The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
City’s students showed Bamber their brilliance
University Challenge first broadcast across the UK on ITV in 1962, hosted by iconic quiz master Bamber Gascoigne.
Gascoigne, who has died aged 87, helped make the show a cult favourite and was the originator of catchphrases such as “your starter for 10”, “no conferring” and “well remembered, Queens”.
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.
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 was not 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 longrunning 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 itself as Britain’s brightest 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 had a devastating loss against Balliol College, Oxford.
A week on from its supposed defeat, the team was called by Granada and told there had been a scoring error and it 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 smoothly progressed through the quarter and semi-finals, against Leeds and Birmingham before going head-to-head with Durham in the final.
The first game was lost comprehensively before Dundee mounted a fightback and forced a decider.
It was a cliffhanger that was only decided in 30 seconds before the final buzzer sounded, with Dundee inching it.
Remembering the win, Graeme Davidson, said: “I confess to having experienced in the moment a certain sense of ‘Ha... we showed them’, as regards people who might not have rated our chances of getting anywhere at all in the tournament, far less actually advancing to the senior stages and eventually going on to win the chuffing thing, after an utterly draining and totally nail-biting three-game final,”
Dundee University’s record for Scottish university wins was only added to when Edinburgh University were crowned winners in 2019.