University Challenge, the quiz show pitting universities and colleges from around the country against each other has twice been won by Imperial College. Most recently, in August 2001, an Imperial team sunk St John’s College, Oxford by 250 points to 195. In 2002 another Imperial team came within a whisker of beating Somerville College, Oxford to win the challenge for an unprecedented time but eventually bowed out.

After a year’s absence, Imperial’s latest entry to the competition took to the screens today with Calder, Berfield, Smith and Amen a team fighting under the banner of “Imperial College, London” (sic) to take on Queen’s College, Oxford. While expectations were high, with Jeremy Paxman concentrating on Imperial’s impressive record during his introduction, the team never really succeeded in seizing control of the game.

Oxford were very much in charge at the beginning, making their way up to 65 points before Imperial had even managed to get a starter question. Imperial did fight back eventually, taking their first set of bonus questions on the topic of “monarchy” and actually working their way up to 80 points and overtaking Oxford (who lost 5 points in the meantime) before their opposition scored any further points. Oxford took control again however, fighting their way over 100 points and even a brief Imperial rally taking the score to 105 all was insufficient to stop them pulling ahead and taking the match.

The match ended with 140 points to Oxford and a fairly unimpressive 105 to Imperial.