Skip to main content

University Challenged: Volume Twenty (16.01.17)


Clear the decks and ring the bell: Monkman’s back in da house.

Apologies for briefly slipping into yoof speak (of the mid-Nineties), but my point still stands. When Wolfson’s finest is safely tucked away behind his University Challenge lightbox, you know the show's going to be a cracker. He is a man with exceptional comic value, even if it’s completely unintended; I’ve never seen anyone look so consistently manic and perplexed.

See below for my Twitter commentary on tonight’s Monkman-filled episode;even if you didn’t watch it, you should be able to pick up the gist.

Wolfson - Cambridge Vs. Balliol - Oxford (16.01.179

8:01pm: Paxman. So weary.

8:02pm: .....iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitttttttttttttttt's MONKMAN.

8:02pm: Chaudhri's from near Cockermouth. Heh heh.

8:03pm: Cancel everything: Monkman's in town.

8:03pm: Well...Pope's got a centre-parting.

8:04pm: I'm absolutely completely in love with Monkman. This isn't a drill.

8:05pm: Cosgrove is doing everything he can to present a suave coolness.

8:06pm: I want to do some spin-orbit coupling with Monkman.

8:06pm: Is Monkman wearing a false collar?

8:08pm: Monkman: the world's most ineffectual superhero.

8:09pm: I want Monkman's face as my face.

8:11pm: Goldman and Paxman should stage a disdain-off.

8:13pm: TILING: "Balliol Potts". POTTS: " Tit". TV gold.

8:14pm: Monkman's hair ends where his glasses begin.

8:18pm: Every second Monkman isn't on #UniversityChallenge is spent combing his hair forward and forward and forward and forward and forward.

8:21pm: Balliol Potts, hair of Lego.

8:22pm: Goldman...get an answer right...say it really quickly and disdainfully...DON'T SMILE.

8:23pm: Chaudhri is both smug and angry at the same time.

8:26pm: Monkman will be releasing a cover of Talking Heads' Once In a Lifetime in the spring.



8:28pm: Goldman and the c-word are synonymous.

Popular posts from this blog

Shakerpuppetmaker.

Have Parker from Thunderbirds and Noel Gallagher ever been seen in the same room? The resemblance is uncanny. So much so, I think something’s afoot. If my suspicions are correct, I've stumbled across a secret that will blow the music and puppet industry wide apart. In the mid-60s / mid-90s at least. It doesn’t take long to see the signposts. There’s the similarity between the name of Oasis’ first single, Supersonic, and Supermarianation, Gerry Anderson’s puppetry technique. The Gallagher brothers would often wear Parkas . Live Forever was clearly a reference to Captain Scarlet and Standing on the Shoulder of Giants to the size difference between Noel and his bandmates. The more you think about it, the more brazen it gets. It’s fishier than Area 51, Paul is Dead and JFK's assassination put together. The only glitch to the theory is scale . According to Wikipedia, Anderson’s marionettes were 1’10” and Gallagher is 5’8”. How does he maintain an illusion of avera...

"Speaking Words of Wisdom, Let it Shine."

Tonight saw the second instalment of BBC1’s latest advertise-a-musical-for-months-and-then-cast-it-with-performers-too-inexperienced-to-do-it-a-thon ‘Let it S̶h̶i̶t̶e̶ Shine’ (or as I call it: ‘REAL AUDITIONS ARE NOTHING LIKE THIS’). I didn’t watch it (clearly), but being reminded of how angry seeing just five minutes of it made me last week caused me to mull over what I would call a musical based on the band’s songbook, if I was responsible for it. Here are a my suggestions: IDEAS FOR TITLE OF A TAKE THAT MUSICAL: Barlow! Dirty Fat-Dancing Orange! A Million Love-changes-everything Songs Owen! Howard's End Pray Misérables Mamma Marka! Babe (with a pig as the lead) …BUT MY FAVOURITE HAS TO BE: Jason & His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. "It was Orange, Orange, Orange, Orange..." (TAKE) THAT’S ENOUGH OF (TAKE) THAT.

'...I'm Gonna Look at You 'til My Eyes Go Blind."

Over the past week or two, I’ve been on a bit of a Sheryl Crow kick, largely thanks to rediscovering her cover of one of my most-liked Bob Dylan songs. She has one of my favourite female voices, yet despite this, I only own one CD and that’s just a single (her '97 release ‘Hard to Make a Stand’); on that basis, you can only imagine how much of her back catalogue I’d own if I hated her (it would fall into minus-figures). Dylan, conversely, takes up more of my collection than anyone else, save The Beatles and Paul McCartney’s solo work. He’s one of those artists who, when you get him, you really get him - and once I’d tuned into his style as a student, I'd time and again be blown away by his lyrics; he’ll have more jaw-dropping imagery in one track than other people fit in a whole career. These days, I mostly listen to music in the morning when getting ready, and more often than not, this will consist of a suggested YouTube playlist when I’m in the bath, r...