University Challenge

Just a few prefatory remarks about University Challenge, on which I appear as the captain of Loughborough University tomorrow night. It was recently described as 'the poshest pub quiz in the country' (or words to that effect) by one former contestant, and with its mixture of quick-fire questions, conferring, and music and picture rounds, this is about right. Most people who appear on University Challenge, however, leave without any sort of prize. Even the winners. To be fair, even the series champions don't actually 'win' something individually, and even their institution gets to keep the coveted trophy (sorry, excuse the trite phrase) only for a year. So, what's the appeal of going on University Challenge?


Well, I know it sounds like a sort of fake answer, but I think it is true to some extent that any person who appears on the show has some small degree of pride in their home institution. Maybe not a massive amount, but a little. For myself (excuse these self-important ramblings for a sec) I think it was a mixture of institutional pride and a desire to prove that Loughborough was about more than it is usually known for. So it was part pro-Loughborough, and part anti-, or at least anti-the-stereotypical-view-of-Loughborough (people running about in shorts a lot, blowing whistles, kicking balls, and so on). Maybe it's simpler than that: for years I've been at Loughborough (it's well over eight now), and in all that time I hadn't had an opportunity to represent my university in any capacity. Being gangling, malcoordinated, and utterly untalented when it comes to anything vaguely sporty (I even struggle with darts), there was no way I was ever going to be running around a field flying the flag for my institution. But with University Challenge, suddenly here was a chance: here was an opportunity to try to make my university proud.

Winning the first-round match was a bonus. I didn't go on to win it. None of us did, I don't think; as captain, I was happy enough to be sitting behind one of those coveted desks (sorry, that adjective again), with three other lovely Loughborough people, ready to take part in the toughest quiz on television (with the exception of Only Connect, I freely admit). When the gong went and we'd won our first-round match, I can't help feeling rather surprised. Was this allowed? Weren't we breaking some sort of regulation? Surely there was something in the rulebook about a university like Loughborough not being able to win something like this. After all, we hadn't been on the programme since 1984 (a fact that, when I mentioned it at our auditions, may have helped us to make it onto the programme: I'm surmising, though). Was this the place for Loughborough?

Although I hadn't really thought about it in this much detail, perhaps our appearance on the show back in July helped to refashion and remould a few assumptions and prejudices people had about Loughborough. Those who had written the university off as a sports institution (not helped by the fact that all of our most famous alumni are famous for their sports achievements) perhaps were forced to reconsider this, especially when they saw that not one of the students Loughborough had put forward for the team were studying anything remotely sporty (Chemistry, Engineering, English, and Fine Art). Maybe the fact that we won made them think, 'Oh, maybe a few people at Loughborough know a few things.' Not a massive moral or philosophical U-Turn, I'll grant thee, but enough to sway those prejudices just a tad. After all, it's only a general knowledge quiz. A pub quiz, on the telly, and open only to students. Nobody's going to write a novel, or paint a picture, or record an album, or invent a cure for cancer. It's half an hour of trivia. But if our appearance made some people revisit their assumptions about Loughborough (if they had any), then that's a bonus too.

So, tomorrow's match is really a bonus to the bonus. It's another chance to represent our university for another half-hour, and, one hopes, not to bring our university into any disrepute. In a way, it's all by-the-by. I hope those of you who watch the match enjoy it, and remember that, whatever small difference our appearance on the show will have made, there is a world of far greater importance beyond the show. People with big egos like myself need to remember this sort of thing, from time to time.