Amol Rajan is fresh out of his quizmaster booth. The new host of University Challenge, the third in the show’s 61-year history (following Bamber Gascoigne and, of course, Jeremy Paxman) is wearing his trademark suit and tie. He is also holding a bag for life full of tins. “Who wants a gin and tonic or piña colada?” he asks. This is not a moment I expected.
Filming has just finished (the tins are Rajan’s way of thanking the crew) and I’m here because, as well as talking to him about taking over as host of the iconic student quizshow, I have been invited to try it out. You won’t be surprised to find out that it is hard. So hard, in fact, that having just played I rummage through Rajan’s bag and down an entire piña colada in one go out of stress.
An hour earlier, I arrived to watch an episode being recorded. What strikes you when you enter the studio is that there’s very little difference to what you see on TV. The quiz is similar in length, but occasionally Rajan says “Stop the clock” to pause proceedings to confer with the quiz specialists in his earpiece or after someone accidentally swears on air.
I cannot see Roger Tilling, who introduces each contestant, but his voice booms through the studio as if he were God. Multiple episodes are recorded in one day, so there is the surreal twist of having one team play a new team 20 minutes after facing their previous opponents, only stopping to change their outfits for the camera. They are all pretty calm, jovial even. At one point during a warmup, one contestant uses their buzzer specifically to ask someone for a glass of water. What a badass.
Keeping the contestants relaxed is one of Rajan’s key goals in fronting University Challenge. He knows its importance only too well, having been a contestant himself on the Christmas series several years back: “When I was a contestant, I didn’t have that skill, which comes with practice, of being able to forget the last question and really focus on the new one. I was really annoyed at myself that I hadn’t got the last one.” How well did he do? “Not great,” he admits.
University Challenge naturally became moulded round Paxman’s image, so it must have been tempting to copy his authoritative, sometimes impatient presenting style. But Rajan is going his own way, aiming for an energetic and enthusiastic approach. “I want to establish a rapport with them. Partly because they’re really nervous. Partly because I want them to have a nice experience.
“You have to say things they don’t like. You have to make adjudications on tight things, or ask them to hurry up. You need to have that authority over them. But it helps if you’ve got a rapport.”
As the students are asked a few test questions to get into the flow of things, I meet my competition and teammates, some of whom are journalists. I realise that I’m incredibly nervous. Thirty minutes later, we take our seats at the famous desks. Our names are placed in the slots in front of us. At this point I realise I don’t have a mascot. Rajan introduces us, the camera pans to my face – and I temporarily forget what I studied at university. Then comes our first starter for 10:
“Who is this? Born in York in 1570, he converted to Catholicism and fought for the Spanish army in the Low Countries, and at the siege of Calais. After returning to England he adopted the name John Johnson and was arrested at Westminster in November 1605.”
I don’t buzz. I don’t know. Neither does anyone else, so an agonising silence ensues. In the heat of the moment, I decide this is worse than someone giving a wrong answer. So I buzz.
“University Challenge Bryan!” yells the voice of God. The camera zooms in on my face again. I have no clue what to say.
“Christopher Columbus?”
The crew in the studio gasp. Rajan’s head is on his desk. When he eventually sits up, he helpfully says: “Christopher Columbus had set sail nearly a couple of centuries before then. Do we dock them five points for a ridiculous answer?”
It passes to the other team, who get it right (it’s Guy Fawkes).
Things move quickly. Rajan makes frequent (and polite) uses of “c’mon” whenever a team take a while to answer. Ensuring there’s no time-wasting is a priority for him. “If a team is 25 points behind with three or four minutes to go, that’s only a starter and a set of bonuses, you know?” Putdowns will only be used if he genuinely knows the answer, he says. A hurdle of being quizmaster, he has learned, is mastering reading out very long questions while also having to enunciate clearly. “I actually had a really, really meaningful conversation with Jeremy, and one of the things he said was: ‘Make the question second nature to you.’”
While the set has been refreshed, and there’s a new host, Rajan emphasises that the show is carrying on much as it did before: “There are little things you can do to reassure fans that you paid attention to Jeremy. There are all these institution-like phrases, like: ‘Fingers on buzzers, here’s your first starter for 10.’ We have still got the gong, we still have the ritual of saying the team that lost first. I’ve still got that thing Jeremy did where if a team nearly gets it but doesn’t, I say: ‘Bad luck.’ I hope that despite all the change, there’s a bit of reassurance.”
From here, things start to go a bit better for me – though it’s not like they could get worse. My teammate gets the next question right, leading to a set of bonuses on the Marvel Cinematic Universe:
“The Avengers film, released in 2019, has what subtitle? It was also the name of a one-act play by Samuel Beckett that premiered in 1957.”
“Age of Ultron?” I say. Incorrect. Although that would have been one hell of a Beckett play. Another starter question:
“Born in 1833, the German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen is often credited with coining what two-word term for the Eurasian network of overland routes by which ideas and merchandise were transferred between east and west?”
Silence. “You got this,” says Rajan. To make us feel better, he gives clues: “Eurasian! The famous roads!” I guess the Silk Road. Correct. Elation.
“Your bonuses are on an organic compound,” says Rajan. My heart sinks. I would write out the next question for you but I cannot even transcribe four of the words despite replaying them many times. It is at this moment that my teammate wants to offer an answer but I cannot nominate her. Having only met an hour earlier, I have forgotten her name. Leaning over the desk to find it out feels a bit rude.
“Let’s move on.”
“Of the naturally occurring metallic elements, which has the lowest density at room temperature, one of the lowest melting points at 180C, and the lowest atomic mass?”
At this point I am willing to throw anything in the ring.
Buzz. “Copper?”
“No,” says Rajan flatly. The other team don’t get it either. It’s lithium.
“We’ve got all night,” he jokes.
I buzz for the next starter. I didn’t mean to this time but my finger slipped:
“What short word denotes the strictest form of contrapuntal imitation? In another sense, it might indicate an accepted body of work or the recognised genuine works of an author?”
“Omnibus?” No, it’s canon. It turns out the University Challenge buzzers are very sensitive. And the gong goes.
It has gone way worse than I could possibly have imagined, and the gong feels like the sweet release of death. “It just didn’t quite work for you,” says Rajan, remarking on our final score of 25. Our rivals? 45. At this point, a member of the production team reminds us that all the questions we have been asked were real University Challenge questions from a round one match. I feel a bit better, until she adds the caveat: “Obviously, without all the extra clues Amol gave.”
Later, as Rajan and I reflect on the experience, I ask whether he was nervous on his first day of filming. He admits he was, but that the main thing on his mind was his late father.
“I was really nervous, but it was emotionally powerful because of my dad.” When Rajan was announced as the show’s host last August, he said his first starter for 10 would be devoted to him. “Where I sit, there are all these people you can’t actually see, you just know that they’re there. On the first day, I did think about him a lot, probably too much. Because it would have been wonderful for him to watch. Even now, I imagine him sitting there in the darkness.”
It’s time for me to leave the studio. I look in my bag and see a rolled-up lamination with my surname emblazoned across it. I feel a bit of pride, knowing that I would never have made it academically to go on the real University Challenge, but somehow I managed it anyway. This pride, however, is short-lived, as I remember what Rajan said to our team after we lost.
“Well, we won’t see you again.”
University Challenge returns on 17 July on BBC Two at 8.30pm
