Soton Students on Eggheads

A claim to fame if ever there was one, a brainy bunch of Southampton students were on Eggheads this month. We spoke to Third Year Zoology student, Sarah King, to get all the gossip.

First, and most importantly, what was your team name?

Five Degrees of Quizeration

What date was it filmed?

March 4th 2014

Where was it filmed?

We were flown from Southampton Airport to Glasgow, where it was filmed in the Glasgow BBC headquarters.

Wow, quite the trek then! What date was it on TV?

The show aired on January 6^th 2015

What was the prize fund when you were on it?

The prize fund was at £3,000 when we went on the show

Did you win?

We unfortunately did not win.

Oh well. What made you apply for Eggheads? Why specifically Eggheads? Surely, you’re quite young for this show…?

As a house we always watched the quiz shows every night on TV and thought we were not too bad at it either. So during the madness of revision period we applied to go on the show as a joke. After being accepted the reality of actually being on TV hit us, and we started to prepare.

How did you pick the team?

The team was made of up of housemates and a close friend who agreed to join in.

The brain boxes who joined Sarah were: Ellie Tarhan (Third Year BA Geography), Rachael Maudsley  (Third Year IT), Tom Rees (Second Year History), Chris Carmichael (Third Year Electrical Engineering) and Josh Drewitt as a back-up.

Did you train? How?

Training consisted of going to as many pub quizzes as we could. We would spent ages on websites, such as Sporcle, and even bought the Eggheads board game. But it was quite hard to revise for a situation like this whereby you could receive a question on anything.

Were Jeremy Vine and all the Eggheads welcoming? Did you talk to them much?

Yes, they were all very friendly. Walking into the studios we could see them dotted around reading newspapers and books, and some of us were able to talk to them in the makeup room. When we went on set Jeremy did come over to talk to us and see how we all were. Once we each chose our Egghead to play against there was a short walk to the separate room and during this we were able to have a one on one conversation with our Egghead.

Who was your favourite Egghead?

My favourite Egghead was Dave (regardless of him beating me in my head to head). He was very friendly and talked to me for ages about my degree and even gave me a hug at the end.

Is CJ as annoying in person as he is on the show?

His persona is slightly exaggerated on the show but he is actually quite a nice person in reality.

Is CJ better or worse looking in person? Does he really talk like that?

CJ just looks like he does on TV and he does act and talk offset like he does on. He did make fun of us throughout the show but it was just banter.

Any embarrassing moments?

The most embarrassing moment had to be when the show was aired and we saw ourselves on TV!

Best moment?

The best moment was the actual trip and going away for the weekend to Glasgow. Being flown to Glasgow, put in a very nice hotel and then even getting a dinner budget was fantastic.

Would you do something like this again?

It was a fantastic experience, but I don’t think I could cope with seeing myself on national TV again.

This isn’t the first time Southampton students have been on a quiz show, one of our ex-Sports Editors had his claim to fame on Countdown.