Surely I can't be alone in thrilling to the prospect of an Oxbridge college being trounced by one of the 'new' universities, or relishing the depth of disdain that flavours one of Paxman's put-downs as a student gets an answer so terribly wrong? That's part of the programme's charm, along with its 'split screen' format that places one team above the other during the 'starter for ten' questions. As young teenager, I used to think they really were on top of each other, and thought how wonderful it was to be the 'top' team, like getting the top bunk bed.
The Challenge has been going for over forty years, and I've always thought of it as a game for undergraduates, most likely in the second or third year of their studies, anxious to show their parents and the rest of the country that they knew not only stuff, but pretty clever stuff too. They could answer questions on physics, literature, mathematics and art. They knew the name of Bill Sykes' dog and how many Champagne bottles make a Jeroboam, but they were also pretty adept at Boyle's Law and all things biological, and they were probably only just out of their teens.
But now it's all changed, and not for the better in my view. The playing field, such as it is, is no longer level. More often than not, the line up of four team members will include one or more postgraduate students, studying for PhDs in any number of esoteric topics. Some of them even look old enough to be, well, if not my Dad, then at least my older brother. And they don't just know how many bottles make a Jeroboam, they've lived long enough to drink several more of them than the undergraduates they replace.
What next? In an effort to gain victory at all costs, will the team selectors bypass the undergraduates altogether and just get their professors in?
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