By Calvin Palmer
Gail Trimble has been dubbed the greatest ever contestant on University Challenge. Tonight she lived up to her billing by captaining her team, Corpus Christi College, Oxford, to a 275-190 victory in the final against my alma mater, Manchester University.
Before tonight, Trimble had scored two-thirds of her team’s 1,200 points in the competition.
Gail Trimble with two of her Corpus Christi College teammates Sam Kay (left) and James Marsden. Picture courtesy of The Guardian.
The 26-year-old from of Waltham-on-Thames, Surrey, has been described online as someone who has a “breadth of knowledge that has crushed all opposition like a panzer squadron racing across the countryside”.
In the quarter-finals of the contest, her team defeated Exeter University 350 -15. A win that quiz host Jeremy Paxman likened to a “cull” rather than a general knowledge quiz.
Other wins saw Corpus Christi College beat Durham University 330-95 in the first round; Edinburgh University 295-85 in the second round and St John’s College, Cambridge 260–150 in the semi-final, with Trimble scoring 185 points.
At least in tonight’s final, Manchester made it the closest of the Oxford team’s five victories.
Trimble’s phenomenal knowledge and speed of thought generates polarized views. Some see her as a machine-like intellectual blitzkrieg a kind of cerebral shock and awe, while others think she is smug and cocky. She has also been hailed as a sex symbol, something she finds surprising.
Trimble’s knowledge of the male psyche is clearly not as extensive as her general knowledge.
The ‘Gail Trimble Appreciation Club’ has recently appeared on Facebook.
“I’m glad that people are being nice about me rather than nasty, but … I very much think this would not be happening if I was a man,” she told BBC Radio. “People would not feel it necessary to comment on my looks so much.”
Trimble said much of her knowledge stemmed from what she learned as a child, in a stimulating household filled with books, and from her scientist parents, whom she described as “amazingly supportive”.
She was educated at Lady Eleanor Holles in Hampton, Middlesex, and won a place at Oxford in 2000 after achieving 11 GCSEs and four A-levels in Latin, Greek, English literature and Mathematics — all at grade A.
In her spare time she gives lunchtime recitals as a soprano singer and lectures on Ovid and Hellenistic poetry. She does admit to some weak spots in her armor however — biology and sport.
She enjoys an occasional gin and tonic as well as being part of the college choir and drama group, recently producing a play at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. When she graduates next year she is hoping to become an academic at Oxford or Cambridge.
The other members of the victorious Corpus Christi team were Lauren Schwartzman, Sam Kay and James Marsden.
[Based on reports by The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph.]
