So, here we go people! The first installment of my series marking the tenth anniversary of this blog. If you missed the announcement last week, I'm going to be going back and rewatching the first series of UC I covered here, the 2012-13 series. It'll probably still be going when the next series of the show starts, but we'll wait and see how long it takes.
Anyway, here we go with the first four matches of the series...
Match 1: Trinity Laban vs York (16th July 2012)
So, the first episode of UC I ever
covered on this blog. Trinity Laban were represented by Claire Barton, Diccon
Cooper, Sam Draper and Amber Jackson-Bond, and York by Alex Leonhardt, Robin
Virgo, Rebecca Woods and Edward Haynes. In York’s intro, Paxo gave us a mention
that the university’s famous ducks now have their own Facebook page! A
foreshadowing of the Twitter page the 2015-16 team later set up.
And just from the first few
questions, the first thing you notice is how much faster the show is compared
to nowadays. Obviously, that’s no-one’s fault, especially Paxo himself given
his illness, but it does stick out quite a bit given how familiar we’ve become
with the slower pace of nowadays. The questions are also a lot easier for the
average viewer, compared to the more complex ones of nowadays. I covered both
these issues in my long blog of two years ago, so go back and read that again
if you need reminding, and also the comment afterwards that offers up a theory on
the latter issue (which a fellow blogger has privately corroborated)
York got the first two starters of
the game, before two penalties (both from early guesses of the sort you never
see nowadays) allowed Trinity Laban to take the lead. In fact, there’s quite a
lot of guessing going on, and quite a lot of dropped starters, and when York
eventually get some starters, the bonuses aren’t falling for them well either.
The music round is one that would
get a tonne of criticism on Twitter nowadays, and probably at least one pathetic
newspaper article as well; it involves two pieces of popular music by groups with
a shared member, requiring that member to be named. Trinity Laban incorrectly
offer ‘Damian Albarn’ to one of the bonuses, something else that’d earn them a
tonne of Twitter abuse nowadays. At least it was wrong anyway; someone did that
on Popmaster last year and Scott Mills gave it to them, provoking much
criticism (but then, pretty much anything he does when he hosts that segment gets
criticised!).
The two sides exchange starters
and the lead before York get a run of starters together and the bonuses finally
fall for them, including a bonus set on geometry that would probably be too
easy for Susan Calman’s Top Class let alone modern-day UC! An equally easy
starter on green flags confirms the win, though Trinity Laban do get one more
starter to reach three figures. York won 185-105.
Match 2: St George's vs King's (23rd July 2012)
St George’s were represented by
Shashank Sivaji, Alexander Suebsaeng, Rebecca Smoker and Sam Mindel, and King’s
by Curtis Gallant, Amber Ace, Fran Middleton and our old friend and blog reader
Jim Gratrex. He was the only member of that team not studying classics, so he,
of course, got the first starter of the show, which was on classics!
Later, we had a picture round on
marathon routes; the starter was that of the Boston Marathon, which is
unfortunate considering what would happen the following year. The two teams
were exchanging starters quite quickly, before St George’s got a slight run together.
King’s then responded with a run
of their own, including Jim getting a very basic starter of “What is the eighth
prime number?”; wouldn’t have something as simple as that nowadays. This run took
King’s back into the lead, but St George’s recovered with a late rally of their
own, which won them the game, 175-145. Both teams, of course, would be coming
back for more…
Match 3: Wadham vs Bristol (13th August 2012)
After a two week break for a
certain sporting event in Stratford, the show returned with Wadham College Oxford,
represented by Alistair Smout, Jonathan Hall, Jonathan Stanhope and Oliver
Forrest (who later captained the Forrests in Series 14 and 15 of Only Connect),
playing Bristol, who were James Xiao, Andy Suttie, Will Brady and Madeline
Fforde.
Wadham took the first starter, but
Bristol seized the initiative and began to pull away, until they were halted by
two successive penalties, including an unfortunate swerve question, one of
which allowed Wadham back into the game. Despite this, and another such error
later on, Bristol maintained a steady lead, but profligacy with the bonuses,
which Wadham also struggled with, meant they never fully pulled away.
Bristol ultimately won the game
120-105, which was the lowest winning score of the BBC era at the time, but has
since been ‘beaten’ at least three times.
Match 4: Strathclyde vs Durham (20th August 2012)
Finally this week, we have the My
Mum derby: Strathclyde, represented by Michael Doroszenko, Julia Hyslop, Martin
Nealon and Bruce Wareham, vs Durham, who were Philip Ferry, Katie Vokes,
Richard Thomas and Dominic Everett Riley. The latter easily dominated, running
straight into a strong early lead, with the starters and bonuses both falling
well for them, and after the first picture round, they already had a 100-point
lead.
Poor Strathclyde were restricted
to a forgivable penalty, before they eventually got some points on the board
with the music round, by which time Durham had 155 in the bank. The Wearsiders
led 220-10 after the second picture round, but Strathclyde did, to their
credit, manage a good late rally to a more respectable score, which does
suggest they’d have fared better against a lesser team on the buzzer.
Durham won the game 245-70 and
looked set for a long run; that was, of course, until they ran into our old
friends Bangor in the second round. Six years later, of course, the two
institutions met in the first round again, and that time Durham won even more
convincingly.
So, that's the first week's worth of shows done. I'll be doing another four next week, with another roundup on Thursday; then the next two weeks afterwards, I'll be away. When I return after that, we'll be trimming down to three shows a week. That's, hopefully, how this will all pan out.
So, until next week, sayonara...
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