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Fingers on buzzers: Students aim for second University Challenge win

Press release issued: 18 December 2017

The University of Bristol’s quiz team returns to our screens tonight [18 December] in their second round University Challenge match again Trinity College, Oxford.

It follows a convincing victory (230 – 95) over Trinity College, Cambridge, in the second episode of the series back in July.

Hopes are high for the Bristol team, whose predecessors' winning streak took them all the way to the quarter finals last year.

Viewers can see if their success continues as they face Jeremy Paxman tonight at 8.30pm on BBC2.

The team has already fought off fierce competition from the country's brainiest students to reach this stage, with over 130 student quiz teams auditioning for 28 slots on the show's 47th series.

Prior to the televised challenge, all applicants were put to the test by the University of Bristol Students' Union (Bristol SU), competing in three rounds of mentally gruelling tests.

The final five Bristol teammates, chosen from well over two hundred Bristol students who applied, are:

  • Sam Hosegood (Team Captain), first year undergraduate, Chemical Physics
  • Oliver Bowes, First year undergraduate, Music
  • Kirsti Biggs, Second year doctoral candidate, Mathematics
  • Dom Hewett, First year postgraduate, English
  • Owen Iredale (reserve), Second year undergraduate, Biology

Team captain Sam Hosegood said: "It's difficult to explain how nerve-racking it is when you're sitting on set with all the lights and cameras on you waiting for the first question to be read. However, despite how stressful the filming can be at times, the whole experience was really good fun.

"Personally, I think that one of the greatest strengths of our team was that we got on so well meaning that meeting up to practice was never a chore. We all looked forward to our weekly practice sessions and now that the filming is over we still regularly go to the pub together (and of course the occasional pub quiz!)."

University Challenge is the longest-running academic quiz show in the UK. It was first aired in 1962.

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