Your starter for 10: Manchester returns in University Challenge

30 Jan 2013

Our University’s team will make its next appearance in the current series of University Challenge on BBC2 at 8pm this Monday, February 4.

The University has been series champion three times in the last seven years, and they are the reigning champions from 2012.

The class of 2013 has already made it through to the quarter-finals this year with victories over Lincoln College, Oxford and Magdalen College, Oxford, and now faces Imperial College, London in Monday’s TV showdown.

The team comprises undergraduates Richard Gilbert, the team captain (BA in Linguistics), Adam Barr (MPhys in Physics with Astrophysics) David Brice (BA in Economics), and graduate student Debbie Brown (PhD in Pain Epidemiology).

They have a tough act to follow - last year, The University of Manchester quartet beat Pembroke College, Cambridge by 180-135 in a dramatic final, watched by three million viewers.

The team received their trophy from the Duchess of Cornwall, at a special ceremony at Clarence House to mark the 50th anniversary of the show, and were later invited to travel to Japan to take part in the ‘Brain World Cup’.

Manchester’s team is coached by Stephen Pearson, a University librarian who has enjoyed considerable success with University Challenge, having captained the team himself in 1996.

Manchester has dominated the competition under Stephen’s tutelage, lifting the trophy in 2006, 2009 and 2012 as well as finishing runners-up in 2007. The last seven Manchester teams to appear on the show have all reached at least the semi final stage.

More than 120 universities enter the show every year, with the top 28 appearing on TV, and it remains the UK’s longest-running quiz.

But Manchester’s history in the quiz has not been without controversy – in 1975 the Manchester team staged a protest against what they saw as the show’s elitist bias towards Oxbridge, which allows separate colleges to enter. They answered ‘Marx’ or ‘Trotsky’ to everything.