Starter For Ten

It seems like only yesterday when, as a young, slim fellow with hair, I took part in the iconic TV series University Challenge. My team, the University of Leeds, dispatched a college from Oxford and another from Cambridge, before wiping the floor with University College Swansea by 415 to 70, one of the highest scores ever. We were eventually knocked out by Dundee, who went on to win the championship. Here is the mighty team of the far-off days of 1983.

Very little video survives of University Challenge from those days, but I have a rare clip of us in action here:

Imagine my surprise therefore when I was invited back for another go. For the past nine years, University Challenge has had a short series at Christmas featuring notable alumni - and now, me. I can now reveal that I've been up to Salford Media City to join this Happy Few, this Band of Brothers, and so on and so forth in like fashion. And here we are!

My colleagues are, from left to right, Jonathan Clements, author and TV presenter (BA, Japanese with East Asian Studies); self (BSc Genetics and Zoology); Rev Richard Coles (vicar, former pop star, broadcaster, TV personality and team captain, MA Theology) and Tim Allen (photographer and film maker, BSc Zoology). If you'd like to see how we got on, tune in to BBC2 at 19:30GMT, Monday 23 December. And if you missed it - here is the episode on YouTube. Enjoy!

*** UPDATE ***

I can now reveal that of the fourteen teams entering, we were one of the four to score enough points to qualify for the semifinals. We won our semifinal against UCL, and went on to win the final against Wadham College, Oxford. So that means we are now University Challenge Christmas Champions! This is the first time the University of Leeds has won any flavour of University challenge, and the first time that a non-Oxbridge institution has won the Christmas alumni edition. TV’s Jonathan Clements sums it all up better than I can here. All I can add is that the Rev Richard Coles is a National Treasure.