Class warrior time is it? OU students are, if anything, even more diverse than other student groups including a good proportion of single parents, part-time workers, people struggling to combine study with full-time work and families and those from disadvantaged backgrounds who missed out on higher education and are now looking to better themselves. I have no idea how the team fitted in with any those categories and neither, with all due respect, do you.

God I wish I'd never mentioned it

I agree . There's some very aggressive posters on this forum. Just expressing an opinion (not fact!), you get shot down in flames ie where's your source, you're wrong , I'm right kind of replies. I think I'll give this topic a miss in future and stick to the more genteel rugby forum.

Funny that this sort of thing also happens on the Only Connect thread. I can't quite seem to put my finger on what the common element is between both threads though.

Again I'd point out that if your argument had any merit whatsoever then the OU, Birkbeck College London and Nuffield College Oxford would win every year which is patently not the case.

You have decided that there is an original concept which is being somehow overridden but as far as I'm aware there has never been an age limit nor has it ever been limited to undergraduates. And even if you allow mature students and those studying for postgraduate qualifications to compete they're still students. They still have to fulfill that criteria to compete in the show so I'm not sure how you can begin to suggest that somehow allowing those classes of people makes it just like any other quiz!

Actually the poster was supposedly expressing a "fact" and happened to be talking nonsense. Sadly it's also a subject about which I am more likely to be right having just finished a stint representing my fellow OU students.

Perhaps you might find this a happier thread if people didn't see fit to start attacking other folk daring to take part in a mere quiz show on the grounds of mere class-based presumptions. I might well agree with you there. But your complaints would be better aimed at the original poster.

Looking at them, not at all.

I was answering a point made by another poster who stated that excluding older contestants would lead to teams of "young, very middle class white boys", who would be boring to watch. So why are you attacking me for being a class warrior when I pointed out that in fact the younger teams do seem to have a wider diversity, and the open team which was chosen to represent all these people you talk about was in fact packed with the very white, middle class people THEY seemed to hate?

In fact, the seemingly most working class individual on Monday's episode is the one who has attracted the most ridicule on here. No accusations of class warfare there was there?

Good idea if you can't handle a discussion on an internet forum. Any aggression Is purely in your imagination.

Well, do share. Since JP stayed that the open team hadn't even met until just before the recording and only a select few ever went to Milton Keynes, I don't know why you would know more than the rest of us.

And of course i do try to stick to making points about the subject under discussion, rather than snide comments like this about other posters. If you think my opinion is wrong, tell me why.

Get off your high horse.

Well, even buying the most expensive players in the world doesn't mean you win the championship every time. Just gives you an advantage. And older teams have done very well, winning on several occasions.

And having postgrads and mature student loaded teams is something which has only been prevalent since tbe 1994 revival.

Is it not just that many of the universities that do well in University Challenge are amongst the best universities in the UK and because they are the best, they tend to have a lot of postgraduate students?

Perhaps, but that would be another reason to restrict them so you would have a more level playing field.

Apparently, there was a spate of complaints to the BBC calling for age limits about 8 years ago when teams of older students seemed to be dominating, and of course they had to formalise their qualification criteria when the dodgy student scandal happened, but as far as I can see, and Wikipedia backs it up, having teams of mature students and postgrads seems only to have become prevalent since the reboot, and there wouldn't have been any particular need for restrictions before that.

I'm not on a high horse, I AM the horse. Anyway, others have picked you up doing the same thing you just criticised me for.

But seriously and I apologise that this will seem like a personal attack, you just go on and on and on. You latch on like a lamprey and suck the life out of the OC thread and now you're doing it here. It makes me hesitant to go in the threads.

That's all my personal opinion of course, you can take or leave it how you please. I don't expect you to change even though I'd like you to.

The original poster merely said that paxo didn't seem keen on the open university

[quote=atg;83886634]Looking at them, not at all.

I was answering a point made by another poster who stated that excluding older contestants would lead to teams of "young, very middle class white boys", who would be boring to watch. So why are you attacking me for being a class warrior when I pointed out that in fact the younger teams do seem to have a wider diversity, and the open team which was chosen to represent all these people you talk about was in fact packed with the very white, middle class people THEY seemed to hate?/QUOTE]

Oh really - so all that nonsense about people of leisure swilling back chardonnay and taking the mick out of those of us who have the temerity to live in Leicestershire was merely doing your bit?

As for why they got chosen - they got chosen to win.

But meanwhile there you go again - why are you still so sure these people are "middle class".

Sorry. I should have said "the poster I was responding to". I didn't have a sausage to say to the op. Mea culpa.

You're kidding, right? You're obviously the love child of Brian Sewell and Maggie Thatcher.

No problem. I probably won't change, as I obviously have no idea what you'd like me to post. You're probably better off not reading stuff that makes you so upset. However, obviously there are still people around who are happy to respond to the points made rather than attack the person for doing so, while misrepresenting what they say. Maybe it's those people you'd like to silence too.

I probably shouldn't have used the phrase "very middle class" to describe the young public-school-educated Oxbridge boys, so I apologise for that. But I do think that having some older contestants makes the programme more interesting, and I say that as a very middle-class older person.

My mum was indeed a great admirer of Maggie.

Sewell however was always unconvincing, even in the role he created - that of "Brian Sewell".

Well fair enough, but there's enough of that in eggheads, mastermind, only connect, brain of Britain etc etc, and what made UC different and interesting was that it was just students, whether Oxbridge or Scumbridge

Anyway, I thought my flippant characterisation of that team wasn't too unfair, although 'genteel' may have been a more advisable term to use, on reflection, as I think the class system is more or less irrelevant today. And I say that as a classless person older than their average age.

In what way was he unconvincing?

The mind boggles at just how posh the good doctor is. He operates in truly rarefied circles.

You really think Shropshire and Leicstershire are middle class?