Members of the University of Sheffield’s Quiz Society have appeared on a televised game show.
Forming The Seven Hills Students, Ethan Moss, Alistair Lyle, Dylan Coates and Danny Lardner, took on the Eggheads in the hopes of winning £10,000.
The group travelled to London in May 2021 to film their episode, which recently aired on Channel 5 and is still available to watch on BBC iPlayer.
President of QuizSoc, Ethan Moss, first joined the society back in 2018 when he started at the university.
He said: “We applied for the show on the 16th of April, thinking we wouldn’t stand a massive chance of getting on.
“Then we all did well in our phone interviews where we asked some general knowledge questions and in our audition tapes, and we were told we’d be filming in a couple of weeks.”
Alistair started the episode with a win on Sport against Lisa Thiel, the newest member of the Egghead panellist who joined in 2014.
Following this Dylan fell to the 4-time World Quizzing Champion, Pat Gibson, on Science, and Ethan beat Sheffield alumnus and Brain of Britain finalist, Barry Simmons.
Ethan said: “Recording the show took much longer than you might think, it took maybe an hour and a half to two hours to film a 25-minute episode.
“We had to do our own makeup and sort our microphones due to Coronavirus restrictions, and then between every round, we’d have to do a shuffle while they moved the large plastic screens around and all of our name cards.”
Whilst the team didn’t defeat the Eggheads, they made it to the show’s final round and faced the sudden death question.
Danny said: “My favourite part of being on the show was probably just the excitement of going down on the day, spending time with my friends and having a good time.
“It was great to meet the Eggheads and talk about things that had been going on in the quizzing community and recent tournaments we were playing in.”
Ethan added: “Jeremy Vine was very chatty and exactly as he appears on television, though he did spoil a television series one of our team was watching by telling him who dies at the end.
“It was great to beat Barry as well, he’s now my quizzing rival.”
Anyone interested in quizzing should contact the society, as they host a pub quiz at the University Arms every Tuesday at 8 pm with 70 regular quizzers each week.
QuizSoc also takes part in a variety of online quiz leagues, tournaments and quiz bowls against other universities.
