mostly david ephgrave

As the festive season - and 2016 in fact - nearly draws to a close, so does my relentless coverage of the Christmas series of University Challenge. Admittedly, I’ve not been so organised as to live-tweet every show - I do have a vague semblance of a social life - but I have been good enough to at least go through the motions as if I had, by catching up on the few episodes I missed and noting down what I would have said if I’d watched them when they were broadcast. Some might ask why the hell I’ve done this. Those some can go to hell. This is just the sort of thing I do (plus it gives me a bit of a break from posting a prose blog every day which, as another year of doing this comes to an end, is much appreciated; it’s much easier to think in 140-character bursts. See below for my commentary on the final semi-final (poor choice of wording) between St Anne’s and St Hilda’s Oxford; it’s a veritable roller-coaster ride, of course. St Anne...

I didn’t expect there to be much to tweet about tonight’s University Challenge, as it was one of the Christmas specials with ‘real’ ‘people’ as contestants, but it turns out I was wrong. For starters, one of the teams - Manchester - barely scraped their way past the zero mark on the scoreboard, despite being amongst the college’s top-tier alumni; I guess this was just the way the questions fell. I was also surprised that all of St Anne’s Oxford team were women ; a rarity on such a middle-class white male-led show. This was great, particularly when they trounced Manchester so perfectly. See below for tonight’s UC Twitter ramblings. As to whether I'll keep this up for the rest of the Chrimbo series, we’ll have to wait and shall see. I’m sure the nation will be on tenterhooks as to what my decision will be. Manchester Vs. St. Anne's - Oxford (19.12.16( 8:03pm: "Ivor Nowello". 8:04pm: ...and he don't know it. 8:05pm: Too many women...