University Challenge

When Miriam Margolyes appeared on the show in 1963 representing Newnham College, Cambridge, she said the F-word in frustration after answering a question incorrectly. She claims to have been the first person to say "fuck" on British television, but the word was bleeped out.

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In 1975, the University of Manchester team's first-round match attempted to derail the series by giving absurd answers to the questions in protest at the perceived Oxbridge bias that allowed only colleges to enter. Manchester was subsequently banned from the competition and remained so for four years before successfully arguing its case for reinstatement.

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In the first modern incarnation, the glass-effect backdrop behind each team spelled out "University Challenge" in different scripts and symbols, including Greek, Cyrillic and Braille.

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Newspaper reports in 1994 suggested that Stephen Fry, Clive Anderson, David Baddiel, Peter Snow, Jonathan Dimbleby and Emma Freud were among those considered for the role of question master.

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Contrary to the impression you might get from watching Jeremy Paxman's reaction to unexpected answers, the person who decides on borderline answers is actually the producer. When Paxman appears to mutter something about whether to award points, he is in fact just waiting for a signal in his earpiece.

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Most of the 1962-1971 episodes are missing from the archives.

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Two series from the Bamber era (1986/87) featured eight separate weekly tournaments. Teams played matches over two days, either Monday/Tuesday or Wednesday/Thursday. The first day was a standard game, and the scores carried over to the second match, in which an intriguing gimmick called Pass the Baton was played. The Baton, a vertical cylindrical rod with six lights that slid along the desk, started the show with each team's leftmost player, and the player at the end was chosen from a list of around 60 categories. Bamber would ask questions from that category on the buzzers, open only to whoever held the Baton, each worth five points. The first person to give two correct answers won a traditional set of bonuses for their team and the Baton crossed the line.

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Stephen Fry appeared in an episode in 1980 representing Queen's College, Cambridge.

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Bamber Gascoigne checked the questions himself and personally rewrote the ones that went unanswered. In later years he said this was mainly so that he could be 100% certain when deciding whether the contestants' answers were correct.

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After winning the final, Corpus Christi College, Oxford, was retrospectively disqualified from the 2008-9 series when it emerged that one of its team members had already graduated and was working as an accountant by the time the quarter-finals were recorded. The championship title was therefore transferred to their opponents in the final, the University of Manchester. However, the series did not acknowledge this until the following year's final, when the words "MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY" appeared engraved on the trophy in a close-up.

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The 1971 champions, Churchill College, Cambridge, revealed in the 'Reunited' series that both they and their opponents, Peterhouse College, Cambridge, had been photographed holding the trophy before the Grand Final was played. Apparently this was because the photographer had another job and so could not stay until the end of the series, and Granada did not see fit to pay him extra to remain.

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The special guest at the 1997 Grand Final, Germaine Greer, was so convinced that a team of mature students from the Open University would beat their opponents, Magdalen College, Oxford, that she spent most of the programme rehearsing the congratulatory speech she would make for the Open University team. When Magdalen won, she had to improvise her congratulations.

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The 1985 Grand Final between the Open University and St Andrews featured a picture round: to begin with, the teams were given some letters that had been jumbled and rearranged and had to uncover something connected to the programme. Eventually a member of the victorious Open University team buzzed in and got it right: it was 'Granada Television'. They then correctly solved three more sets of letters, revealing the equally relevant words 'Bamber Gascoigne', 'University Challenge' and 'Open University'.

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University Challenge features in David Nicholls's bestselling comic novel Starter for Ten, which was adapted into a feature film. When the film came to terrestrial television, BBC Two took the opportunity to broadcast the "network premiere" as part of a University Challenge theme night.

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The highest score of the Paxman era to date was the 415 points scored by the Open University against Charing Cross in 1997. [August 2016].

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The oldest contestant in the regular series to date was Mrs Ida Staples, who was 73 at the time. She was part of the 1997 Open University team, that year's losing finalists. [August 2016].

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In the 1984 series, the captain of a team from the University of York apparently could not work his buzzer and instead tapped very audibly on his desk several times to signal a "buzz".

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In 1970, a Mrs Westgate from Southampton complained to the TV Times listings magazine about the Cambridge team on UC: "I missed the introduction and couldn't be sure whether I was looking at men and girls or girls and men. But how masculine the other team looked."

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At its peak the programme had 12 million viewers.

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Special editions of University Challenge include a Red Dwarf-themed edition, wittily retitled "Universe Challenge", in which Bamber returned to the chair, and two "Comic Relief" specials hosted by Angus Deayton.

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In the early days the series had varying point values for bonuses, which the chairman announced before the opening question was read.

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During the Paxman era very few episodes ended in a tie. A series record of 3 tie-breaks was set in 2009-10.

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Several former contestants (including at least two champions) went on to become question setters for the programme. These include Charles Oakley, captain of the Corpus Christi 2005 team; Olav Bjortomt (University of Nottingham 2000, quarter-finalists); Sean Prendiville (Trinity Hall Cambridge 2008, quarter-finalists); Matthew Dolan (St John's College Cambridge 2009, semi-finalists); and, earlier, Dr Phil Jones (Magdalen College, Oxford, 1998, series champions) and Martin Heighway (Open University 1997, series runners-up).

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In the later 2007 series, the producers managed to confuse viewers by showing two picture questions about castles in the wrong order. In the edit the photographs of Warwick and Arundel were transposed, though it is not known whether they were shown to the teams correctly. Since the winning margin was 30 points and at most 5 points were at stake, the result would not have changed.

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In the 1998 Final, Professor Richard Dawkins announced that he hoped A Levels would be abolished in favour of 'University Challenge'-style tests, on the basis that students need to be able to access a wide range of information quickly as solid preparation for their future careers.

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The highest match score of all time was the 520 points scored by University College, Oxford against Reading in 1987.

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The lowest score of the Paxman era so far is the 15 points achieved by Exeter in their quarter-final match against Corpus Christi College, Oxford, broadcast in January 2009. [August 2016].

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Stephen Fry holds the record for the most appearances on the programme by someone who has not been a host. He represented his own university, Queen's College, Cambridge, in the 1981 series, reaching that year's final, and has since reappeared in many celebrity specials, including at least one of the Comic Relief specials hosted by Angus Deayton, and presented the prize to the winners of the Reunited series. He also appeared in the spoof on The Young Ones (1982) and even appeared as the host of a similar 'School Challenge' in St. Trinian's (2007).

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During the Paxman era, in the opening match of the first fourteen series the losing team usually ranked among the highest-scoring runners-up, generally because of a strong comeback by one of the teams. This is because the producers deliberately choose an exciting match to start the series.

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At least two finalists from the regular series went on to win different series. Dorjana Sirola, part of the Somerville College Oxford team in 2002, went on to win the 2006 Professionals series as part of the Bodleian Library team. Rob Linham, of the St John's College Oxford team that finished second in the 2001 Grand Final, won the 2008 Professionals series as part of the Ministry of Justice team.

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Aaron Bell, part of the winning St John's College, Oxford team in 2001, became the 2009 champion on The Krypton Factor (2009).

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Jesse Honey, who was part of the Durham University team that reached the semi-finals in the 1998-9 series, became the 2010 Mastermind (1972) champion.

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Dr Ian Bayley competed on UC twice: first for Imperial College London, reaching the second round in the 1996-7 series, and later for Balliol College Oxford, reaching the quarter-finals in the 2000-01 series; he became the 2011 Mastermind (1972) champion.

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At least two contestants returned to university in later years solely to try to appear on University Challenge again.

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