2016/17, Episode 28 - Edinburgh vs Birmingham

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

I usually start these reviews from the start of the week’s episode. Chronologically that just makes sense, but tonight I’m going to delve roughly ten minutes before eight o’clock and describe the relative pandemonium at the Edinburgh Student Union live screening. Relative compared to the levels experienced at your typical University Challenge viewing, not to genuine chaos. However it did provide an added slice of excitement to get the crowd of roughly 100 pumped, and slightly puzzled.

In case you hadn’t realised from that paragraph, I am an Edinburgh student. As such you may notice some partisan aspects to this week’s blog.

I enter, stage left, slightly out of breath from a brisk walk made to guarantee a good seat (I needn’t have worried, my friends had claimed a front row spot) and a quizzical voice cries out at me, “You don’t have a laptop do you?”

“Of course”, I reply, “I have to write my blog after this”, and just like that it transpired that my own personal computer was required for the broadcasting of this monumental event. But tragedy struck and not for the first time my faithful, but ailing Lenovo could not complete the task I had given it.

An open casting call went out to the crowd requesting another replacement, miraculously one came forth and the opening credits were projected onto the big screen, along with an audio track so far ahead that in the first picture round Paxman was asking about the new Spanish flag as the old one was still on screen. This didn’t stop the enthusiastic crowd from cheering out as an Edinburgh name was called out, well before the camera zoomed in on our contestant.

About ninety points in a hero stepped forward, our eyes and ears were synced and we could get on with supporting our noble quartet.

Birmingham had a narrow lead at this point, thanks to captain George Greenlees. In a reversal of the phenomenon whereby one can loathe a footballer who plays for a rival club and still tolerate them when they play for the national side, I found myself cursing Greenlees’ correct answers with no little venom when I’d quite enjoyed his jovial nature in previous rounds.

And I’m not going to apologise for my sporting analogies anymore seeing as some of the points taken by the Brummies were on the third set of football bonuses in four weeks.

Goddard opened Edinburgh’s account with a steal of ‘tuberculosis’ after Birmingham’s resident White Walker Sutherland, an Edinburgh native and blood traitor, had negged. I turned after this answer to see rapturous applause from all corners of the room. Everywhere I looked was pride on faces, smiles on mouths and beers in glasses. I dare say it we had a party on our hands, a tuberculosis party.

In the bonuses which follow Goddard can be heard whispering the correct answer of ‘calcite’ almost to herself, and is given an apologetic look from Boyle after he guesses ‘chalk’, but the room doesn’t mind and the grins only increase as we storm back from the early setback to take a commanding lead.

The mood switches when Birmingham strain back from 110-55 to very nearly tie it, but as they get within five points the Aberdeen Machine, Euan Smith, decides he’s had enough and swats them away with his trademark nonchalance. This was one of a series high nine starters from Edinburgh’s main man, including one of Springsteen in the music round, proving that he really is the Boss.

Every one of his answers was greeted with riotous whoops and claps, always threatening to, but with the intrinsic politeness to refrain only achieved through a mass gathering of University Challenge fans, never spilling over into the next question. The closest it came to this was during Boyle’s relentlessly quickfire answers to the bonus round on birds of the crow family, which provoked untold laughter from the century of onlookers.

The biggest laugh, however, was reserved for Boyle’s guess of Oodle-Oodle when asked for a South American freshwater turtle. “Think of something funny”, Smith had said.  In Teviot House we certainly found it hilarious, but I don’t think a career in stand up will be forthcoming for our erstwhile captain.

Birmingham tried their best to haul themselves back, but they had left it too late to begin a New England Patriots-esque comeback. So late in fact that it hadn’t even started by the time the gong went, and Edinburgh won fairly comfortably in the end. Unfortunately for them, Greenlees is not Tom Brady, though I’m not too sure how much a touchdown would have helped in this situation.

Paxman tried to console the vanquished with some, “The questions didn’t fall your way” sympathy, but the simple truth is that they couldn’t handle the onslaught, thrown at them by the folks from Up North.

Viva Auld Reekie!

Final Score: Edinburgh 220 - 125 Birmingham

Only eight episodes remain before the series final! Its all gone by so fast, hasn’t it. Next week Bobby Seagull returns as Emmanuel play Corpus Christi, and my golly what a match that promises to be. Thanks for reading