2016/17 - Episode 2, Corpus Christi, Ox vs Jesus, Cam

This was a week in which Boris Johnson, a man who would probably take the phrase ‘Starter for 10′ as a challenge to consume ten portions of onion rings himself, was named Foreign Secretary of the nation formerly known as Great Britain. This is surely akin to appointing the Cookie Monster to the post of Minister For The Reduction Of Cookie Consumption. So it was up to the students of two Oxford and Cambridge colleges to prove that not all Oxbridge folk are total buffoons.

And this is what the people really want to see when they tune into University Challenge isn’t it? An Oxford vs Cambridge match. The old guard facing off in a winner takes all knockout clash! But of course if you missed this one don’t despair, there’ll be plenty more this season given that Oxbridge Colleges are basically hydra heads. Indeed there are Corpus Christi and Jesus Colleges at both Oxford and Cambridge (the person in charge of naming them obviously fell asleep on the job) so we could end up with Jesus vs Jesus at some stage too.

If you haven’t already, you can watch the episode here before reading the review:

But getting back to making me forget that BoJo is in charge of negotiating Brexit both colleges do have notable history in this competition. Jesus finished as runner-up in 1968, though their Oxford contemporaries did win in 1986, which I can only presume prompted decades of rivalry and hatred between the two Jesus’.

Corpus Christi reached the pinnacle much more recently, claiming the title in 2005 with a comprehensive rout over University College London. However only four years hence from that glorious occasion they found themselves embroiled in the biggest scandal The Challenge has ever seen when they found themselves disqualified post-victorially (if anyone knows the right word for this, give me a shout) when it was found that one of their team members had graduated before filming had concluded, the scoundrel. He’d sat there and lied baldfacedly to the nation that he was still studying chemistry, when all the while he was working at an accountancy firm, the scoundrel!

This robbed the championship from their legendary captain Gail Trimble, known as ‘The Human Google’, (some posited that this in itself was grounds for expulsion as it suggested she was a living search engine, but there wasn’t anything in the rules about robotic contestants) who had in the semi final answered fifteen starter questions correctly and over the tournament outscored her three teammates combined.

An opponent described her as “a relentless juggernaut of intellectual blitzkrieg”, which would make a stonking tinder bio. Her loss is viewed by many scholars as the greatest injustice of the Modern Quizzing Era (MQE). She later turned down the offer of a tasteful shoot for lads magazine ‘Nuts’.

Anecdotally, my research into this match also revealed that a third member of the DQ’d team was interrogated by the police after complaints had been sent into the BBC about his bright red mohican and RAF surplus jacket (below). I like to think that today in place of complaints this would prompt a barrage of memes, dreadful jokes on Twitter, maybe a Buzzfeed article, and if we were especially lucky, an autotune remix of his answers. He’d probably be interviewed by the LAD Bible too.

I appear to have got through most of this post without actually talking about this weeks episode, and I’ll get to that in a moment (if you’ll forgive this further rambling), but in my defense there was nothing like last weeks eroticism between two contestants, and I couldn’t not mention the graduation-gate scandal.

Anyway, this week brought us our first double-barreled surname and PPE student. There was also a guy studying ‘Political thought and intellectual theory’ which has surely just got to be a long-winded way of saying ‘I was god awful at all sports’. Other highlights included Jesus’ be-turtlenecked Goth Fairbrother staying very on brand and answering ‘tragedy’ as ominously as possible.

The teams combine for ninety five out of the first hundred points on offer, and I relax a little, pushing the thoughts of a blonde space-hopper bargaining for our trade agreements out of my mind for a blissful moment.

Following on from the Sex Pistols round last week, the musical fun continued with a selection of Pixar Soundtracks. Jesus got the defeat they deserved for suggesting that Despicable Me was made by the same genius’ responsible for The Incredibles, Finding Nemo and Monsters Inc.

Questions on Monty Python and the Holy Grail followed, and just as your terribly pompous Uncle was about to post a Facebook status bemoaning the decline in difficulty of UC questions and how this belies a wider point about the decline of the education system, up pops a round requiring identification of Prussian composers from nothing but their silhouettes to placate him for at least another week.

Final Score:  Corpus Christi, Ox 200 - 175 Jesus, Cam

So that was week two, and Corpus Christi beat Jesus to take the first step on their quest to avenge fallen idol Gail Trimble. Liverpool take on Warwick next week and I hope you’ll come back for another edition of the University Challenge Review, thanks for reading.