I imagine that the four brave Newcastle representatives were wondering what hit them when they woke up this morning.
A dirty great lump of Sheffield steel is what.
From where I was sitting (over a tasty beef kebab Mrs Fields produced courtesy of Nigella's book and a very drinkable bottle of Italian) it all went tits up for Toon when poor Patrick Hoan was too slow to add the film title "The Gold Rush" to the first part of his answer "Charlie Chaplin".
Jeremy was very firm with him - though Patrick looked like he wanted to protest. No can do, I'm afraid, chum.
From that moment, Pat and his chums look thoroughly shell-shocked as Sheffield were quicker to the buzzer and piled on the points. Piled them on.
I'm afraid it was too late when he delightedly got to the buzzer first, recognising a description of tofu. He and his mates weren't too hot on the subsequent Shakespeare opening lines questions, though.
Paxo was little harsh with Newcastle's skipper Laura Bailey (a PhD candidate) when she told him all their answers to questions on pointillism would be "Seurat." So they've never heard of Signac, Jeremy. Get over it. One does wonder why, though, they did hesitate to answer Seurat for the very piece that was by him!
It was good to see that student tastes haven't changed since my days: Sheffield correctly identified the Doctor Who actors by the theme tune of their era. Well done.
The result - 315-70 - was a sad and huge defeat for the Geordie university representatives. One wonders whether Sheffield were that hot or Newcastle just not on their game. We'll see in the next round.
(Col Juan is away).
