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University Challenged: Volume Fifteen (21.11.16)


Many people where talking online about how tonight’s University Challenge had a unusually high female contingent compared to the usual mostly white middle-class male contestant fare, but I didn’t notice. Why: because I was being dazzled and perplexed by Ducklin’s psychedelic shirt.

It was much the same the last time he was on, when he was sporting another questionable number (not too dissimilar to my vast array of floral shirts), which also caught the nation’s notice; so much so, it has its own spoof Twitter account; proof that whatever you may be thinking at any given point, someone else is probably thinking it too.

See below for tonight’s UC-related Tweets; I don’t mention how badly East London were doing until more than two-thirds down.

East London Vs. Warwick.

8:01pm: #UniversityChallenge Prediction of the Evening: Jeremy Paxman will be impatient.

8:01pm: #UniversityChallenge Second Prediction of the Evening: some of the contestants will have ridiculous hair.

8:03pm: "Hello, I'm Christopher Ducklin, and the early-to-mid-1970s has been sick on my shirt".

8:04pm: "Hello, I'm Thomas Van and I look like I've swallowed a van."

8:06pm: Warwick's Van.

8:07pm: Rudd's wearing an Eighties curtain.

8:08pm: Warwick's Van: TONIGHT'S MURDERER.

8:09pm: Ducklin's shirt's a piece of work.

8:10pm: East London are Warwick's parents.

8:11pm: Jeremy Paxman is so over it.

8:12pm: Imagine Paxman's tie worn over Ducklin's shirt. Madness.

8:12pm: Roger Tilling: loves his job.

8:14pm: Paxman even throws his question cards down disdainfully.

8:15pm; Van's beard is made of iron filings. Van is sucking a magnet.

8:19pm: Warwick are so study-centric their mascot is a cone.

8:20pm: East London have still got only five points. Still. Now. At twenty past. STILL.

8:23pm: East London's low score is undeniable proof that Ducklin shouldn't have worn such a distracting shirt.

8:24pm: "Where had he discovered helium many years before?". IN A BALLOON.

8:26pm: At Christmas, Jeremy Paxman strangles the turkey himself (not a euphemism).

8:27pm: Do the Funky Orlando Gibbons.
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