Despite taking the first starter question, and blazing through a bonus round on the authors of historical quotes, the York team was beaten in the first round by University College London’s 185 points to York’s 105. UCL proved a formidable opponent, living up to their consistent ranking in the world’s top ten higher education institutions.
At the start of the show, presenter Jeremy Paxman joked that the abundant wildlife on campus may have led to York students being instructed not to hunt rabbits, but ‘wait until the fees increase kicks in!’
The University of York team was made up of Rob Miller, an Astrophysics student, Greg Melia, studying for a PhD in Computational Magnetics, Heather Powell, a chemistry student, and was captained by Andrew Rose, studying PPE. The York team held an average age of just 20, while UCL held a slight two year advantage, though both teams were made up predominantly of undergraduate students.
Despite running neck and neck through much of the first third, UCL soon widened their lead, and by midway had drawn an impressive 60 points ahead.
York contestants answered questions on topics as diverse as chemical alloys and dental biology, while Rose and Melia were quick on their buzzers, clocking up a respectable number of starter questions for the team. But they were flummoxed by a round on Renaissance paintings, and failed to beat the quicker team to the majority of starter questions.
While much of the Twitter conversation about #universitychallenge centred around the UCL captain Karran and his flamboyant style (with many tweeters recognising him from an appearance on BBC daytime quiz show Pointless earlier this year), there was also attention for York captain Rose, who was compared to Harry Potter and Louis Theroux. One user, @KatyBliss tweeted ‘Hello, York Rose! You’re lovely!’
At the end of the game Paxman described York’s performance as ‘perfectly respectable.’
However the result is deflating following last year’s success, where a team headed up by the now infamous ‘York Clemo’ reached the final of the competition, after beating off the likes of Sheffield and Bristol, to be finally defeated by Magdalen College, Oxford.
CampusHorse could have done a better job :/
Who is Campus Horse, and why is York Clemo “infamous”?
Campus Horse is a horse that was tethered on campus.
Clemo is infamous because he accidentally got left with the answers to University Challenge and remembered them, answering a last gasp winning question before enough of the question had been read for any conceivable correct answer to be offered. His brilliance in earlier rounds was then called into question and he escaped in an ice-cream van driven by his step-father. Fortunately all his pre-uni friends stayed loyal, plus he ended up with the girl we all knew he would rather than the posh blonde bird he’d been chasing all the way through the film. He then graduated from Bristol with a first in the Summer of 1987 while The Cure played in the background and he was left to reflect on that first starter for ten. Oh and the time he was the last king of Scotland.
Ah – worked it out.
Campus Horse = the horse by campus, not a Y.U. indie band.
Still don’t know why “York Clemo” is “infamous”, though.
“he ended up with the girl we all knew he would rather than the posh blonde bird he’d been chasing all the way through the film”.
Nah. York Clemo wasn’t in Teen Wolf.