Every week it’s the same:
Jeremy Paxman will ask a question like, “Which number is the smallest number that can be expressed as the sum of two cubes in two different ways?” and before I’ve had time to
pull a face and go, “Eh?” someone has buzzed and given the correct answer in quite a smug way.
It’s the kind of thing that could make a grown man dislike intelligent people.
I don’t, of course. It seems lots of people do, according to this documentary following the lives of some
of those who have won University Challenge in the past.
Bright people in Britain have a hard time of it, it says, sometimes having to dumb down just to get a job. This may be true, but I wonder if this documentary may just make the problem worse.
The 10 winners featured here all have lisps or have struggled to form relationships and one even had a cat, which as we all know is shorthand for Saddo. “Did you talk to your cat?” asks the woman behind the camera.
The result is the programme ends up underlining in heavy black marker the prejudices that it could have helped to rub out. It’s like going to a council estate and ignoring the hundreds of ordinary mothers with jobs and great kids and stable lives, and instead scouring the streets until you find one single mum on benefits.
Yes, swotty people, just like gay people and fat people, face prejudice in some areas of life in Britain, but this programme isn’t going to help.
Oh, and it’s 1729 by the way. The smallest number that can be expressed as the sum of two cubes in two different ways.
Wonderland: I Won University Challenge, BBC 2, 9.45pm
