Snigger

[Samjenko]

http://www.standard.co.uk/stayingin/tvfilm/university-challenge-under-fire-for-lack-of-diversity-in-teams-without-women-or-minorities-a3483661.html

[sp1814]

Editor: We need a story for our online edition. Do you have anything?

Ben Travis: Not at the moment. Still waiting My for the pre-written stories from PR companies to be delivered.

Editor: What about Twitter? Have you checked your feed in the past hour?

Ben Travis: Yeah...but the only thing on there are a few tweets about a lack of diversity on University Challenge.

Editor: Run with it. This kind of story will get people moaning about political correctness.

Ben Travis: But it's literally only five people out of millions who watched the show.

Editor: Doesn't matter - people will link to the article and every visit we get is a page impression which increases ad revenue.

Ben Travis: But surely that's not journalism?

Editor: What makes you think you're a journalist?

[-Talbot-]

I'm going to assume you don't use Twitter, sp?

A quick search shows people have been moaning about diversity on UC for years. Some sad people must be waiting ready to release their pent up aggression as soon as they see an all white show.



Simon Horrocks‏ @horrocks_simon 2 Mar 2015
More
What a surprise: 4 young white men taking on 4 young white men. It can only be #UniversityChallenge.

[-Talbot-]

Tut‏ @Puhleesed 20 Oct 2014
More
#universitychallenge 8 white males. #diversity #pembroke #magdalen really need to address their exclusion. Pathetic



There are hundreds of them.

[andy-hughes]

I have watched UC since I was a child, and I have never even noticed, much less felt moved to comment on the gender and / or ethnicity of any of the contestants.

I always assume that the team is the best of those that applied, and the notion of diluting the strength of a team in order to satisfy diversity quotas rather seems to defeat the object.

[mikey4444]

I seem to recall that there was a transgender person on UC a year or two back, and that she resurfaced on Only Connect !

[jim360]

I think it's a good idea not to take tweets about contestants on Uni Challenge too seriously...

[andy-hughes]

Mikey - there has been a transgender person on this year's intake - she was on last week, seriously bright!

[Samjenko]

Sorry jim, sp. Twas a slow news day and my title and most of the replies, I thought, showed how seriously we took it.

Ps,Sp, sadly I think you'll find that nearly all 'journalism' works that way today.

[mikey4444]

Andy........I suspected that she might have been, but I wasn't 100% sure !

[andy-hughes]

mikey - the Adam's Apple is usually the giveaway.

I interview Jayne County (formerly Wayne County) about gender surgery, and she told me that having her Adam's Apple shaved was more painful than the all the gender procedures combined - which may be a reason why some people elect to skip it.

[jim360]

Oh, I agree that your title wasn't taking things seriously -- although the whole "sadly this is the world today" line taken by some respondents seemed otherwise.

People complain about a lot when watching UC. A. Lot. Seriously. It's part of the fun I guess.

[Samjenko]

Questions are too pimpsy is my biggest complaint. ;)

[jim360]

This inspired me to search for all the tweets about me on UC again.

Tomorrow's DM/Standard/Express headline:

"Uni Challenge player victim of HORRIBLE ABUSE and SEX JOKES in twitter storm -- and some even complained that he wore a HOODIE!"

[Peter Pedant]

// much less felt moved to comment on the gender //

then you didnt notice that the Sommerville team that won it in 1963 were all gurlz.... and one lights up during the contest ....

and we have had ethnic Han ( chinese ) and Indian ( continent rather than country ) - no one veiled yet.

the eastern europeans with unpronounceable names
I think do quite well - English isnt their first language

and would you like to do challenge des univeristes in French
no I wouldnt actually
we have had two blind people
but no one doing sign language

[-Talbot-]

You say don't take it seriously, Jim but these people are the same kind of people who will be reporting and encouraging people to report hate crimes ... even imaginary hate crimes.

They are idiotic race baiters who do nothing but create division.

[andy-hughes]

Samjenko - //Questions are too pimpsy is my biggest complaint. ;) //

Me too!

By definition, the questions have to be academic, but there is no entertainment, or knowledge to be gained by Jezza asking incomprehensible maths and science questions with equally incomprehensible answers being given.

[jno]

Sometimes you will get all male sometimes you will get all black


lol ... for "sometimes" read "usually" and "never" respectively.

[Peter Pedant]

er o god what does pimpsy mean in this context

too easy or too difficult ?

Bamber Grass-groin used to check all the qq himself
we had an ethnic Russian on our team who pointed (to himi) out that Essenin ( Isadora Duncan's lover ) was a mainstream russian poet who was studied in schools ( in russia of course ) - and that Plotinus was an important neoplatonic.

Bambi thought they were too pimpsy ( 1972)

[jim360]

Well I suppose the point is that no, I don't agree that what's said on Twitter is always a reflection of how people behave in real life, so it doesn't follow that these people will also look for excuses *in practice* to find racial tensions.

As it happens the selection process for first round teams does have some element of diversity in mind. After that of course it's the best teams at quizzing that get to the latter stages. This still exposes a diversity issue of sorts, in that it's comparatively rare for women to be among the top performers at UC. In the 2012/13 and 2013/14 seasons, all of the ten best at answering Starter questions were men (and I think both times only two women in the top 20; also I'm not sad, these are stats someone else collected).

So actually quizzing does sort of have a lack of diversity. Of course the main point is that it's nothing to do with UC -- so the complaints are still bogus.

[-Talbot-]

This still exposes a diversity issue of sorts, in that it's comparatively rare for women to be among the top performers at UC.


Is this you Jim? ;0)