Shortly after joining the LMB’s Cell Biology Division as a PhD student in October 2024, Oscar Despard began appearing on TV screens as the captain of Christ’s College, Cambridge’s team in University Challenge. He shared insights into the University Challenge experience at the time, but kept news of how the team fared under tight wraps.
Several impressive performances saw the Christ’s College team advance to the final where they faced off against Warwick University. Though they had previously defeated Warwick, Christ’s were in for a much tougher match and tailed significantly behind for much of the game. A thrilling comeback saw the Christ’s team into a nail-bitingly close finish, ultimately securing the win by just one question, finishing on a score of 175-170. This is the first victory for Christ’s College, Cambridge in the history of the competition.
Finally free to discuss the results, we recently caught up with Oscar to get his first-hand insights into the incredibly tight final.
Congratulations on winning University Challenge – was the final as tense to play as it was to watch?
Yes – at least! And tense to watch it back, even for me. People who have been telling me they were confident we’d won because I looked happy about it were admitting to me that they were shaken halfway through the episode. I was pleased that we have managed to keep it secret enough that it wasn’t given away and the result was a surprise. It was great to keep all this quiet, knowing the end result. The aim is to make good television, and I hope we at least did that on the final.
Did you feel increasing pressure as you progressed through the rounds, or did you settle into the flow of things a bit?
Because there’s not really an audience, you kind of forget that anyone’s going to be seeing this at any point. The final was very tense at the end, but up to that point we were so far behind that actually I wasn’t too worried about things. I was just trying to go as fast as possible through the questions, so we’d maybe have a chance of catching up.
Did you take any consolation that you’d previously beaten the Warwick team?
Well we knew they were very good. We got a nice set of questions against them in our quarter-final match. We didn’t get as nice questions in the final – the bonuses were certainly hard work. There was a series asking for the decades in which certain American states were admitted to the Union – we were exactly one decade off every time.
Did the filming schedule allow you to do any frantic last-minute revision before matches?
The filming is done in batches, spaced out over a few months. In the earliest weeks, you’re only involved for a day of two, and then in the final week you’re there for as long as you stay in the competition. We ended up with a day off between the quarters and the semi-final. We thought at that point there’s not that much more revision we can do, so we walked around Manchester for a while, which is a lovely city. We did hope vaguely that something we learned on our tour of Manchester might come up, which it did actually, but in not in our match. In the other semi-final there was a question on the Warsaw Uprising, about which there was an exhibition on in Manchester Central Library. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to answer those questions.
The trophy was presented at the ADC Theatre in Cambridge by Sir Ian McKellen – was that a total surprise?
Yes. It was one of the things that was hard to keep secret – perhaps more so than winning was. He was lovely. I have to say that we had a bit of time to chat to him a little bit after the camera stopped as well. And we got to have nice conversations with Amol Rajan [the host] during filming, especially in the final week and when we got to meet him again at the trophy presentation. With his background in political journalism, he was able to speak a lot about all sorts of interesting things.
Has the experience put you off quizzing for the future?
No, not at all. The whole experience was great. I really enjoyed it.
Further references
Starter for Ten: Oscar Despard recounts his University Challenge experience
They did it! Christ’s wins University Challenge – Christ’s College
University Challenge Grand Final – BBC iPlayer (requires TV license)