I MUST confess to feeling very sorry for the victorious Corpus Christi team who thrown out of University Challenge after it was revealed that one of the number had now left Oxford to work for a living.

Matthew Tacket

I MUST confess to feeling very sorry for the victorious Corpus Christi team who thrown out of University Challenge after it was revealed that one of the number had now left Oxford to work for a living.

But today I'm able to offer them a new challenge - take on Ipswich's top quiz team . . . our own hat-trick heroes the Star Scribes.

The four-student team was led by brainbox Gail Trimble who has become something of a national heroine by almost taking on the opponents single-handed.

But it was not Gail who was the reason for the disqualification. Her team-mate Sam Kay left university between rounds and is now a trainee accountant in Surrey.

Frankly it seems ridiculous that the BBC film the series over two academic years - and insist that everyone is a student at the end of the show.

That means no third-year students can take part in the series unless they know they are going to be doing a post-graduate degree, and even then there is no way you can know whether you will be a post-grad student until you know what kind of degree you get!

But I digress.

Corpus Christi may be the top university quiz team, but I'm confident our scribes could give them a run for their money.

After the series Gail had all kinds of offers, including one from a lads' mag which wanted her to do a photoshoot for them - she declined because she is engaged to the son of a vicar!

I don't think any of our team have had any such approaches - although Lynne Mortimer may one day do a fashion shoot for our sister magazine Let's Talk!

And the Star Scribes' team is certainly not a one-person team, I'm told they all pulled their weight at the Mayor's Quiz. No one would tell me which of the team knew that the Teddy Bear's one-hit wonder was “To Know Him is to Love Him!”

Mind you one of the team had a quick look at some of the University Challenge questions and went quite white.

Although another had the answer: “I'm ready to take them on,” he said. “But we'll get the questions set here in Ipswich!”

Star Scribes questions:

Q: Which film does the Stevie Wonder song “I just called to say I love you” come from?

A: The woman in red.

Q: In which US state was Elvis Presley born?

A: Mississippi.

Q: In which decade did the first dog go into space?

A: The 1950s.

Corpus Christi questions:

Q: A taco terrier is a cross between a toy fox terrier and which other breed of dog, originating in a country of Latin America?

A: Chihuahua (from Mexico)

Q: If a tap leaks a millilitre of water every second, how many 10-litre buckets will it fill completely in a day?

A: Eight (8.64)

Q: An unattested language from which a group of attested languages, in this case those of the Germanic, Slavic, Romance and other families, are thought to be historically derived, for what do the letters P.I.E. stand?

A: Proto-Indo-European