It’s hotting up for our Leavers at this time of year with revision, last-minute deadlines and soon, goodbyes to be had. Sometimes, one just needs a dose of amusement at this point, behind and even in front of the camera.

Having had a few OWs try their hand at University Challenge - and in most cases this is only going to an informal meeting to see if they’re able to answer just a question - one or two have been in the team and even been captain!  

To all our Leavers, we are sure that we could produce an RGS team to be reckoned with if we had the chance!

John Maier, who captained Balliol College, Oxford, which was crushed in the first round by Imperial College, relives the pain and is delighted to lose to this year's champions.

"The first piece of bad news on the day itself, delivered to us in the lift on the way to the studio floor, was that we’d be playing Imperial College. Disaster. “We wouldn’t have put you up against them if we didn’t think you’d do well,” the production assistant reassured us, lyingly.

It was several minutes into the first-round match, and Imperial College’s scorecard was spinning around like the reel on a fruit machine. Balliol College, Oxford remained motionless at minus 5. There’s no way they’re going to be allowed to broadcast this before the watershed, I thought, as I sat there with a motionless finger on my buzzer. Is this going to be reported in the news? “Oxford College left for dead as Imperial progresses to the second round.”

As this year’s captain of the team fielded by Balliol College, Oxford, I felt the crushing responsibility appropriate to my position. In 2017, Balliol won the contest, a fact memorialised in the commemorative photograph, hanging in the college buttery, of four dazed students receiving a large trophy from Stephen Hawking.

Two generations of undergraduates have since come and gone. And in the intervening years, our college had recorded some rather more equivocal performances on the show.

Rumour had it that these days the UC production team considered it good optics to have a few Oxbridge teams “steamrollered” in the opening round. This intelligence I chose not to communicate to the troops.

To the viewer at home, University Challenge’s first round seems the very beginning of the process; in reality, it is the culmination of an arduous months-long campaign to get on TV.

Our campaign started the previous year at college when, following two rounds of in-house tests, our team of four players and a reserve had been chosen. The selection process then begins all over again at the national level, as a hundred or more teams vie for the two dozen slots available.

After an enormous amount of form-filling, in the course of which I assume I waived various fundamental legal rights on behalf of my team, we were invited to “audition” in front of the programme’s producers, who every year decamp to Oxford for several days to host blocks of interviews in which hopeful teams are assessed for their charisma, or anti-charisma.

Another written test is administered: this time it’s the team’s collective score that counts. But when it comes to this “judges’ houses’’ phase of the pre-competition, it’s clear that being knowledgeable is a necessary, rather than sufficient, condition of advancement. The five of us spent a good deal of time speculating about what else they could be looking for. Diversity was clearly important. In our briefing notes, we learnt that the programme aimed to “showcase” the entire UK’s student population “in terms of race, gender identity, sexuality, disability, faith, socioeconomic background, and more”.

Our credentials on this score were underwhelming, though probably not disqualifying. One member of our team had had the foresight to be a woman; that was certainly a point in our favour. Another was from Latvia which, after a little deliberation, we concluded probably fell most naturally under “and more”.

In the end, the audition was less high-stakes than we’d feared. It mostly consisted of demonstrating our ability to say our names while staring down the lens of a camera. A few weeks later, we got the call to say we’d made it.

How to prepare? First the question of what to wear. No intricate patterns or stripes that might strobe under the lights, we were told, as our outfits were vetted in hair and make-up.

The four of us revised pretty diligently too: quizzed each other, divided and redivided areas of specialism, and lounged about in the college TV room watching reruns of old episodes. How else, when it comes down to it, are you to ready yourself for a quiz where anything might come up?

As the nerve-racking final days before filming ticked away, my preparation increasingly took the form of what I’m told elite athletes refer to as “visualising success”. While out running late at night on the streets of Oxford, the host Amol Rajan would materialise before me, firing off volleys of questions. Somewhat unavoidably, these ended up being about whatever I happened to have just been reading or thinking about. Again and again I’d buzz in with the answer, hesitantly at first, then with a growing resolve.

The further I ran, the more the questions tended to fall in my favour. “Very impressive,” Rajan would remark, glancing up from his cue cards to provide one of his occasional commentaries on the game, as all the while our opponents looked on, speechless in disbelief.

The danger with a team such as Imperial is that, unlike the plucky team of amateurs I was leading, they were likely to be bona fide “quizzers”’: students for whom buzzer quizzing is an elite-level hobby pursued as an end in itself.

Then it dawned on me that worse than being violently defeated, we simply weren’t going to be in the show at all: at the present rate, the entire programme would consist of the Imperial team in a form of extended dialogue with Rajan, curiously bookended by shots in which our team bid the viewers hello and goodbye.

Angry licence-fee payers would write in to complain about the usual number of teams being inexplicably halved. This, I resolved, was a humiliation too far. Sure, we may not be able to win, but I was certain I could buzz in with the incorrect answer quicker than they could buzz in with the correct one.

In the end, we clawed our way back into the game, scoring a mediocre 145 points against Imperial’s rather less sportsmanlike 285. Congratulating them afterwards, I speculated that they might well win the whole contest.

Apparently misinterpreting this as generous-spiritedness on my part (rather than what it was, an attempt to salvage some self-respect from the thought that we had at least lost to the overall winners), they thanked me and agreed that they would try. Imperial made it to the final, and thankfully they kept their word."

Who was the 'Greatest ever' University Challenge captain poised to lead a team to victory?

Gail Trimble – Corpus Christi College, Oxford University (2009)

The woman dubbed the “Human Google” and “TV Quiz phenomenon” steered Corpus Christi College to victory after correctly answering more questions than the rest of her team combined… Only to have her team disqualified after an investigation revealed one of her teammates had finished studying at Corpus Christi before the series ended.

Kaamil Shah – Kings College, Cambridge University (2015)

Who doesn’t remember the black pleather-vested hunk? Kaamil walked onto the show and into our hearts donning a massive gold chain.

Shah made headlines across the country for his sleeveless style and emo hair, melting the hearts of Twitter-fans and sending social media into a love-struck frenzy.

Sadly, his fierce appearance wasn’t enough to bring his team to victory, losing to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.

Oscar Powell – Peterhouse, Cambridge (2015)

Viewers remember Powell as the man with an abundance of facial expressions.

The geological science student helped his team soar to victory in the semi-finals with his extensive knowledge on geology-related questions, but it was his bizarre on-camera array of animated expressions that stole the hearts of viewers all across the country.

During the music round, Powell pulled his hair, chewed his hand and stuck out his tongue while desperately trying to remember the name of an artist. His performance sparked a twitter campaign led by fans calling for Powell to become Prime Minister.

Ted Loveday – Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge (2015)

The 21-year-old law student answered 10 starter questions in a row and won over fans with his 3-second response to Jeremy Paxman’s hapax legomenon question.

Later he admitted all his knowledge was attributed to intense studying on Wikipedia and Youtube.

Alex Guttenplan – Emmanuel College, Cambridge (2010)

The enthusiastic captain won first place in 2010, scoring 315 points to 100 against St John’s College, Oxford. But it was his snappy unprecedented comeback at Paxman that captured viewer’s hearts across the nation.

After the natural sciences student paused for a few moments before correctly answering a question, Paxman said: "Good guess". Guttenplan calmly responded: "It wasn’t a guess".

The 19-year-old teenager remained composed in the face of Paxman’s aggressive questioning, beating countless politicians before him. His supporters, dubbed "Guttenfans", held him to heartthrob status and many labelled him as the pin-up Einstein.

Sam Fairbrother – Jesus, Cambridge (2016)

University Challenge fans lost it over Fairbrother when he raised his fist and shocked Paxman with his eccentric outfit.

It’s not the first time viewers have been sent into a frenzied state over a UC vest (see Kaamil Shah), but not even Kaamil was as eccentric as Fairbrother.

Many comparisons were made between Fairbrother and a number of celebrity lookalikes. The most notable being Demi Moore and Simon from The Inbetweeners.

Hannah Woods – Peterhouse, Cambridge (2015)

Captain Woods directed her team to victory, defeating rivals from St John’s College, Oxford in the series finale.

But it wasn’t her brains that won viewers, it was her left eyebrow.

The famously arched thick black left eyebrow that was raised higher than the right. ‘Browfan’ and ‘Facetious Eyebrow’, two twitter parody pages were inspired by Wood’s brow as well as a marriage proposal.

Stephen Fry – Queen’s College, Cambridge (1980)

Yes. The man, the legend… Stephen Fry. The British comedian began his career on-screen in the 1980 University Challenge with Queen’s College, Cambridge.

The fresh-faced 23-year-old made it to the final round and is among the few contestants who went on to find fame, others include Miriam Margolyes and David Starkey.