Wednesday 13 February 2013

University Challenge: Paxman criticized for berating Tyszczuk Smith

Those of you who watched Monday's fascinating match will recall that, at one point, Tom Tyszczuk Smith of U.C.L. answered a history question with William I, when William III was what was sought. He probably just got muddled, but Paxo was not amused, and heavily berated him for his error (being 600 years out).

Earlier today, my Dad discovered an online article from the Telegraph claiming that Paxo has been severely criticized for his berating of Tyszczuk Smith, who many claim was rather nervous, and may not have taken Paxo's remarks very well. Others have popped up as well; one claimed that Mr Tyszczuk Smith spent the rest of the match staring at his desk, and not saying much. This looks to me to have been the case, though he did get one more starter afterwards.

Of course, Paxo is supposed to try and be amusing, but, sometimes, he may cross the line. His remarks may have been out of order, especially considering its not the sort of thing everyone knows everything about. Someone on Twitter pointed out that Paxo never berates people for making similar mistakes on science questions. Of course, Paxo's not science expert; a few series ago, he accidentally denied a couple of teams points on science questions due to them not giving the precise answer on his card (see Weaver's Week from mid 2007).

Twitter will usually react negatively to this sort of thing anyway. They thought Pietro Aronica's mistake from last week was hilarious, but this negative reaction from Paxo was criticized in a light-hearted way.

Of course, I am against writing disparaging things about game show contestants on a public forum where they are liable to read it, and be offended by it, but some quite happily do it, knowing they are quite safe behind a computer screen. They'd never do it in reality. Also, it's good to see the contestants themselves post on these forums, and many might get put off by this sort of thing (a few years ago, a Deal or No Deal contestant reacted badly to criticism of them made on the forum, and some users were banned as a result).

On the other hand, as someone on the (Deal or No Deal) forum once pointed out, if you agree to go on TV, you are throwing yourself open to criticism from all parties.

Of course, it is amusing to see someone get it oh so wrong, whether it be a bad decision on Deal, or a wrong answer on UC or Pointless, but berating them for doing so where they could read it and take offense is another matter.

This incident does raise a couple of questions about Paxo as a host, but he has a history of doing this (he is a lot worse with the celebs, for obvious reasons).

And it's not the first time the show has got this reaction for a negative reason. There was the infamous 'flag-gate' a couple of years back. And a female contestant who was subject of ridicule online due to her good looks.

And, of course, at the time when swerve questions were more prevalent, the show was under repeated attack, particularly in Weaver's Week.

In conclusion, this incident is just a minor incident, and will likely blow over quickly. But it does raise some interesting points, more of which I hope to cover another time.

5 comments:

  1. It was an unfortunate slip of the tongue, I think, and Paxo was a bit mean for laying into him about it when I'm betting that Tyszczuk Smith knew as soon as he said it that he meant "Third". Oh well.

    On the online criticism thing, I've already noticed that at least one seriously rude person on Twitter has laid into me, during the game v. Warwick. I'm not even sure why, precisely, since, the super/hypersonic boob aside, I didn't say anything stupid -- I think he might just have been an overzealous Warwick supporter or something. Anyway, when I saw it I felt rather hurt, and once again the online curtain allows people to think they can get away with things they never would say or do in real life. Maybe if I had twitter or could be bothered I would complain but it's a bit late now, three months on.

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  2. I'm friends with UCL Dennis, went to their first round match, and I've met the team. Honestly, I think Tom's reaction to the media would be, "It's fine." In their first round, he'd panicked on the first question and sent the team to -5, despite knowing the answer. At the end, Paxo went over and had a chat, honestly being a good guy.
    The Twitterers and the Newspapers are assuming a lot they do not know.

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  3. Great, the video on the telegraph article includes my (equally ridiculous) answer of Elizabeth I...

    I'm not sure whether Tyszczuk-Smith was any more quiet after being laid into that than he normally is - he comes across as being rather soft-spoken and diffident generally. I suppose one of the perils of UC is that the presenter gets no opportunity to find these things out, that said I think you're broadly right in that if you agree to go on UC you basically sign up for poor treatment frrom JP. I actually wanted it to happen to me, my UC experience would have been incomplete without a bollocking from Paxman! I got my wish in our very first round.

    I also got a rather more sincere, general bollocking from him in our last match which wasn't filmed. We had technical problems and had to pause the match in the middle. We were allowed to wonder around to stretch our legs while they sorted it out, and I walked over the thing in the middle of the studio (perhaps rather foolish a thing to do admittedly) because I'd always thought it was supposed to be some kinda podium - obviously that wasn't what it was intended for and one of the crew panickingly asked me not to, and then Paxman told me that it was a damn silly thing to do, and that I should be more mature or something to that effect.

    I don't particularly like Paxman - not for bollocking me particularly, I probably deserved that - I don't mind him on UC but I don't like watching him interview people; sometimes he's good at hounding politicians who are trying to evade questions but more often than not he drowns them out when they're trying to answer them. He very frequently comes across as very biased when he's supposed to be neutral (watch him interview Alex Salmond!). I think he comes across as rather self-important. In many ways though, by being such a dragon, he betrays his own (considerable) ignorance in many fields - as you've pointed out this never happens with science questions, his knowledge of classical music is also very limited. You can tell when he knows nothing about something because he doesn't berate answers which are obviously wrong.

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  4. As for random criticism on twitter - no criticism was less worth listening to. I actually HATE pretty much everything about twitter (I'm forced to use it for work),

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  5. [Another person from one of the quarter finals teams here - who really appreciates your blog and always keeps up with the Twitter commentary, but feels that if she started sticking her oar in she'd share far too much information and ruin everybody's fun watching the programme. But anyway -]

    I think, if Tyszczuk Smith is anything like me, it wouldn't have been Paxo's criticism that necessarily got him down, but his own self-criticism. I definitely had a few clangers and there were times when they really set me back, usually when they were most out of my control and basically just down to nerves or brain-freeze or whatever. It was one of the most difficult aspects of the quiz, I found, because getting the buzz in requires taking every question as it comes and having a go, but if you get self-conscious or worried about your own ability to pull off the answer once you've buzzed in, then you just drop points left and right. If you can't regroup almost instantly then there's very little time to reflect and move on.

    Of course, it might be different generally, because I tended to appreciate Paxo's bollockings when they came as a chance to be filmed reacting with either a sort of 'eh, it was a guess anyway' expression or 'yeah, that was really stupid; sorry, I got confused' expression... It felt like you got the chance to defend yourself against looking just woefully misinformed. In any case, I think the newspapers like laying into Paxo for whatever reason they can find. As it is, the ratings would almost certainly drop if they got rid of the pantomime-villain aspect of the whole thing (as they would if there wasn't a hefty opportunity for Oxbridge-bashing in the first round). So I doubt the production team will do anything about it.

    As for Twitter, there are definitely some people who seem to get a real kick out of saying nasty things like they never would to a person's face - I get quite angry about that, because I don't think anyone should have to accept that sort of thing just because they've gone on the TV. It always seems to follow the standard bullying tactics of picking on the most vulnerable-seeming people they can pick out on the programme and saying whatever they think would be most likely to hurt them, which is so depressing. Most of the commentators on Twitter don't seem to bear any of the contestants ill will, though, so it seems fair that they should be able to have their banter. Some of the stuff about me and our team has been pretty funny!

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