Skip to main content

'University Challenged: Week Twenty-six' (05.02.18)


Tonight’s University Challenge saw a Cambridge college take on a college in Oxford; is it me, or are the teams always from there?

I know there are a number of colleges in both cities, and I know both cities are famed for their top-quality education (you may not be aware of this) but still, can’t some other places have a crack of the whip? I want to see scarily well-read students from different privileged backgrounds, and not just the same two boat-race locations going at it; if not, I’m going to write a strongly-worded letter to Points of View (but only if it’s read out on the air by someone with suitable vocal standing; James Earl Jones, perhaps?)

See below for my tweets about tonight's show:

Fitzwilliam - Cambridge Vs. Merton - Oxford (05.02.18)

8:33PM: Typical two-out-of-four Theo team average.

8:34PM: Tindall killed five people...and that's just today.

8:35PM: Tindall's hair and Fuzzy Felt have the same consistency.

8:36PM: Maloney and I share the same MP. This makes me famous.

8:38PM: Oxlade. So frowny; so high-voiced; so insistent.

8:40PM: REGISTRAR: "Do you, Jeremy Dixon Paxman, take ________ to be your lawful wedded wife?" 
PAXMAN: ".........no".

8:41PM: I'd like to shave the word "NO" into the back of Jeremy Paxman's head.

8:42PM: Woodland's eyebrows look like tadpoles with elongated tails.

8:44PM: You can only just see it, but Howe has tassels on his sleeves. HE HAS TASSELS ON HIS SLEEVES. 

(For fuck's sake.)

8:48PM: How good it was of Martin Bell to loan Wiberg his jacket.

8:48PM: I love a round on granite buildings.

8:50PM: Well, I got 'Sunday in the Park with George' and 'Little Shop of Horrors'. That's about my limit.

8:51PM: Tindall's favourite film franchise is 'Saw'.

8:52PM: Jimmy Hill was the leader of the Qin Dynasty.

8:54PM: The longer you look at Oxlade, the closer together his eyes get.

8:57PM: Woodland speaks like her trachea's stuffed with cotton wool.

8:58PM: Woodland is dressed like your mum's English teacher.

8:59PM: Fitzwilliam Tindall sounds like a posh person's dating app.

Popular posts from this blog

Not The Bayeux One.

The Carole King album Tapestry has been my 'getting-ready-in-the-morning' soundtrack for the past few weeks.  It's been a favourite album ever since I was a student, which makes for a pleasantly gentle way to usher in the start of a day. I've always been a fan of a well-crafted song, which is something of a Carole King hallmark, ever since she started writing with her first husband in the early Sixties. Tapestry may be an unimaginative choice for a favourite LP, as it suggests I haven't delved that far into her career, but it's still an undoubted classic; anything with '(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman', 'Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?' and 'You've Got A Friend' on it can't really fail; if nothing else, it proves she likes writing songs with long titles.  Next month, she's set to perform the album live in its entirety for the first time at a gig in Hyde Park, which I would have loved to have gone to, if it weren...

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...

'...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...