The new season of TV quiz ‘University Challenge’ is underway, and the Christ’s team will make their first appearance tonight - Monday 14 October - on BBC2 at 8.30pm.
Captained by scientist Oscar Despard, the team members were all undergraduates at the time of recording. They are Anniko Firman (Classics), Linus Luu (Mathematics), Brendan Bethlehem (Linguistics and Egyptian) with Ari Vladimir (History and Modern Languages) as the reserve.
Brendan has watched the show religiously since 2014, but Ari who is American had not heard of it until he arrived in Cambridge last year.
Filming began a few months ago by which time the team had put in a lot of practice by watching old episodes and trying to answer the questions more quickly than those on the show. But, said Brendan, there is so much to know about sport in general that ‘our biggest fear was cricket.’
In the studio, besides nerves, one of the biggest hurdles is the buzzer which Oscar says needs’ a surprising amount of strength.’ When the margins for buzzing in first come down to a ¼ second, buzzer technique is critical.
And the team is sworn to secrecy - we will have to wait to see whether the dreaded cricket question came up.
Anniko said of the experience:
“For me it feels like it never happened because you're not allowed to talk about it.”
So, it will be strange for the team to watch themselves for the first time on Monday, especially because many people - their friends included – often think the broadcast is live.
If you miss it you can catch up on the iplayer