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"University Challenge": The First 40 Years

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"University Challenge": The First 40 Years (Paperback)

by Peter Gwyn (Author)

2.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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12 used from �0.75

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Product details

Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Granada Media (2 Sep 2002)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0233050825
ISBN-13: 978-0233050829
Product Dimensions: 21 x 13.6 x 2.8 cm

Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 179,850 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

With some of the great brains of our times appearing on University Challenge, this book will go behind the scenes of 40 years of the brainiest show on television. From Bamber Gascoigne's avuncular reign to Jeremy Paxman's sardonic delivery, the author will take us through 40 years of Britain's brainiest quiz. Including the selection process, which involves a test paper and long interviews with University Challenge staff, interviews with some of the famous faces that made their first television appearance on University Challenge, including Stephen Fry, David Mellor, Malcolm Rifkind, Clive James and John Simpson, plus some of the not-so-famous who became memorable because of their fabulous or not-so-fabulous performances. As with all quizzes, every question must be 100 per cent accurate and should not have an alternative answer. Not an easy task when you're working on the most challenging quiz of all; here the author will take us into the strange and obsessive world of the question-setter, and the even more obsessive existence of the question verifier. How do they do it? And what makes a good University Challenge question? Finally see if you've got what it takes to become a University Challenge contestant with the sample test papers and some questions, set especially for this book. Plus you can enter the exclusive competition which involves several academic disciplines and will be in the form of a riddle - not for the faint-hearted.

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Customer Reviews

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2.5 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Hmmm..., 17 Nov 2002

By	UC alumnus (London, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

As a former contestant of the show I was bound to buy the book, however, you could say it was just a direct transcript of the documentary they screened earlier this year and should be interesting for anyone who's watched the show avidly. All the questions in the back are taken from the last three years so it saves people from taping old episodes and transcribing them - an occurence common amongst quizzers. Yet they say these are the questions that would be asked in the semi-final. Like hell they are, there are two or three that were asked in the quarter finals in the semi final section, I should know, my team was on the receiving end! So a bit sloppy. It's also exorbitantly expensive and far more expensive than the last UC book, which was good purely because of the large number of questions. Lots of questions keep people happy. Also the history misses the point, you know it's written from a producer's point of view because he sees it as entertainment. The student quizzers see it as a competition so which may explain the absence of a roll call of the great contestants?

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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Cash In, 17 Oct 2002

By A Customer

University Challenge is one of the most consistently entertaining and interesting shows on TV, but this book fails to do it justice.

There's too many of the tired anecdotes about UC that everyone has heard many times before ('Trotsky'), too much tired filler about the production team's typical day, and not enough about the true magic of UC - the great players and their often stunning levels of general knowledge.

Moreover, whilst the book purports to be a history of the programme, virtually the whole second half of the book is chock-full of questions previously used on the show. Which is fine if you're after a quiz book, but fairly shoddy when you've forked out thirteen quid for a book which is essentially half the length it seems to be.

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