A brand new team of York’s brightest and best is set to go head to head with another University over the summer as well as facing the formidable Jeremy Paxman on University Challenge.
The team, which was selected from a pool of almost 300 applicants in December, is led by first year History student and team captain Andrew Clemo and also consists of Biology student Ben Keane, English and Linguistics student Chris Caudwell and Simon Donelly, a third year Computer Science and Maths student. Second year Politics student Tom Coates is waiting in the wings as the team’s reserve.
Speaking to Vision, captain Andrew Clemo said he is hoping to redeem York after last year’s dismal performance. He also revealed that the team have been training regularly by attending the pub quiz at the Victoria pub on Hes Road and having “occasional success.”
At present the identity of their first round of opponents is still unknown although Clemo hopes “it won’t be an Oxbridge team.”
As for meeting the infamously scathing host, the team are very optimistic.
“We are very, very much looking forward to meeting Paxman, hopefully we will be able to withstand his sarcastic putdowns and maybe even get an approving comment” said the captain, before adding, “but we’ll take it one step at a time.”
Overall the team is confident that they’ll put up a good fight regardless of who they are drawn against due to the diversity of their interests.
Clemo revealed that each member of the team has their own area of expertise: “I bring history to the table, Simon is our maths and classical music specialist, Ben obviously brings biology knowledge and Chris has great all round knowledge.
“We will do our best, and hopefully we’ll be able to show off our arcane knowledge to the full.”
“At present the identity of their first round of opponents is still unknown.”
They were on yesterday and beat Royal College of Music by a long way. Watch it on iPlayer.