Tonight the BBC broadcast the final of a series of University Challenge, in which ‘distinguished alumni’ of a number of universities were members of teams representing those universities. Being the BBC, the ‘distinguished alumni’ included prominent feminists who any person with an IQ in at least double digits would regard as blithering idiots. Needless to say, they appear very regularly on BBC TV and radio, where they are treated with reverence.

Two days ago we published a piece about one of the semi-finals, in which Special Snowflake (aka Laura Bates) performed so woefully that had she been replaced by a pot plant, her team would not have scored fewer points.

Tonight the BBC broadcast the final, with Sophie ‘Doughnuts’ Walker, leader of the Wimmin’s Equality Party, captaining the team from Reading. Three of her four team members, including herself, were token women. One of them, Pippa Greenwood, didn’t attempt to answer even one question. Katy Brand, a comedienne, ably and humorously captained the team representing Keble College, Oxford. Two of her team members were token women.

Katy Brand’s team, which had beaten Laura Bates’s team in the semi-final, beat Sophie Walker’s team by 240 points to nil. Had every member of Walker’s team been replaced by pot plants, the team would not have scored fewer points. At least the plants wouldn’t have answered any questions incorrectly. The programme is on BBC iPlayer for the next 30 days – here – you’ll need a BBC licence to watch it.

We’ve produced a detailed analysis of the programme – here. It turns out this blog’s software cannot link to Excel files, but if anyone wants the original Excel file, please contact us ([email protected]). The link we’ve provided is to a PDF, and possibly rather confusing, as it breaks up the Excel spreadsheet into individual pages.

So, how many points did the individual members of Katy Brand’s team score?

Frank Cottrell-Boyce: 140

Paul Johnson: 45

Katie Brand: 30

Anne-Marie Imafidon: 15

Unclear who answered the question correctly: 10

Frank Cottrell-Boyce scored more than 3x that of all five female contestants combined, while Paul Johnson equalled their points.

Of the 15 points scored by Anne-Marie Imafidon, 10 points were for identifying Nigeria as the country in which a number of cities are located. Paxman starts reading out the question at 7:04. Imafidon’s father emigrated from Nigeria, and she appeared sheepish in answering the question – her expression read, ‘Thanks for the gift, Jeremy!’ – and the chance of any other contestants knowing the answer to the question was surely very low. Without that ‘gift’ to her, both of the men on Katy Brand’s team would have earned more points than all five female contestants combined.

While the winning team was gender-balanced, the men scored at least 77 per cent of the team’s points. Frank Cottrell-Boyce alone scored at least 58 per cent of them.

We can be sure what the response of feminists will be to all this:

Women are strong! Women are amazing!! Women can do anything men can do!!! We need a minimum quota for female contestants on quiz shows.

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