Twitter can’t handle York student’s name on University Challenge

By Jonny Long

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Last night, York contested their first round of this year’s University Challenge against the University of Manchester.

Coupled with the excitement of finally watching your own university going up against Paxman and other swotty students from across the country, York Vision’s very own Editor-in-Chief, Barto Joly de Lotbiniere, was competing!

I waited with baited breath for the viewers of BBC2 to experience the wonder that is Barto’s surname(s). Joly. de. Lotbiniere. A quick search of #universitychallenge on Twitter, and I wasn’t disappointed.

For starters, his name only just fitted on the panel.

There was a lot of love for the seven-syllable surname.

Some people simply refused to believe that it was his name at all.

Barto’s class status was called into question at times – Twitter can be an awfully mean place.

Twitter is fully versed in sarcasm, who knew?

There was a geography round where you had to guess the country from the outline of the map.

When York got the answers right, people started getting suspicious…

…and questioning York’s tactics and Joly de Lotbiniere’s inclusion in the team.

28 points without any bonus tiles.

It wasn’t long before people started to feel sorry for the guy who announces the names before a question is answered…

…or until creative puns started appearing!

This was the best one by a long way.

As the contest rolled on, certain viewers started seeing Barto beyond just his brains.

Despite being Enfield’s alma mater, it’s too big a gap for Barto to be the inspiration for Tim.

Even minor celebrities started getting in on the action.

The York team took a giant rubber duck along as their mascot.

Some people weren’t too happy about it.

Under Barto’s intense gaze, it looked like it all got a bit too much for the poor thing.

The surplus of penis on the York team angered quite a few twitterers. Do they not read Vision?!

Even the UK editor of the Huffington Post weighed in.

York were more than a one funnily-named-man team though, with team captain David Cole answering lots of questions with sounds that I didn’t even know were words.

^(Mine too!)

Manchester weren’t having the best of times.

Surely this is one of the best bits of the programme, no?!

Actually, this was probably the best feature of the episode!

The contest was over…

…York were victorious!

The tie was over, York were through to the next round! Social media man-of-the-hour Barto Joly de Lotbiniere had this to say:

“I think the reason we performed so well is down to long hours of practise in front of the pub quiz book.

“We made an effort to spread our knowledge effectively although there are chinks in the armour, most notably Literature and the experimental school of neuro-pyschology in the 1960s.”

When asked about his momentary new-found twitter fame:

“I’ll try not to let that 30mins of fame go to my head but from now on people must address me as #jolydelotbiniere!”

The hashtags have definitely gone to his head.

If you missed the episode, you can watch it on BBC iPlayer here.

3 thoughts on “Twitter can’t handle York student’s name on University Challenge”

  1. Did it ever occur to these idiotic extremist feminists that perhaps the reason why York didn’t have any females in the team is because none were good enough to qualify?

    Or perhaps they think women deserve special treatment because women just can’t be good enough. Pathetic.

  2. Blahb – I’m pretty sure I speak for all the team when I say that I find your comments to rather silly. The selection process was done on merit; there were simply many more men who tried out than women. There were women in the final round of the selection, suggesting that they were of similar ability to those of us who were lucky enough to be on the team; however, the numbers were against them. The suggestion that there aren’t any women at York who are good enough to be on the team is, frankly, laughable. It merely suggests we aren’t advertising the competition well enough. More people wanting to be involved has to be good – it gives us a better chance in the competition.

    We’ve had two years running of all white men on the team. I want the University Challenge team to properly represent all of our community. I hope that more people of every background will try out next year, but particularly people who aren’t white men.

  3. David: “however, the numbers were against them” – presumably this refers to them getting a lower score than the people who made it onto the team. Thus, it is done on merit, as you said.

    Yes, it may be the case that there are women out there who didn’t apply and who are good enough to be on the team. Or it may not be the case. I don’t know and frankly I didn’t make any comments on that. I merely find irritating the suggestion that the _only_ reason no women were on the team was because they were discriminated against, when the more likely reason is that those were applied were not good enough. I find it irritating that some people say the team must have women, or must have someone non-white, with no regard shown to whether they deserve to be on the team.

    My last two sentences in the previous post I think were misunderstood by you; I was suggesting that these people on Twitter seem to believe that women should be on the team for quota reasons, not on merit.

    As for your last paragraph, I find it strange. Why should the UC team “represent” the York community? It is a competition and the best of York should be in the team, if that’s four straight white men from public schools then there is nothing wrong with that. Nobody needs to apologise for that. Yes, it’s good for more people to try out, but I see no reason why we need to have a person from any “minority” group on the team just to show diversity.

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