Gail has turned ‘geek chic’ into cool (From Gazette & Herald)

Gail has turned ‘geek chic’ into cool

9:10am Thursday 5th March 2009

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YOU’D have thought that anyone who claims their life ambition was to appear on University Challenge could surely not be lying.

Wanting to exaggerate your youthful ambitions to be, say, an astronaut instead of telling the truth about a burning desire to be a car park steward is understandable. But announcing to the world that all you wanted to do was become an acned quiz show champion is not the sort of behaviour of someone trying to impress.

However, just this week I’ve heard this very claim being bandied around by at least five different people, all insisting that they’d dreamt of answering a starter for 10 since they were small.

Either they are all telling the truth (which I doubt, as I know very well that at least one of them wanted to be a car park steward), or else claiming a long-standing affinity with University Challenge has become rather cool.

The unlikely heroine of this ‘geek-chic’ revival comes in the unassuming form of Gail Trimble, captain of this year’s winning team, Corpus Christi, Oxford and dubbed the ‘human Google’ after she scored two thirds of the team’s points and subsequently became the Challenge’s ‘cleverest ever’ contestant. I think it’s fair to say that Trimble comes across almost exactly how you’d imagine a Latin PhD student to be – she seems quiet and thoughtful and looks as if direct sunlight might kill her.

So far, so normal by University Challenge standards. But that doesn’t account for the five and a half million people who tuned into the final last week. That sort of viewing figure is normally reserved for programmes with far less intellectual content – but could it be that University Challenge has accidently become the new reality TV?

Ms Trimble herself has been subject to a certain amount of celebritisation (I myself am a proud member of the Gail Trimble Appreciation Facebook Group) as well as some undeserved negative press for her perceived smugness and celebratory hair-flicks after every correct answer. The Challenge may have inadvertently turned into a rather gripping soap opera – was that a twinkle in Paxman’s eye whenever Trimble buzzed in? Who would be the first to work out pi to the power of the Battle of Hastings? In fact the plot continues to thicken.

As I write, scandal has just tarnished their victory, with the BBC investigating complaints that a member of the team was no longer a student, and consequently not eligible to take part in the quiz. Suddenly, it’s not just the world of academia that teeters on its axis as it anxiously awaits the result – anyone who’s ever shouted ‘President Roosevelt!’ at the TV is now on tenterhooks at the latest development in this, the most port and Stilton of any press phenomena.

In fact, it’s all getting a little bit heady for me. What with suggestions that Trimble has been approached by lad’s mags for various photo shoots wearing only a strategically placed Oxford English Dictionary, and rumours of revenge plans from the losers at Manchester University, it’s possible that University Challenge has picked up a pace that is all a bit much for its faithful fan base.

I can only hope that I can watch next year’s starters for 10 with a warm mug of cocoa instead of the nerve settling Scotch that we were forced to turn to by the end of this series.

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