The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Team take up Challenge after 30 years in the TV wilderness
A wills Dundee University announces a fresh team of students be competing on University Challenge for the first time in nearly 30 years, we take a look at the show’s history and the triumphant victory for Dundee in 1983.
University Challenge first broadcast across the UK on ITV in 1962, hosted by iconic quiz master Bamber Gascoigne.
The show quickly became a cult favourite and despite a hiatus after being axed from ITV in 1987, before being revived by the BBC in 1994 with Jeremy Paxman at the helm, it remains a firm fan favourite to this day.
In 1978, Dundee University had the chance to become the first Scottish winners of the quiz show 16 years after the first broadcast when the team made up of Tom Mcghee, Isabel Morgan, Alistair Thomson and Enid Anderson beat competition from Aberystwyth to reach the show’s quarter-finals.
It wasn’t meant to be, however, when the team were pipped at the post by the Sidney Sussex College at Cambridge University.
Despite their loss, the team were still celebrated in the city, with those who watched the show remembering captain Alistair Thomson’s musical knowledge, answering every music question which cropped up.
He also gained increasingly enthusiastic applause from the audience each time as he answered with greater detail than even host Bamber had on his cue card.
St Andrews University became the first Scottish institute to be crowned champions on the long-running show in 1982 but the luck of the Scots kept coming when in 1983 it was Dundee’s turn, although it almost never happened – twice.
The foursome was made up of James A Smith (Economics and Politics), Graeme Davidson (Law), Donald Kennedy (Medicine) and captain Peter Burt (Zoology) with future university rector Craig Murray being the team’s first reserve.
The team proved themselves as Britain’s brightest brainboxes with a startling run all the way to the winners’ podium but it was one of the more remarkable performances in the show’s history, involving scoring errors, that earned them reprieves along the way, most notably when a viewer noted a disallowed correct answer.
Back in the 80s, to qualify for the quarter-final, teams had to win three games. Despite the Dundee side winning their first two, against Salford and Westfield, London, they received a devastating loss against Balliol College, Oxford.
A week on from their supposed defeat the team were called up by Granada and told there had been a scoring error and they should actually have been named the winners.
It was on to the quarterfinal where it appeared they had lost to University College, Oxford, by a painfully slim margin of five points.
However, lightning indeed struck twice.
Following the airing of the quarter-final, viewers noted a disallowed correct answer which was also the case for Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. The teams were invited for a play-off, with Dundee coming out on top.
The team progressed smoothly through the quarter and semi-finals, against Leeds and Birmingham, before coming head-to-head with Durham in the final.
It was a cliff-hanger that was only decided in 30 seconds before the final buzzer sounded, with Dundee inching it.
The victory made Dundee only the second Scottish university to win University Challenge, a record that was only added to when the University of Edinburgh were crowned in 2019.
The University of Dundee
haven’t had a team compete since their win.
Pharmacology PHD student Barnaby Stonier, 27, captains the team, joined by second year anatomy student Conor Philip, 20, medicine graduate Jacob Spurrell, 27, and the team’s youngest member, biomedical science first year Olivia Russell.
Team captain Barnaby
said: “A lot of people watching on TV might not know much about Dundee, so we’re really acting as ambassadors.
“Ultimately as someone who grew up watching University Challenge, becoming the captain of a team is a dream come true.”
The team will make their debut on the BBC2 show on September 27.