Hello everyone! This is my second week at the Mills Archive, and this week my obsession with SPAB increased to a new level when Nathanael showed me a photo taken ten years ago this month of SPAB taking part in University Challenge – The Professionals.
In the photo is Director of IJP, Ian Pritchett, Secretary of SPAB, Philip Venning and Publicity Officer of SPAB, Kate Griffin. “Ms Jones’” role has so far remained elusive – information on this is very welcome!
University Challenge has been airing since 1962 back when it was presented by quizmaster Bamber Gascoigne. Bamber presented the show for 25 years on ITV, otherwise known as ‘The Bamber Era’, until it was taken over by the BBC in 1987 and Bamber was replaced by Jeremy Paxman.
Being born and bred in Manchester I would just like to subtly mention that the University of Manchester and Magdalen College, Oxford have had the highest number of wins to date! Also, as I was researching more on some memorable contestants, I found that Warren Read from University of Reading claimed fame by infamously challenging Paxman when asked ‘Which planet is principally made of iron, but shares its name with a different metal?’ by answering ‘Pluto’. When this answer received a laugh from Paxman, Read persisted: ‘Plutonium. It does share its name with a different metal – You can’t argue with that!’, to which the defeated Paxman replied ‘well I suppose it does, if you want to treat it that liberally, but I’m not going to accept it. The answer is Mercury!’ Lesson learned – Never challenge Jeremy Paxman!
I was surprised to find out that University Challenge has had its fair share of celebrities appearing as contestants, such as journalist John Simpson, politician Malcolm Rifkind, actor Julien Fellowes and my personal favourite, author Sebastian Faulkes. Faulkes wrote my all-time favourite novel Engleby and since studying it in English Literature for A Level, I have not found a novel that measures up to it! University Challenge’s most notable contestant has to be Stephen Fry who was a contestant back in 1980 at the age of 23, representing Queens College, Cambridge.
This spin-off University Challenge matched occupational groups such as civil servants, architects and doctors against each other and in February 2005, SPAB got the opportunity promote the society and take part in the famous quiz show. Dozens of societies took part such as the Financial Times, The Economist and the previous year’s winners The British Library. The SPAB successfully beat two impressive teams at the audition but unfortunately went on to lose to The Barbican with a close score of 135 to 170. The final was won by the Privy Council Office when they beat the Romantic Novelists’ Association with a score of 115 to 165.
Even though the SPAB team didn’t win, the time and effort put forward by the members to bring more awareness to the society and what it does was worthwhile and I think they probably had a lot of fun in the process and that is what societies like this are all about: finding new, innovative ways to draw our attention to the exciting work they do all over the world.
Philip Venning has commented:
“Good to see the piece about our University Challenge experience which was indeed great fun. Miss Jones is Helen Jones, Cambridge graduate and SPAB office manager (now married and last heard of working for Haringey Council planning department).”
