I have a great fondness for University Challenge. Even as a small child when I could not even have understood a single question, let alone answered one, I was fascinated by it. It spoke of unknown adult pleasures and potential futures. Would I one day be at University? I don't think I ever dared imagine I would be one of the coolest of the cool (to the five year old me) who actually got to sit behind the desk, but I remember loving it when they cut to the audience and you'd see all the students in their college scarves, waving teddy bears with impressive grown up beards and moustaches... and that was just the men. The women of course didn't have those.
It also had a kicking theme tune, an eccentric and likeable host with a ridiculous funny name - Bamber Gascoigne. Plus that great TV quirk of making it appear that one team sat directly above the other, even though we knew in our hearts that they were side by side. If I had been in charge of the newer version I would have built the set so that this convention became actual reality. After all they do it with Celebrity Squares.
Tonight's final was pretty much a replay of the
Young One's version of the programme (in which the desks are arranged as we all really wanted them to be - and also I wonder if my memories of the real audience are based on this pretend one), where Footlights College, Oxbridge took on Scumbag College. It was in fact Corpus Christi Oxford versus Manchester, but that was the University that most of the Young Ones team actually attended. Would the Oiks be smashed or could Scumbag tamper with the question cards so most of the answers were Toxteth O'Grady?
It turned out to be an unusually exciting contest with Manchester streaking into the lead, only for the poshos to come streaking back and snatching the crown in the last five minutes. Although I have just ruined it for you, you can watch it
on iPlayer if you missed it. I got about one answer right - Petri.
The star of the show is Gail Trimble who as a result has had the media spotlight turned on her
predictably being referred to as an unlikely sex symbol. But there is nothing unlikely about a clever, posh bird being sexy - it's why I still find it hard to concentrate if I have to go and work in a library. It's why I love
Kathy Sykes, even though
I was to blow it with her when I had the chance - I actually think she quite liked me. It's why Carol Vorderman would be sexy if she didn't ultimately prefer money to mathematics.
Trimble is a cracker. If only she had a bigger conk then I would marry her right now. Big nosed academics who can make lenses out of ice and know obscure facts about Dante - life would never be boring would it. Plus all that time spent in libraries must mean that they really let their hair down once the library is shut. Trimble looks like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, but she knows it would, being aware, I am sure of both the exact temperature of the human mouth and the melting point of butter.
Mike Skinner from the Streets was watching too and getting quite into it if his
hilarious comments on Twitter are anything to go by. He seemed to like Trimble too. I hope they get together. What a brilliant celebrity couple they would be. And he was as confounded by the victory of Footlights College, Oxbridge as everyone else. The natural order of the world was restored and the posh triumphed over the Manchester scum. Despite Corpus Christi having something like a hundred times less students to pick their team from than Manchester. Oxford rocks! That's where I went, b ut only because my father is a Lord and he paid or me to get in.
And weirdly academic library dwelling young men are not in any way sexy, yet academic young women are. To me at least. But I think that pretty much holds true universally. What's that about?
Thank God I didn't really do any work.
