How often do you fail at something and get a second chance?

As previously recounted in Useless Information, when I was a postgrad at Queen’s back in 1983, I was picked for the University Challenge team. I’ve always been a fan of the show and I was fortunate to (still) be at college when our turn came around. I went for an informal test: a fellow student read out 25 or 30 questions and I answered on the spot, as best I could. After which he said, “Well, as things stand you’d be in the team”.

And so it came to pass

We were a knowledgeable crew but not well organised. how many student teams are? Much of a team’s success is down to training and self-belief; quizzing can be described as a sport without the physical exercise. Unfortunately, we came up against a very good team (Magdalen) in the first round. I answered five starters correctly and acquitted myself well, and at the halfway point we were in the lead. But in the end we lost. It was nice to have been part of the show, but I knew we could have won, if only…

You can’t win ‘em all but it would’ve been good to win something – for once. I’ve never been much cop at anything athletic, so you can rule that out. It is a long time since I won the Overchurch Junior School essay prize with “What I Should Like To Be When I Grow Up”; the prize being, as I recall, a bag of Cadbury’s chocolate eclairs.

When I went on to Birkenhead School I wasn’t top in everything, winning prizes fn every subject. It was a very academic, selective school and I’ve always been an all-rounder (or Jack of All Trades, if you like), so there was usually someone a mark or two ahead of me. Even in Spanish, which I went on to teach at Oxford University.

***

I’d been working at the British Library for 17 years when it were asked to take part in a special 2004 edition of University Challenge, called “The Professionals”. I just had to go for it. I took a written test and made the team, joining three other northerners; all a bit old, a bit over-weight and generally lacking in physical charms. You could imagine the marketing director thinking, “Oh God. We have some photogenic young curators, so how did we end up with this lot?” In fact I am sure that is exactly what she said – though not directly to me. But of all those who wanted to take part, we were the four who performed best in the tests. Three of us had been on UC as students, and all waiting for that second chance.

UC is not a beauty contest

We practised and got to know each other’s strengths. When you are ready to buzz in on a starter question you have to ask yourself: “Is anyone else more likely to know the answer than I am?” Get it wrong and they will not be happy.. Don’t buzz in and you might lose the game. You will be like an unloved mantelpiece ornament that offers nothing but a ruefull smile. We’ve all seen them. It’s having the guts to take risks under pressure and, what is more, on a popular TV show, that makes it a challenge. A team has to become a team, and there is a great deal of satisfaction when it gels.

We didn’t socialise much

As my old school-friend Charles Grimes says, when an orchestra’s musicians come together to play they don’t need to like each other. But they do have to love what they do and give it their best shot.

As the date of our first recording session crept closer, I started to get nervous. I was considering how to get out of it rather than how I was going to win it. Of course, anyone can lose a game, but it’s the fear of losing really badly, of being an embarrassment, that gets to you. We would be representing a world-class institution – one that had “The World’s Knowledge” as its pretentious byline. But the things that cause you most worry are the things that will give you most satisfaction – provided you succeed! Over the years I have discovered that I am actually a very competitive person, even if I don’t like to show it.

We took the train up to Manchester. The next day we won our opening game against a team of crossword compilers. Can there be four individuals less likely to form a successful team? It was obvious that they were never going to be quick on the buzzer.

Kathryn Johnson was our star player. She was razor sharp and seemed to know everything. Quizzing is her passion and she has been on Mastermind three times. The rest of us made respectable contributions, often at key moments. We weren’t allowed to tell anyone we’d won until it was shown on the BBC, a few months later.

People I hadn’t seen for many years saw the programme and got in touch. We received congratulations and warm wishes from our colleagues, but “senior management”seemed wary. Perhaps it was as well that they left us to get on with it.

A month or so later we went up again and beat a truly awful quartet of marketing folk. By the time we got to the final against Oxford University Press, I had got over my stage fright. I answered the first two starters and we never once lost the lead. When there was just a minute to go I realised we were so far ahead that we could not lose. A moment to savour.

Once again we had to keep it quiet, and the programme was not broadcast until September 2004, three months after it was recorded and 20 years after my appearance for Queen’s. Colleagues packed out the British Library Auditorium to watch it “live” on the big screen. Nobody was told the result in advance. Wild cheering broke out.

The CEO couldn’t stop boasting about it and we featured in the Annual Report.

So fickle is management…

For a month or two you strut around like a celebrity, and occasionally you get recognised.

We were asked to set the Guardian quiz. Kathryn and I contributed most of the questions, and I name-checked my old mate Paweł Pawlikowski just because I could. I was asked to appear on a new show called Only Connect but I couldn’t get a team together. Anyway, I had achieved my ambition of being a UC champion.

Quit while you are ahead

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I have to say that there was a huge amount of luck involved. First, I could easily not have made the team, and we had a brilliant reserve. Second, we were the only team with Kathryn Johnson in it! Third, the team we beat, OUP, was as good as us, and it could have gone the other way.

Before the quiz proper starts they always ask a couple of test questions to make sure all the technical gubbins is working. OUP beat us to the buzzer and got both questions right. Then we began for real and OUP answered the first starter, getting all three bonus questions right.

But then… Paxo gets a message in his earpiece

The producer stops the show. Apparently “Team Dictionary” have given an incorrect answer. It was decided re-start the game from the top. And once again OUP buzzed in first – but this time incorrectly. I followed up with the right answer (that Oscar Wilde’s executor was Robbie Ross) and… the rest is TV history.

I’m sure the false start unnerved the opposition But viewers could not have known what had happened – until now. But you have to take the rough with the smooth and all that crap, and the OUP people were very gracious in defeat.

Footnote: I can claim to be one of very few people to have had a post-UC pint with both Bamber Gascoigne and Jeremy Paxman, and they can never take that away from me.