Freddy Leo, the quiz kid and whiz kid

One of the great joys in life is University Challenge — at least I think so. UC is a British quiz show, staging a tournament every (academic) year. Three years ago, I wrote a little paean to UC, for Standpoint. I have had a couple of contestants as guests on my Q&A podcast: the great David Landon Cole, of the University of York, and Eric Monkman, of Wolfson College, Cambridge, who sparked “Monkmania,” making people like me “Monkmaniacs.”


I now have a third guest: Freddy Leo, of St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, who shone in the season recently ended. A kid from Berlin, he seemed to have no weaknesses at all: He knew everything, or virtually everything, across the humanities and sciences. On Q&A, I ask him a host of questions — here — and he indulges me, polite young man that he is.

When you have time, search him out on YouTube, fielding questions from Jeremy Paxman (the legendary, occasionally fearsome quizmaster of University Challenge). It is, frankly, stunning.

While I have you on the line: I’ve done a new episode of Music for a While, here. This one includes a few ballet scores — plus Art Tatum, an aria or two, and more. I end with music — in more extensive form — that has opened and closed Q&A for all these years.


Call it cross-marketing, I don’t know.