I ignored the email when it arrived. My long-standing obsession with University Challenge was well known to all my friends and an invitation to appear on a Christmas special of "distinguished alumni" had all the hallmarks of a setup. I re-read the email later that evening and Googled the sender. She was the programme's producer. So I again ignored the email. What to do? Put up or shut up? The following day I decided to put up.
The recording took place in Manchester in early December and the Exeter team met for the first time over lunch that day. "I don't really have a plan," said our captain, John O' Farrell, the author and comedy writer. "But I've been sent a copy of the University Challenge Quiz book, so we might as well warm up with a few old questions." Without the buzzer and an opposition, we were surprisingly good.
"It will be a lot of fun," the producer had said earlier. For her, maybe. For an ego-driven bunch of celebs, academics, MPs, people with top jobs – and me – it was deadly serious. The green room was mostly tense and silent, with fraternisation between opposing teams minimal. Still, I seemed to have picked out the right clothes – jeans and a sweater. At least I thought I had, until the proper celebs asked for the dressing-rooms and returned, kitted out in clean shirts, jackets or posh frocks. Out of my depth already.
Jeremy Paxman turned up for a quick chat in the makeup room – he really is quite charming – and then we were walked out into the studio. After minimal introductions we were under way. And it quickly started going tits up. Harry Burns, Scotland's chief medical officer, who had been by far the most diffident member of the Glasgow team in the green room, was red-hot on the buzzer. Every time I knew the answer to a starter question, he knew it a fraction of a second earlier. Before long we were down, by 90 points to 10.
If we carried on like this, we would be annihilated. Time for a change of tactics and to start having a go at questions I wasn't 100% sure of the answer. "Zermatt," I said, guessing a picture question. "No," said Paxman. "Glasgow?" Another starter. How do you spell mozzarella? "M – O – Z – A -," I said.
"No," Paxman interrupted, "Glasgow?" What kind of a moron was I? I knew how to spell mozzarella perfectly well.
Thankfully that was the nadir. We clawed our way back to a final score of 125, but were still beaten by 30 points. "That's a perfectly respectable score, Exeter," Paxman said at the end. Was it? It didn't feel that way. It felt like a disaster.
"And your score of 155 points, Glasgow, means you qualify for the semi-finals as one of the four highest-scoring winners." Cue plenty of faux grumbling from Glasgow about being forced to come back to Manchester the following week. Yeah, right! Everyone in that studio would have killed to come back the following week.
"How did it go?" a friend asked the following day. "Not my finest hour," I had to admit. "I even misspelt mozzarella." "You complete idiot," he laughed. "It's M – O – Z - A -"
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