University Challenge (also featuring Only Connect and other BBC quiz shows)

Working on her "murder mystery" book? Hence the masquerade thing.

Ugh. This is exactly why I skip the bantz at the beginning.

huge discrepancy in the length of the names last week - an vs akarapongpisakdi

UC was incredibly literature-heavy today. not complaining but by this point it's usually very dry

Yeah, I struggle with hard science and dull history and there didn't seem as much of it as usual.

Yer Scottish lad on Open is definitely one of this year's MVPs (possibly because his literature game is strong and there was quite a lot of it)

I notice Amol is better on literature too.

He’s become a good host, I think. I don’t need to watch with the subtitles - he’s quick but clear. He doesn’t have the Pac-Man gravitas but the warmer approach seems to fit.

Autocorrect but I stand by Pac-Man

Andi Oliver is good on Pointless, I think.

Not seen her. Of the faux-Richards I've seen, I like Alex Brooker and Stephen Mangan the best.

I like Stephen Mangan the best too. I suppose I had lower expectations of Andi Oliver, but she genuinely seemed to be enjoying herself, and she was sometimes able to come up with stuff to say that she didn't have to read off the screen.

We are aware of a number of inaccurate claims being made online in relation to last night’s episode of University Challenge and we utterly condemn the abuse that has been posted and shared.

For the avoidance of doubt, this episode was filmed in March. The mascot is one of many…

— BBC Press Office (@bbcpress) November 21, 2023

I'm so glad it's not Giles on pointless anymore.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9x8rBUHes0

I never thought a cuddly mascot on UC could be so deeply sinister, jfc

Adorable! As a Jew I would gladly be subjugated by this cutester

that this cuddly adorapus had the rabid racist, Baroness Foster, calling for the expulsion and arrest of the Asian student is completely evil and insane behaviour. I feel sorry for the student having to put up with this shit.

even by the standards of the mad Islamophobes and right-wing nutcases on the web this was all a bit much. At least Gary Lineker is used to being monstered by spittle-flecked bigots, he probably has a social media team to take the flak anyway. Increasingly it seems like the media and political classes think it's okay to take random members of the public (and especially if they happen to be people of colour, young and/or women) to task from perceived "crimes" like this, with who knows what consequences for the unlucky victims?

Actually, that team did get us hopping mad: they were blatantly playing for time to maintain their lead towards the end. Blue octopus, or dead cat?

comedy b vs stephen mangen on celeb weakest link just before doctor who. good job.

That was good, yes. Also enjoyed Rosie Jones on Twitter getting really enthusiastic about how she actually did work and revision before going on Celeb Mastermind and how genuinely chuffed she was that it paid off.

this week's celeb weakest link winner was Josie Long who gave the money to her own charity.

Hmm, bit weird, but at least she knows how the charity is run and how the money will be spent.

she co-founded it but isn't listed on the current board. still does a lot of fundraising for it, which i guess this was. i have no problems with this. (we were regulars at her monthly Camden thing and she'd remember us from one month to the next)

I'm currently trying to recruit her to my quiz league team!

koogs, what era? We may have been in the same room!

Not to be Cap'n Save A Josie but Arts Emergency is a charity dedicated to helping working class people break into the arts and that's a very urgent & key cause in the 2023 British cultural landscape

this was upstairs at the black heart. i was there for her 30th birthday show (she had a list of 30 things to do before you were 30) and i was at the last one and many times in between (often on my own if friends couldn't make it)

Not to be Cap'n Save A Josie but Arts Emergency is a charity dedicated to helping working class people break into the arts and that's a very urgent & key cause in the 2023 British cultural landscape

No Josie hating here! It is just a bit odd to see a celebrity giving money to their own charity on one of these things. But, as I say, at least she knows it's a properly run organization. People have been bitten in the past. Imagine if you were a celeb who'd given money to the Captain Tom thing, for example. (Although I can't think of anyone who did, off the top of my head.)

Arts Emergency is FANTASTIC and everybody who can afford to should chuck them a few quid, which is something I have been saying repeatedly to my privately educated friend whose privately educated child is about to follow them into television :)

koogs, yeah, I was a regular at the Black Heart too!

always fun seeing Nathaniel Metcalfe selling comics in the Gosh basement too, (local stand up) celebrities: they're just like us

Napalm Death and Sabbath on University Challenge: a first?

Husband doing last week's picture round on OC: "Bird, bird, bird, bird. Oh, they're all birds."

For some reason we laughed ourselves sick at this.

Radio 1 were losing it over McMillan when he gets name- called after buzzing. Chicken noises.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozcHqgZiSfA

Examples: 24 mins, onwards...

Haha, glad we weren't the only ones, hilarity in the Moose household every time Roger Tilling did his chicken impression. BirkbeckMacMillan! Bwok-bwok-mwok-mwan!

Haha, that's brilliant and I totally didn't notice that. Obvs, because I know every quizzer in the universe, I shall be making chicken noises at Danny next time I see him.

It felt like the BirBek noise got more insane with each go as well, I suspect Tilling lost some kind of bet.

Particularly when he got called to deliver the tie-break answer with a "buzz-in-early"

The noise definitely got more insane, because the competition was more tense. It was very funny, although my husband said he'd rather I hadn't told him about it because he got completely distracted waiting for it to happen. Some people will say anything to justify their low scores, tbh.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/dec/18/bbc-called-to-defend-elitist-format-of-university-challenge

Frank Coffield otm

Yes, I was worried by that headline that it'd be about dumbing down the questions but forcing Oxbridge to field only two teams is praxis.

must remember to check my recordings are correct for the christmas editions of these things because iirc i missed one last year because they are in the epg as different things from the usual series.

Sheepishly I don't really care about the Oxbridge bias (in my mind more Oxbridge teams = more chances to see them getting whomped by teams from former polys) but the refusal to manage even basic reasonable accommodations for disabled team members (see here) is some pathetic bullshit

The great thing about the Christmas Only Connect specials is that they have proper Only Connect teams on them. Last night's Christmas University Challenge was more of a chore than a treat. Might not bother with the rest of them (of course I will, though).

celebrities: they're dumber than us

Worth it just for the answer 'Doctor Spock' to the question asking for the name of the killer in the Halloween films.

I'm always struck by how badly the journalist contestants perform -- most of the journalists I know are deep-knowledge savant-quiz-types.

But not these ones, I guess.

> Doctor Spock

the clue mentioned william shatner, but this is another level of wrong

Rolled my eyes that between the four of them they didn’t know that Frank Capra made “It’s a Wonderful Life”.

That was the one that got me. And that they appeared never to have heard of Delft, ffs.

There's nothing like shouting "Frank fucking Capra, you arseholes!" at the television to let you know Christmas has started.

Yeah there was a team on regular UC who were so bad at culture questions, and had an attitude towards them that was probably just sheepish but felt smug to me. The one where they guessed that Kant's philsophical stance was "postmodern existentialism" or something along those lines, really made me think "why are you even here".

NB I would surely do even worse at STEM-y questions and am a horrible hypocrite.

worst of last night's UC was the two minutes they were taking to not answer some of the questions

I think the new headmaster has been doing a fine job but it is true he lets the students go on a bit, one misses the iron grasp of Paxman. Always going to be worse with alumni, the older the student the more disruptive they get imo.