Manchester beats Oxbridge in TV quiz

The University of Manchester became champions of University Challenge for the third time in just seven years last night.

The team, led by English literature student Tristan Burke, rounded off the 37-week series by triumphing over Pembroke College, Cambridge.

BBC2 viewers saw the Manchester students collect their trophy from the Duchess of Cornwall, who said she was the show’s “greatest fan”.

The team won the final with its lowest score of the series, 180 points against Pembroke’s 135.

But the four members had set high standards throughout the competition. Their 330 points against Newcastle University in the quarter-finals was the highest tally of this season of the contest.

The University of Manchester last took the title in 2009 after it emerged that the winning team Corpus Christi, Oxford, had fielded an ineligible contestant.

Manchester landed its first win in 2006 against Trinity Hall, Cambridge. It is now only the second institution to have won the contest more than twice – last year’s winner, Magdalen College, has won four times since the show began in 1962.

Manchester beat colleges from Oxford or Cambridge in every round of the 2011-12 series, which saw 120 teams apply.