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Post by Neil Megson on Mar 5, 2012 12:35:48 GMT
In 1975, the University of Manchester's team for "University Challenge" apparently felt the need to protest against what they saw as the over-representation of Oxford and Cambridge in the competition. They did this by answering "Trotsky", "Lenin", "Marx" etc. to all the questions, hoping to make the programme unbroadcastable. Does anyone know if this really happened, or is it an urban myth ? Did the team really keep up the "revolutionary" answers for the whole half-hour ? Was the programme ever broadcast ? And does it still exist in the archive ?
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Post by Richard Marple on Mar 5, 2012 13:20:43 GMT
I've heard of this, & Manchester Uni were banned from UC for a time.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 5, 2012 13:23:15 GMT
It doesn't exist, I don't think, but seemed to have happened as it was referred to in a University Challege retrospective doc some time ago. Can anyone confirm for sure?
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Post by Dale Rumbold on Mar 5, 2012 14:09:34 GMT
I remember watching this programme, though my recollection is that 'Shakespeare' was also repeatedly given as an answer (or maybe a member of the audience kept shouting it out?). At the end of the show, Bamber Gascoigne made some statement about hoping not to see Manchester again 'for a very long time'.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 5, 2012 15:02:45 GMT
It doesn't exist. I was an extra on a '40 years of University Challenge' (or similar) program back in about 2002 and they had us recreate the scene in the studio as it didn't exist anymore. There were several scenes we had to recreate. The resulting program didn't show much in the way of archival footage at all due to its non-existance.
Hope that's of some use!
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Post by Paul Varley on Mar 5, 2012 15:52:02 GMT
It's also referenced in the Young Ones 'Bambi' episode where one of the Footlights team (Ben Elton) gives an obviously incorrect answer of Lenin. Suddenly makes sense now. Just about!
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Post by Pete Morris on Mar 5, 2012 20:55:57 GMT
I heard a while back that there is a surviving clip of the episode.
Why would they feel the need to 'ban' Manchester? The team would lose the round, thus be out of the competition. Next year the Manchester team would be 4 new people.
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Post by Ian Wegg on Mar 5, 2012 22:10:47 GMT
In 1975, the University of Manchester's team for "University Challenge" apparently felt the need to protest against what they saw as the over-representation of Oxford and Cambridge in the competition. They did this by answering "Trotsky", "Lenin", "Marx" etc. to all the questions, hoping to make the programme unbroadcastable. Does anyone know if this really happened, or is it an urban myth ? Did the team really keep up the "revolutionary" answers for the whole half-hour ? Was the programme ever broadcast ? And does it still exist in the archive ? The incident is covered in Peter Gwyn's 2002 book University Challenge the First 40 Years. The team, fuelled by drink, decided to disrupt the programme by shouting "Marx", "Trotsky" and "Marilyn Monroe" to every question asked. The recording was stopped and the team read the riot act by the producer, after which they played the game properly and ended up with 40 points. The programme controller, Julian Amis, had the programme broadcast as recorded. It generated a lot of press comment and, apparently, caused the students themselves some embarrassment. The book doesn't mention anything about Manchester being banned in following years. They did change the ticket system (supporters had got in with forged tickets). The students on the team had actually dropped out of Manchester University. The four of them were living together and by a weird accident the letter asking the Union if Manchester would like to put a team forward had been diverted to one of these four so they put themselves forward as a team. The book also mentions the state of the programme archives: ... a few mouldering, slightly damp manila box files, each one containing a seemingly random collection of papers: a few pages of contact details for students who graduated decades ago, and a very paltry number of complete programmes remaining out of the many hundreds recorded over the years.~iw
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Post by Neil Megson on Mar 6, 2012 9:18:14 GMT
Thanks Ian, very comprehensive answer - probably no chance of ever seeing this again though...
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Post by Ian Wegg on Mar 6, 2012 18:44:10 GMT
No problem. As I put the book back on the shelf it's occurred to me that the 50th anniversary is coming up, I wonder if they'll be another celebration?
~iw
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Post by Brian Denton on Mar 6, 2012 22:36:21 GMT
I remember it being broadcast. It was quite funny, from a 14 year old's point of view anyway ! One of the questions was "Which road links place x to place y (I forget the details) ?" A girl on the Manchester Uni team replied "the Yellow Brick Road". Bamber was flabbergasted.
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Post by Rob Moss on Mar 6, 2012 23:16:11 GMT
It surprises me to hear that this may not exist. I thought Granada programmes usually had an excellent survival rate..?
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Post by Ian Wegg on Mar 7, 2012 5:21:01 GMT
Dramas and documentaries yes, but it seems even Granada didn't see the value in keeping a quiz show.
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Post by Rich Cornock on Mar 7, 2012 9:15:31 GMT
i imagine quite a few of these may exist as off airs in the hands of the people who took part
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Post by Pete Morris on Mar 7, 2012 12:29:57 GMT
I doubt it. At about £600 in 1975 money to buy a VCR it would have been beyond the budget of most students.
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