Amol Rajan’s University Challenge nightmare! New host turned captain in celebrity special – but his team suffered a heavy defeat as they got 14 of their 18 answers incorrect
- Rajan appeared on a celebrity series of University Challenge in December 2020
- His team from Downing College, Cambridge didn’t make it through first round
- Now, BBC rising star will replace Paxman as host after 28 years
- He has been BBC media editor since December 2016 and a presenter on Today programme since May 2021
New University Challenge host Amol Rajan once appeared as a contestant on the notoriously hard quiz show – but suffered a nightmare as his team got 14 out of 18 questions wrong.
Rajan, 39, was a captain for a celebrity Christmas special but oversaw a resounding defeat – as his team from Downing College, Cambridge, lost to Durham University by 90 points to 65.
The BBC media editor answered seven questions by himself but only got two correct. His wrong answers included failing to name the artist Francis Bacon, incorrectly pinpointing an American city and opting for tuna when asked to identify types of goldfish.
He was joined by author Louise Dean, theoretical physicist Sir John Pendry and BBC broadcaster Dharshini David.
Rajan appeared on a celebrity series of University Challenge less than two years ago. The 39-year-old, who was confirmed as Jeremy Paxman’s replacement on Tuesday, was born to Hindu parents in Calcutta, India
Against him, Durham’s team was made up of their captain Sarah Keith-Lucas, BBC Weather Presenter and 2003 graduate, architecture critic Hugh Pearman, stand-up comedian Ed Gamble, and YouTuber and physicist Dr. Becky Smethurst.
The BBC announced on Wednesday that the 39-year-old is set to return to the show to replace host Jeremy Paxman.
He will take up the role in autumn 2023, with Paxman to have one final season asking the questions on the quiz show. The appointment caps a meteoric rise.
In 15 years he has gone from a researcher tasked with telling the audience when to clap on Channel 5’s mid-morning chat show The Wright Stuff to become a presenter on BBC Radio 4’s flagship Today programme.
Along the way he edited The Independent newspaper, having been appointed to the role aged 29 in 2013 by Evgeny Lebedev, the Russian media magnate.
Rajan’s team from Downing College, Cambridge had a disastrous run and did not even make it through the first round, losing to Durham University by 90 points to 65
As well as hosting the flagship news programme, Rajan has been given his own television interview series. He has also hosted episodes of The One Show and acted as a stand-in host for both Zoe Ball and Jeremy Vine’s Radio 2 shows.
How Amol Rajan’s team faired on University Challenge
Incorrect answers:
1. Which British painter created the Triptych, that sold for more than $84m dollars in an online auction in 2020?
Amol passed – correct answer was Francis Bacon.
2. An installation piece entitled The End resembling a swirl of cream with a cherry on top appeared on Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth in July 2020. Who created it?
Amol answered Mark Wynne – correct answer was Heather Phillipson.
3. Which scientist created a gas combustion device with a metal collar to regulate airflow?
Amol passed – correct answer was Bunsen (Bunsen burner).
4. For your picture starter you’ll see a map of Texas: name the city?
Amol buzzed in, answered Austin – correct answer was Houston.
5. From which Shakespeare play is the line ‘At Christmas I no more desire a rose. Than wish a snow in May’s new-fangled mirth; But like of each thing that in season grows’?
Amol answered The Tempest – correct answer was Love’s Labour’s Lost.
6. Identify the locations of these US places in which events in the Virginia Slims women’s tennis tour took place?
Amol answered Delaware first – correct answer was Philadelphia.
7. Amol passed on the second.
8. Give the names of these birds from a description: Amol answered yellowhammer – correct answer was goldfinch.
9. Amol was timed out – correct answer was long tailed tit.
10. Amol passed – correct answer was house sparrow.
11. Name the book titles from the cover art:
Amol passed – correct answer was Anatomy of a Murder.
12. Amol passed – correct answer was Bonjour Tristesse
13. Named after a Canadian educational theorist, which proposition states that in a hierarchy each employee tends to rise to the level of their incompetence?
Amol answered Maslow – correct answer was Peter
14. Comet black telescope, lionhead and shubunkin are common breeds of what freshwater fish?
Amol answered tuna – correct answer was goldfish.
Correct answers:
1. Who wrote ‘It snowed last year too! I made a snowman and then my brother knocked it down. Then I knocked my brother down. Then we had tea’.
Amol answered Dylan Thomas.
2. In September 2020, Essex beat Somerset to win a trophy named after which England pace bowler.
Amol answered Bob Willis.
3. Name the book titles from the cover art.
Amol answered Vertigo
4. Identify the locations of these US places in which events in the Virginia Slims women’s tennis tour took place?
Amol answered Las Vegas.
On top of which he has held the job of BBC media editor for six years, a position he will step down from when he takes up the University Challenge job.
Already the joke in broadcasting circles was that it was impossible to find a programme that was not fronted by Rajan, a feeling that has only been exacerbated by his latest appointment.
‘People are seething,’ a senior BBC insider told the Mail.
‘He gets every gig going. They pay him so much that they have to find him stuff to do.’
Another leading industry figure added: ‘When somebody becomes flavour of the month and [the BBC] throws everything at them, it is not always good for them.
‘The public can quickly feel bored if they think someone is being thrusted on them all the time.’
Ahead of his appointment there had also been speculation that the time had come for a woman to be given control of the quiz show’s chair — during its 60-year history the two hosts have been Paxman, 72, and the late Bamber Gascogine.
Indeed, when it was announced earlier this week that Paxman would be stepping down, Samira Ahmed, a fellow BBC presenter, hinted that she was unhappy at not being considered for the role.
Ahmed, who previously won an unequal pay claim against the BBC, said she had approached the production team about the job, having worked on the show as a stand-by presenter for the past year.
‘I approached University Challenge myself months ago … I’ve loved working with the fab team who seem to love me and just narrated a UC [University Challenge] documentary that’s going out on BBC Two.
‘But no one from the BBC has spoken to me yet about taking over. I’ve always been happy to go through an honest fair process and be judged on my merits. I still am’, she said.
Rajan was given a bigger role at the BBC last year after a rival broadcaster tried to poach him from the Corporation.
The BBC put together a financial and programme package to keep him.
‘ITV approached him for the Piers Morgan role on Good Morning Britain and he met with them,’ an ITV source told the Daily Mail.
‘They offered it to him, he went back to the BBC and told them he had been approached.
‘They offered him more, he went back to ITV, they offered him more, then he went back to the Beeb, then back to ITV, who thought he was massively taking advantage of them and ended negotiations.
‘The BBC didn’t know that but as a result he has had enough leverage with them to get whatever he wanted.’
Rajan is already among the broadcaster’s best-paid staff.
According to the BBC’s latest annual report in the past year his salary increased by about £80,000 to up to £329,999 a year, while he is expected to get a significant pay deal to present the quiz.
In what marks a momentous moment for Rajan, he has also said that he will dedicate his first starter for 10 to his ‘beloved’ late father who moved his family to the UK in search of a better life.
After his new appointment, he said: ‘Being asked to host my favourite TV programme is dream-come-true territory.
‘I have watched University Challenge obsessively for years, addicted to its high standards, glorious title music, and inspirational contestants.
‘It’s the best possible antidote to cynicism about young people, allowing millions of us to test our wits against the best minds of a new generation, and annoy and impress our families by barking answers from the sofa.’
The 39-year-old was born to Hindu parents in Calcutta, India, and moved to London aged three.
His father, P. Varadarajan, was a general manager at a trading company while his mother was a dinner lady and a nursery teacher and eventually worked in administration at the Foreign Office.
State-school educated and living in Tooting, south London, he applied to read English at Downing College, Cambridge, buying a pair of mustard corduroys for the interview.
‘I thought that was what you were supposed to do,’ he told the Mail. ‘Until then, I thought of posh people as a distant race. To me, Eton was like Mordor.
Rajan said that he will dedicate his first starter for 10 to his ‘beloved’ late father who moved his family to the UK in search of a better life.
‘But going to Cambridge made me realise I could compete at the top on level terms, that the people who went to Eton could be my friends, that anything was possible.’
Jeremy Paxman first became the face of the revived University Challenge when it returned after a hiatus
He once again recognised his father’s contribution in a statement greeting his latest appointment, writing: ‘I won’t stop thinking today about my late, beloved Dad, whose devotion to education brought him to England, whose love of knowledge I imbibed as a kid, and whose belief in the noble challenge of university so shaped my life.
‘I’ll devote my first ”starter for 10” to him – and to the millions of quiz fiends who, like me, love those rare occasions when they know the answer before the students do.’
‘He would have loved to see me do this show. Then again, as my brother says, he would have loved me to pay off my mortgage even more,’ Rajan wrote, adding that he had been in a ‘pit of grief’ since his death.
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