University Challenge

A strange feature of the last few days has been a series of artices in the Times and Independent about the tv show University Challenge. Apparently there was a girl on the Oxford college team who virtually won the competition on her own. This had produced a backlash in some of the press about "swotty, know-it-alls". With two more articles in yesterday's press I felt it was time we had a look at what the fuss was about.

I was able to find the quarter-final and final on a tv show website and downloaded them for viewing last night. The quarter final is a complete slaughter of Exeter - something like 350 pts to 15. The final was far more interesting, as it took the star of the Oxford team more than half the show to get going. Down 70-0 after five minutes and with 4 minutes to go, down 190 to 165, Oxford rally to win 265 to 190.

The press have focused on the captain, Gail Trimble, who is studying for a PhD in Latin literature. She attributes her skill to a lifetime's reading. The odd aspect of the story is that she has been so picked on by some parts of the press. Some commentators are comparing it to the treatment Jade Goody gets - formed from the same critical views.

As always with this show, the main enjoyment is to see how many questions you can answer. Linda and I did ok, but were clearly nowhere near the standard of Ms Trimble.

"A random blast from the past"

February 26th 1995

Not sleep very well overnight. Up at 6:30 and sat watching bits of "Passion for Angling". Next weekend is my 3 day trip. The weather remains awful and I'm considering going walking in the Lakes instead as the caravan is now open. I went for a long walk down to the river this morning. It was massively flooded again. All rather depressing really. Linda is not very well and is not looking forward to tomorrow when Emma has her last holiday day. She won't have much rest this week either with the preparations for her parent's visit on Saturday. Emma played "Animal Quest" a lot and is doing very well on the PC. Linda cooked spaghetti and Emma was really good about going to bed again - is this the start of a trend?

(Addendum - We have been living in Oxfordshire 6 months or so and I had been keen to do some fishing. My planned weekend trip was to Ringwood and turned out to be a nightmare due to the weather. Emma is coming up to her sixth birthday)