quiz team.

He couldn't be more different from me.

He has this image of being the tough guy, really a hard man.

And I was always a bit of a softie really.

Bamber was a kindly don eliciting information from his very bright students.

Paxman is disappointed that today's students just don't know enough.

-No, if you buzz you must answer. You lose five points.

-Sorry.

-Why did you buzz then?

-E=MC2?

-Too easy, isn't it? No, you may not confer either!

-"Television, Kearney".

-Eh, rose window?

-Did he tell you that?

-No.

-OK, I'll accept it then.

He can be occasionally rather contemptuous.

I want to be as kind to you as I possibly can, New Hall, but it's a terrible score.

When someone gets a century hopelessly wrong he's the first to be extremely screwy faced about it.

-No.

-It always rather amuses me when he baits the students for not knowing

the answer to a question, because I always think, at 18, Jeremy, did you know that?

I can't imagine how clever it was of them to have found

-the only other Bamber Gascoigne, but a Bamber Gascoigne with attitude.

-Yes, I'll accept that. Just about.

I would like a doctor like Jeremy Paxman.

I would like a doctor who doesn't flannel.

And he doesn't.

Straight to the point. What's the answer? Bang!

Knowing the answer always helps if you want to win, as does a bit of enthusiasm.

I like students.

I like what they know. I'm amazed by what they know and also, sometimes, what they don't know.

I love their eagerness.

However, in the 1997 series the students at New Hall, Cambridge

seemed less than eager to represent their college on the show.

Someone put a poster up in New Hall to get together a University Challenge team.

And I think about five people turned up.

So it wasn't actually all that difficult to get a team together.

-Yeah.

-You had to have four and one reserve.

I don't think I even actually turned up to the pub quiz.

I can't really remember that bit. I remember in the bar later.

Hello, welcome to another first round match of University Challenge,

and more reassurance that the taxpayers' money isn't being wasted on education, we hope.

Several million taxpayers were watching.

Fingers were on buzzers, the nation expected and then...

"Goodness had nothing to do with it", published in 19...

-"New Hall, Coleman".

-Sorry, forgot.

Bad luck, you lose five. The term "glorious revolution"

is used to describe the events which placed which king on the British throne?

-Charles II?

-Charles II? No.

-We don't know.

-You've hopped around every century except the right one.

It's William III.

Initially it was like watching some terrible road accident in slow motion.

Every time they tried to buzz in they got it wrong.

-"New Hall, Shaw".

-Miller.

-No.

-"New Hall, Shaw".

-Heaven.

-No.

-"New Hall, Shaw".

-Napkin.

-No, you lose five points.

You saw him staring at you and he's like, come on girls!

And you're like, oh no, I'm letting him down!

The one good thing is we don't get the same treatment as the politicians.

He doesn't carry on asking the question until he gets an answer he likes.

-That's true.

-I felt terribly, terribly sorry for them and started sort of willing them on.

But you can't fake it.

The thing has to be like Caesar's wife, it has to be unimpeachable.

You can't fix it. It has to be the best team winning.

-"New Hall, Shaw".

-Christopher Dean.

-Christopher Dean, hooray!

It takes you up to a magnificent minus five.

It was difficult, because once you get to that stage you know you're going to lose.

Do you lose quietly, calmly, or do we have that final, last ditch effort of get every

piece of knowledge that may still be in your brain and spurt it out?

Some teams do take it seriously.

Too seriously, I would say.

But the majority, the nicest teams, the best teams, are the ones who, they obviously want to do well,

but who realise, it's only a bloody game.

Which two-word popular name is affectionately applied to the flag of the USA?

Stars and stripes.

-Two-word.

-Uncle Sam. Uncle Sam.

-Uncle Sam, no, I'm afraid not.

It's Old Glory.

By that stage me and certainly Abbey were sat there going, I'm not saying anything more now, that's it.

Rosie valiantly just carrying on.

-I think I'm good at lost causes.

-Yeah.

What was the title of the piece by Elgar to which AC Benson set the words of Land of Hope and Glory?

Pomp and Circumstance March No. 4.

-Pomp and Circumstance March No. 4.

-I'll take it. I think it was No. 1, but Pomp and Circumstance is right.

It brings you to a majestic zero.

Getting a big cheer when you get back to nought is...

isn't a good sign.

And as the thing went on,

one began to realise that

they weren't going to pull anything out of the fire.

Don't know.

Don't give up, please.

They scrambled back to, what was it, 35 or something?

I mean, I remember it.

I thought, 35 is the most awful score I've ever seen on this show.

Don't be deterred from buzzing in, New Hall, it's the best way back.

It helps if you've got the right answer, but just keep on doing it.

And then I started thinking, actually in a way

it's quite distinguished really to have achieved such an abysmal score.

I suppose what you want from your appearance on University Challenge

is a nation kind of open mouthed with awe at your extraordinary knowledge and insight and intellect.

But the reality, I think, is a nation of people going, "I can't believe he didn't know that."

The nicknames cheesemongers, cherrypickers, Bob's own, the emperor's chambermaids

and the immortals are or have been used for which group of men?

-"UMIST, Bright."

-Homosexuals?

No. No, they're regiments in the British Army!

They'll be very upset with you, UMIST.

Getting the wrong answer can often prove to be extremely embarrassing.

Thumer, toucher, long man, lechman and little man are old and middle

-English names for which parts of the human body?

-"King's, Scoffing."

-Penis.

-No.

-"Keeble, Dobie."

-Fingers?

Fingers is correct, yes.

How many penises do they teach you we have nowadays?

In April 2003 the professionals spin-off series

allowed more mature minds to face their own starter for 10.

Hello. Worlds collide tonight, commerce

against the arts, as the voice of British business takes on one of the world's leading opera houses.

Having gone to university in the early '90s,

the show wasn't on television so I didn't have the chance.

So, the professionals series was the perfect opportunity to make amends for that.

-"Royal Opera House, Cann."

-Is it Seneca?

-It is, yes.

-"Royal Opera House, Cann."

-Kurt Weill.

-That's right.

"Royal Opera House, Cann."

The Emperor Karl of Austria.

That is correct, yes.

We got off to a very good start and we were well ahead for most of the match.

But towards the end the CBI, who we were playing,

answered a sequence of questions, plus the bonuses, and they caught up

so that when the gong sounded at the end of the match, Jeremy announced that it was a dead heat.

That's the gong. We have an absolute dead heat, 100 points apiece.

So there would now be a tie break.

Right, what happens now, it's the first one to answer a starter question correctly.

But beware, because if you buzz in incorrectly you lose five points and the other team

automatically wins without even having to answer the question. So here we go, 10 points for this.

-Grockles is a word used mainly in Devon to refer to...

-"Royal Opera House, Cann".

I had buzzed in absolutely overjoyed that I had got the right answer

and was going to win the match single handed. Tourists.

No, I'm afraid you lose five points.

Oh no!

My insides just dissolved when I realised that the question

was changing track and that I'd got the wrong answer.

Rather than single handedly winning the match, I had single handedly lost it.

It does refer to tourists.

But I wanted the equivalent term used in Cornwall,

which is emits. So, I'm afraid that without the CBI even having to answer it, I'm afraid you've lost.

Coming from an area of Devon reasonably close to Cornwall,

we use the Cornish equivalent "emits" almost interchangeably with "grockles".

So, I could have answered it correctly if I had waited.

Although it is a bit of fun,

in the heat of the moment you do take things very seriously.

-And I was just full of despair in that one moment.

-Bad luck, Opera House.

It was a very, very easy mistake to make.

But it cost you the contest, I'm afraid.

Thank you very much for taking part. CBI, well done.

Did you know the answer to the last question?

To tell the truth, I pressed, he beat me and I was going to say tourist as well.

Ah well, honours are shared then.

The producer, I think, came up to me and said, "Ah, that's great television!"

And there I was in the pit of misery.

And that's not wholly what I wanted to hear.

Some famous faces now got the chance to display their great knowledge.

Welcome to another first round match in our search for the UK's brainiest institution.

I got, I think it was a call from the producer saying, "We're going to do a sort of grown up version of

"University Challenge with professional teams, and would Private Eye like to put a team in?"

We all had to admit we were really keen to appear.

It was really like feeling you were inside a television set.

Unlike any other programme I've been on,

you were properly on the television if you were on University Challenge.

Hello, I'm Martha Kearney and I'm the Political Editor of Newsnight.

It's a programme I enjoy watching.

It has a certain rapid-fire pace about it,

unlike most television programmes where one is shouting, "Get on with it", at the screen.

Sorry.

It seemed harmless fun.

So I said yes.

If anyone said to you it was a jolly day out, I think they're probably lying.

On a scale of 1 to 10 of how competitive, we were about 10.

When I saw saw these famous numbskulls in the other team,

much more famous than any of the arts people,

of course we felt competitive.

About halfway through when it looked as though we were

going to be beaten by Debretts, I thought, "I can't bear it.

"I just can't bear it."

-Um, it dissolves things.

-Specifically?

Stuff.

-Lead.

-No, completely wrong.

Your finger on the buzzer.

It's an iconic moment.

You know if you get it wrong, you interrupt

there's penalty points and you feel the responsibility for the whole team.

So the first time you do it, your heart is really, really beating.

Television, Kearney.

Michael Howard and Britney Spears.

Correct, yes.

When we appeared on the show, both Francis and Marcus and I agreed

it was probably the most nervous we'd been about doing anything

in our whole media careers, and I've done a fair amount of television,

but going on University Challenge and looking a complete idiot, which is perfectly possible,

was a very scary thought.

I was terrified that I wouldn't get something right about modern politics.

I remember the very long drive up to Manchester.

The thing I swotted up on was every single member of the Cabinet.

The Shadow Cabinet and things I sort of knew but just imagined

under the lights not knowing who the shadow home secretary was.

-That would be very humiliating.

-Here's another starter question.

Nicknamed Taximan for his habit of driving an old London cab, which MP was elected President...

-Television Kearney.

-Simon Hughes.

I should hope so too, yes.

Pleasure comes when something which is

obscure, and as the question is rolling out, you really have no idea what the answer is, as it comes

to the end they've just thrown in some tiny clue.

A further inspiration to De Cooper town was a visit to the Olympic Games held annually since 1849

in which Shropshire town situated to the north east of a limestone ridge that bears the same name?

I think...

What's that ridge called?

It's...

- Wenlock. - Wenlock.

It is, Much Wenlock is right.

It's like playing tennis.

You achieve a return that you didn't think you are capable of.

Afterwards, you had people coming up going, "I'm very surprised

"that you didn't know the answer to such and such."

-Television, Kearney.

-The Go-between.

-No.

-You think, "Oh, yes, I am sorry, I should have known that."

It was fun. I'd willingly do it again.

From humble beginnings in Manchester to a star

of the silver screen, University Challenge has now been immortalised in the film Starter For Ten.

The idea for Starter For Ten came from just sitting on the sofa, watching the show

and idly speculating about the relationship between the team members.

When I was given the film script which featured University Challenge

as the climax of the movie, I thought it would be a fantastic

opportunity to give University Challenge the Hollywood treatment and have a lot of fun with it.

I've got an announcement to make.

What's that then?

- It's just something that happened last term. - Oh, God, Brian.

- Mum, don't worry, it's a good thing. - Tell me then.

I'm going to be on University Challenge.

What? That thing on the telly?

Yeah.

Congratulations, Brian, that's brilliant news.

Cheers.

Oh, God, what a relief.

Why?

To be honest, Brian, I thought you are going to say you were gay.

I am James McAvoy and I am Brian Jackson in Starter For Ten.

He's 18 years-old, even though I'm not, and he has

just started university and it's the biggest thing in his life because all he ever wanted to do was learn.

In a weird way, kind of show off the fact he has learnt so much,

so a game show like University Challenge is the perfect medium.

- Jackson, Bristol. - Electro-luminescence.

Candour luminescence.

Luminescence?

Phosphorescence?

Come on.

- Incandescence. - All correct. Names of...

I play Patrick Watts, the captain of the Bristol University Challenge team.

-It's a form or fungal infection.

-Is the correct answer.

And I think, fundamentally what appeals to him about University

Challenge is the idea of controlled knowledge and being able to show it off in a very identifiable way.

In order to qualify you'll need to answer 30 questions in 30 minutes

and the top three scores join me, the captain, in this year's team.

I have some lively little questions, so I think you're in for a pretty good time.

But it is against the clock so, people, if you're ready, let's quiz!

When it came to putting University Challenge on the movie screen, one of

the biggest challenges was who was going to play Bamber Gascoigne?

It was a very intriguing idea and then immediately quite daunting because of his iconic status.

There still may be time to catch up.

Here's a starter question for ten.

Everybody has an idea

of how he speaks and his whole persona based on their childhood memories,

so it immediately went from being a,

"Whoopee," idea to, "Oh, God, how am I going to do this?"

The Oresteia by Aeschylus.

- Correct. - Euclidian algorithm.

-The Euclidian algorithm?

-Correct.

Honni soit qui mal y pense?

Correct answer.

I remember sitting in the chair in the wig and the glasses and being

quite frightened by how much I looked like him.

It just sort of seems to fit once you're in front of that incredibly green,

grim set.

Everything seems to slot into place.

I could taste Sunday dinner again from being on the set, it reminded me of when I used to watch it.

It was always very important for us to get the actual show right.

Right from the beginning we consulted with the current production team so that

they read all our questions and were extremely helpful, so

they would come back to us and say, "Actually, that's a little bit easy for a starter question."

Derived from the Greek words for wing and finger, what is the genus...?

-Jackson, Bristol.

-Pterodactyl.

-Is correct.

-Down to details like making sure we had the captain sitting third from the left.

-Everything had to be right, really.

-Correct.

It's a real eye-opener being on the panel and in front of the cameras as opposed to watching it at home.

You really get a sense of how pressured you must feel.

We're stupid actors with the right answers to say or get wrong.

There's a real studio pressure - bright lights, the audience, the expectation.

I remember by a bizarre coincidence, just around the back of the set there was a white cat,

a toy cat.

I immediately got it and just sat there like that, stroking it, because

I felt I was like master of all I surveyed.

It's not a usual subject for a feature film.

There's no tradition of college movies in the UK.

I think it's because generally speaking people dislike

students, especially once you stop being a student you develop a kind of, "Oh, bloody students!" attitude.

So I never imagined it

as a feature film. But now I watch it, I'm incredibly proud of it.

Let's quiz.

# Looking back on my life you know that all I see are things I could have changed,

# I should have done... #

Since 1962, University Challenge has charted the fortunes of the student.

From grant to debt, from demos to raves, from sociology to media studies,

all have been united by a starter for ten.

Students in those days, I know it's looking back through pink

coloured spectacles, but I think we were more politically engaged.

It was a brave new world for us.

For students today, university is taken for granted.

Of course it wasn't. None of my family had ever been to university.

My parents had virtually no idea what a university was or what I did there.

And they're just so sweet these days, just poppety.

They're not angry about politics, which is maybe a pity, maybe they should be.

What strikes me is that in the '80s,

probably the early '90s as well, people were less confident.

Now, you get someone going on University Challenge,

they're all sitting like this. "Yeah, yeah, yeah."

Hi, I'm Adam McCartney from Hook in Hampshire and I'm reading for a Masters in Scriptwriting.

Whereas in the '85 final, it was very much, "I'm Brian Jackson and I'm

"from Gloucestershire and I'm reading Engineering."

Alan Frith from Watford studying History.

They were mortified to be on television,

which is brilliant because we live in a different age now.

In the Bamber Gascoigne years, part of its pleasure and charm

was a fusty academic image.

Alexander Fyjis-Walker from Notting Hill reading English.

Steve Cooter from Brighton in Sussex reading Interdisciplinary Human Studies.

And now it seems like that

there's no stigma attached to appearing on University Challenge.

Weirdly, like footballers, students are suddenly really beautiful. When did that happen?

Now in its 40s and the show is a strong as ever.

Today's contestants might be tomorrow's world leaders.

And through the decades, the format has remained the same.

Untouched by fashion, a chance for each generation to test itself against the last...

and the next.

No, not in my hair.

It's very simple, it's very fair, everybody's under the same pressure,

and it's a test of knowledge

without any violence.

There was quite a bit of excitement at my hall.

Lots of people heard about it.

Since the return of University Challenge, Britain has exploded with a million quiz nights.

It's become a rather common thing for people to be a member of a quiz team.

Somehow, University Challenge managed to avoid its questions being trivia questions.

They somehow come from a place that is more related still to the idea of learning. That's a very good thing.

Big, big welcome for Oxford!

Although some of the questions and answers may still be highly specialised and not

relate to day-to-day living, it's far more important to remember who was president of Uganda

in the '70s, for example,

than Jade's bra size or how old is Hugh Grant?

Welcome for Manchester University!

It's against the zeitgeist which is always a good idea.

I think it's still there as an outpost of cleverness that celebrates people knowing things.

Sometimes as a country, we're quite anti-intellectual.

I think University Challenge celebrates intelligence in a way that very few programmes do.

It's an achievement to know so much, to have such an eclectic range of knowledge.

I think it's probably that that makes it so special.

If you could manage to get a few amongst all that stuff about electro

magnets and stuff, you really feel proud of yourself.

There are very few real groupings of people that have both brilliance and

an aggressive attitude to each other to compare to university students.

You know what automatically you're going to get good people.

You've got all the ingredients of a really good contest.

The fact that so often it can be very close makes it irresistible.

It is to show to young people that the sort of people who go to university

are no different to them.

It's rather wonderful to see them when they do well and they know amazing things.

That's the fascination of it.

-It's about learning.

-Counting to titles.

Going to titles in five, four, three, two, one.

-Bye!

-Goodbye.

-Nazdar!

Goodbye!

-Bye!

-Goodbye.

Goodbye.

-Goodbye.

-Bye-bye.

-Goodbye.

-Goodbye.

-Goodbye.

Goodbye.

Bye.

-Good night.

-Goodbye.

And it's goodbye from me. Goodbye.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd 2006