A team from Bangor University will feature in TV’s toughest quiz team tournament tonight, when they appear on University Challenge.
As the first round of the quiz competition for students draws to a close, teams from the universities of Bangor and Nottingham put fingers on buzzers for the first time as Jeremy Paxman asks the questions.
BBC Two’s University Challenge is the UK’s annual university TV quiz show, with teams of four competing head to head across a range of question categories.
The 52nd series of University Challenge began on 29 August 2022 on BBC Two. A special programme commemorating the show’s 60th anniversary was broadcast on the same night.
Teams consist of four members and most represent a single university. The exceptions to this are colleges of the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge, which enter independent teams. The competing teams each year are selected by the show’s producers, based both on scores from a general trivia quiz and the producers’ judging of the suitability of the teams for television.
The current tournament format used for each series is that of a direct knockout tournament starting with 28 teams. The fourteen first-round winners progress directly to the last sixteen. Two matches, involving the four highest scoring losing teams from the first round, whose losing scores often exceed winning scores in other first-round matches, fill the remaining places in the last sixteen.
This will be the final series hosted by Jeremy Paxman, who has been confirmed to be standing down from the role after 29 years. From Autumn 2023 onwards.
The news comes after the presenter revealed he has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease last year. His doctor diagnosed him with the condition after noticing that he was less “exuberant” on the quiz show. The current batch of episodes, presented by Paxman, will run until the summer of 2023.
Journalist and broadcaster Amol Rajan will take over from the autumn of next year. Paxman’s last-ever appearance as host will air sometime later in 2023 at the end of the 52nd series.
The programme featuring Bangor University will be broadcast on BBC 2, on 15 November 2022, at 8.30pm.
