Oriel flies the Oxford flag
OXFORD MAY have lost the Boat Race but once again an Oxford team have made it to the final of the BBC's University Challenge, and there wasn't a light blue shirt in sight writes the news staff. Oriel College reached the final in a thrilling semi-final shown this week, but they're keeping tight-lipped about who wins the final, due to be shown next week.
Captain, David Stainer, and the team; David Brewis, Toby Cox and Robert Dougans are putting their success down to hard work.
"I don't think it was luck," said Stainer, "we were all prepared to do a bit of work and learn about some of areas, like literature, which we felt we weren't as good on."
"Basically we loved it," he said, "we weren't that scared and won the first four rounds fairly convincingly. I admit we were pretty nervous before the final, since the Open University had won its own semi-final by about three hundred points. Needless to say you'll have to tune in next week to see who wins!"
Each team member can only have one shot at appearing on University Challenge, so the team were determined to make the most of it. "We are all quite interested in quizes so we were really pleased to take part. One of the best things was seeing how the programme was made." Stainer even claims that Jeremy Paxman was much nicer in real life than his tigerish reputation on the programme might suggest.
"Our biggest problem was the size of an Oxford College when compared to whole Universities, as well as the fact that we were so much younger than some of the other teams which were full of mature students."
Most of all, of course, the team were pleased to help recover Oxford's fortunes after the result of this year's Boat Race. "It was nice to see Oxford reaching the final, especially when Cambridge did so abysmally," Stainer said. The team are looking forward to the forthcoming Varsity quiz match when, according to Stainer, Cambridge should forward to being "soundly beaten." The final is to be shown on BBC2 at 8:00 pm next Tuesday.