The Tab Tries… University Challenge Trials

Our Debate editor, Joe Murphy, attends the trials for University Challenge…


There’s an eerie silence in Lecture Theatre 2 as people arrive for the University Challenge trials. Everyone is sitting dotted around the room, looking expectantly at the front in awkward silence.

You half expect Jeremy Paxman himself to be wheeled out on stage, still smarting from his tussle with Russell Brand. Instead we have the far less intimidating, more comforting presence of UEA Quiz Society members.

Just as I’ve found someone I know, a voice from the front informs us that we need to spread ourselves out to avoid cheating. There is much sheepish, obedient shuffling. There’s a collective intake of breath as we’re told that we’ll be asked 120 questions, and then some relief when we’re assured that we won’t be expected to know all the answers.

Would having a team member called Brain help your chances?

Then come the questions. “Who was the last British Prime Minister to have served in World War II?” Immediately the name of every British Prime Minister vanishes from my head except, bizarrely, Benjamin Disraeli. Which almost certainly isn’t the answer. Then there’s a barrage of Chemistry and Biology questions which to a Humanities student like me might as well be in Hebrew.

120 questions goes quicker than you’d think. There’s barely time to try and remember the official languages of Switzerland before I’m having to make a wild guess about some art movement or other. Worrying about the blank spaces on my paper, I answer a question about types of pasta with ‘Dolmio’ and hope I’ll get marks for effort.

Around three quarters of the way through I sneak a look around. Some people are bent double over their paper, scribbling furiously, while others stare into space, clearly straining to remember distant lectures. One girl seems to have given up, and is dismantling her pen and laying the pieces out. It’s like being in an exam.

As the papers are being collected some of the answers I missed come flooding back to me. You can tell other people are thinking the same, and one person seems to be sneakily trying to improve his answers. It’s been an interesting experience, like a particularly tense and difficult pub quiz.

If we didn’t fail spectacularly at the first hurdle, we’ll be called back for a second round next week. Some of us could even find ourselves facing the studio lights and condescending death stare of Paxman himself. Now for the hard part.