News

Public Services Policy and Management student, Thomas Graham, and fellow members of the King's College London team competed and won the round against Cardiff University on BBC2's University Challenge on the 24 August 2009.
 
The King's team comprised Captain Brian Murray (PhD English), Thomas Graham (MSc Public Services, Policy and Management), Oliver Crawshaw (BA Classics) and David Willis (PhD War Studies) and and was selected via a trial examination set by Emily Rowe, who was then Vice President Academic Affairs at KCLSU. They were the first King’s team to make it through to the televised rounds since the 1999-2000 series.
 
The quiz programme has been presented by Jeremy Paxman since 1994.
 
Team Captain Brian Murray comments: ‘Our intensive training consisted of a few pub quizzes, at which we learned a little bit about each other’s strengths and weaknesses. We were sorted for Cricket, the War of the Roses, and pop music 1967-1968. However, we had to work on our weak points, the most glaring of which were all of science and maths. Though after a hard slog through Wikipedia and some Very Short Introductions we were pretty sure we had Organic Chemistry, Comparative Anatomy, and Astrophysics in the bag.’
 
He continues, ‘The experience being in studio under the glare of the lights, trying to come up with the answers while Paxman grills you like a member of the shadow cabinet was pretty intense. Intense enough to make the prospect of remembering your name seem like an extreme intellectual feat. But after about three minutes your competitiveness gets the better of your nerves, and you filter out everything except Paxman, the buzzer and the scoreboard. If nothing else, the thrill of hearing your name and college pronounced in the dulcet tones of Roger Tilling, as you beat your opponents to the buzzer, made the experience well worthwhile.’
 
Full article can be found in King's News Highlights - 24 August 2009.