obsessions
I obsessively hate University Challenge. I guess this makes me almost as boring as those who obsessively love it. And there are few of those around.
Ever since I told Mr Kumar, who runs my local Londis, that I was at Oxford (it just slipped out, honest), he has quite unashamedly pestered me for my views every time I buy fags on a Wednesday: he laughs hoarsely about the stupidity of Oxbridge undergraduates. "How could the ginger chemist chap from Oriel think that the God Ajax was the inventor of toilet cleaner? Everyone knows it was Marvyn Kaswieslowski." I smile and sprint out. Sometimes without paying.
Mr Kumar, let the truth be told, has harboured a grudge against Oxbridge ever since both his sons sensibly (given their specialities) chose to study elsewhere. In fact he positively takes delight in watching monochromosomal PhD students researching Indescribably Jargon-filled Science from redbricks pit their wits against pallid petulant prissy Oxbridge eggheads. And who would blame him? I occasionally take self-conscious pleasure in the same sadistic sport, too.
At root, though, University Challenge simply remains an utterly pointless exercise. Who seriously takes pride in knowing the name of the sister of the co-inventor of the microchip? Even if Magdalen's Sarah Fitzpatrick undermines the generalisation somewhat, it remains more or less true nowadays that the average contestant is old, male and eminently one-track-minded. Serial quizzers. Phew.
Just as once the Boat Race was the domain of gentle British amateurs (as opposed to the professional multi-national hulks of today), so, too, the days of fresh-faced teenaged students fumbling with their teddies on ITV have been replaced by middle-aged PhD students answering monotonously and staring vacantly into the hearths of people across the country who are gullible enough to take University Challenge to be representative of the nation's students. It's not, is it?
It is said that competitors take part out of pride. (The prize is, after all, a rugby shirt for each of the team - regardless of gender - and a garish book-like brass trophy. One past winner has taken brass rubbings: they're on the Internet.) Pride, though, would imply that their achievement is noble and envied. However once (if?) they graduate, bleary-eyed, into the real world, they find that general knowledge, especially the peculiar Classics-dominated variety Paxman barks out, is neither noble in its achievement nor envied by anyone.
University Challenge is neither universal nor challenging. In fact, because it glorifies the narrow-minded non-skill of parroting meaningless facts, it is pointless. It's an embarrassing anachronism which (along with minor royalty and the Spice Girls) should be rapidly abolished.
Oh, and Bad Luck, Oriel. Too bad, really.