He's started, now he's finished

[Discordant Resonance]

Jeremy Paxman to retire from University Challenge after 29 years (by series end) - in truth, the impact of Parkinson's had become palpable on his presentation delivery in recent seasons, but his replacement faces an unenviable task in fulfilling viewer expectations, given the show is a particular favourite of "circuit quizzers".

[Discordant Resonance]

And yes, I have only just realised I messed up the title pun when I finished the OP.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Not wishing to be too hard on JP, especially in the circs as he seems to be a decent bloke (and wasn't too terrible as UC host either), but there are a couple of easy wins for whoever replaces him.

First, make a decent fist of pronouncing foreign names and other foreign words better - JP's attempts at German names in particular were frequently diabolical to the extent that they were a serious handicap for any contestants familiar with the correct pronunciation.

Second, do better at not speaking in a scornful sneer of disbelief when students display ignorance of arts topics, particularly if you yourself know next to fuck all about science topics - JP's obvious double standard there made him a poster boy for the truth of CP Snow's "Two Cultures" lecture.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

oh, and the mistaken reference in the headline reminds me of those joke t-shirts with slogans designed to simultaneously piss off Star Wars, Star Trek and a couple of other fan groups

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

The startling part (for me anyway) is realising that he's been doing it for 29 years.

[Sits]

Sorry to hear he has Parkinson's which is a rough gig.

[Antepli Ejderha]

Sorry to hear he has Parkinson's which is a rough gig.

Didn't know that nor that he's been doing it for 29 years.

[Satchmo Distel]

Bamber Gascoigne technically had a span of 30 years because he did a one-off for the BBC in late 1992. Did the Paxman era retain the same question compilers and were the questions as hard?

[Discordant Resonance]

There is a prevailing myth that University Challenge and Mastermind were harder in the "old days", but if you watch old series, the Gascoigne era was rather more based on general knowledge, whereas nowadays it cleaves far more tightly to third-level syllabi, while in Mastermind, questions that were once considered specialist (the painter of Guernica, most famously) have now moved to the GK round. As for the compilers, it seems most were originally former contestants themselves.

[Ray de Galles]

Not wishing to be too hard on JP, especially in the circs as he seems to be a decent bloke (and wasn't too terrible as UC host either), but there are a couple of easy wins for whoever replaces him.

First, make a decent fist of pronouncing foreign names and other foreign words better - JP's attempts at German names in particular were frequently diabolical to the extent that they were a serious handicap for any contestants familiar with the correct pronunciation.

Second, do better at not speaking in a scornful sneer of disbelief when students display ignorance of arts topics, particularly if you yourself know next to fuck all about science topics - JP's obvious double standard there made him a poster boy for the truth of CP Snow's "Two Cultures" lecture.

Third, stop punishing contestants for interrupting when they clearly buzzed as/after you finished the question.

[seand]

I do rather enjoy the pretentiousness of UC, Paxman's snark when contestants have the temerity to randomly guess Wordsworth for a poet was part of the theatre.

Though I didn't know about the Parkinsons diagnosis it was clear the last couple of years that something wasn't right and it was beginning to impact his ability to host.

[Discordant Resonance]

Amol Rajan is the new host - can't say he made much of an impression when he was on House of Games, but could easily have been Sandy Toksvig literally doing the rounds again.

[johnr]

This is an interesting - and depressing - thread.
https://twitter.com/lillcrawf/status...rvWd7NoDg&s=19

[johnr]

Endorsed by the captain of a previous year's winner.

https://twitter.com/svejky/status/15...utqIz6Bqw&s=19

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

The other thing about Rajan is his past as PR guy for Lebedev.

[Janik]

Third, stop punishing contestants for interrupting when they clearly buzzed as/after you finished the question.

But are you watching take 1 or take 3? That it can need several takes was the one thing I remember from my mate reporting back after he had been on a Nottingham Uni team (that got to the Semis, largely through having Olav Bjortomt as captain). Said mate took a wild stab at "Louis Bleriot" in answer to "Which French aviator..." and the rest of the question never revealed as that was how far Paxman had got before my mate buzzed. However, the cameramen got their pan wrong on the first few takes (I don't remember how many), so it had to be redone several times before suitable for broadcast TV was created. Which led to my friend looked rather bored and arrogant in giving his answer as he had already had it confirmed his speculative interruption was spot on (Paxo, off camera: "Do you know the names of any other French aviators?" Mate: "No").

[Ray de Galles]

Your example is for a correct interruption though. I'm talking about questions where Paxman has clearly got to the question mark at the end (and sometimes even paused after it) and an incorrect answer is still punished by a points deduction.

I can't see how that can be an edit/retake issue and it seems to happen at least once an episode in recent series.

[Lymeswold Snork]

I've been told by a recent competitor that it's someone behind the scenes who tells Jeremy whether he was interrupted, so he's not to blame. But I agree that there are a load of very dubious cases these days.

[Sam]

Yes, I'd assumed it wasn't him making those calls, but I'd also noticed there seem to be an awful lot of obviously wrong deductions for interruptions these days.

And thanks johnr for that Twitter thread. Depressing is the (well, a) word for it.

[seand]

I noticed the interruptions thing too. I reckon in most cases it's an interruptions in the last word or two of the question and Paxman's momentum has him finishing the sentence before he can stop himself- we're talking about a fraction of a second of course