I’m the one in our house without a tertiary education. You can tell it by the pronounced chip on my left shoulder.
It makes watching University Challenge on Monday nights all the more enjoyable, as my lack of degree has of course been replaced by an all-consuming, but utterly useless academic competitiveness which forces other family members out to other rooms, if not into other counties.
I buzz, interrupt, guess, bluster, shout and even end up getting a few right.
My admiration for the competitors in the recent final (when most weren’t even answering questions in their own language) is immense, partly because of their knowledge of esoteric things way outside their actual degree course, and partly because of their incredible speed of random recall.
But mainly, it is because I have been there, too.
Not to University Challenge, of course; they haven’t yet developed a slot for ‘University of Life’ or ‘Green Jacket College, Army’.
No, I have sat on the black Mastermind chair in my own right, a decade ago. You may even have seen it. And I did it four times which, you may calculate, put me into the Grand Final.
Not quite. I sat in it once for my specialist subject, once for general knowledge, and twice for a re-take because John Humphrys couldn’t cope with my name the first two times. My memory is hazy on the subject, but I think I called it a day after Round 1.
I went on as a bet with my best man, Richard, who wagered that I couldn’t get on the show and then run with a specialist subject that he would give me, not one of my own choosing. It’s a long story, but I ended up with Flanders and Swann, a music hall double act from the 1950s and 1960s which only about two people in Britain knew anything about. It was a spectacularly narrow subject, made easier by the fact that I ‘kidnapped’ the real expert (their archivist) before the BBC got to him to set the questions.
The memory is now like an impressionist painting, whose canvas in populated by strangeness.
Like the thought process that made me think that a really good idea would be to drink lots of strong lager on the train with my friends on the way up for the evening screening. Like my entry into the green room, meeting my competitors and realizing that, yes, there really are people for whom this is life or death. Like the fact that there were only 3 chairs when the four of us marched into the studio -(the previous session had featured a wheelchair user)- and Muggins had to wait like a spare prick at a wedding for one to be brought. Like my desperately trying not to sound as posh as I was, or as uneasy as I felt, when Humphrys asked me what I did. Like wondering, in the middle of my round, if the camera on the boom would be able to pick out my nose hairs if it zoomed in as much as it seemed to be doing.
After the specialist subject round, I was in second place with 14 points, not difficult when the whole subject only had about 21 possible things to ask. Then it goes impressionist again.
My hoping that there wouldn’t be any science or entertainment questions, and there being loads. My sounding posher than Prince Charles in my chat with J.H. My forgetting who Frank Sinatra was. My utter ignorance of the periodic table of elements. My utter ignorance of boxing. My feeling that the bird of sympathy had flapped its wings among the audience, for whom the ordeal of my crash-and-burn performance was as painful as it was for me. And my falling hopelessly in love with the word ‘Pass’.
I think I got 6 points, but my friends kindly assure me it was 5. Whatever I got, it was enough to secure me fourth place behind a very cross window cleaner from Norwich who knew all about James Callaghan.
‘I’m relieved,’ I lied through my teeth when we went back to the Green Room. ‘I really wouldn’t have had time for another round.’
A month or so later, various friends and relations came to watch my humiliation on our TV at home. I have to say I didn’t. John Humphrys called out my name and, instead of me, this porky bloke in an inappropriate shirt waddled across the stage. Even then, I had seen enough.
However, unlike you, I can now tell my grandchildren that I have been next to Sue Barker in make-up, and Jerry Springer at the urinal.
And before you even think of looking, it has long been scrubbed from Youtube.
I think.
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