University Challenge
Ok, this QOTW was made for me, and if this doesn't make the top of the front page I will CRY.

Way back in...2003 I think it was, I was a music student, practising scales and Piatti Caprices for several hours a day, bored out of my nut. One of the few things that made life worth living was the weekly ritual of sitting down with a cup of tea to watch University Challenge.

I've been watching University Challenge since the beginning of its Paxman-era comeback - when I was living at home, my parents used to watch it with calculators, adding up their scores. They were hugely competitive about it. In fact, the only screaming argument I've ever had with my mother happened when she deliberately talked over a question she knew I would otherwise have been able to answer correctly. Anyway, other than that, the main thing that I enjoyed and still enjoy about University Challenge was the totty. Other girls might get their kicks out of movie stars, sportsmen or beefcake centerfolds; I like geeks. For me, University Challenge is, honest to God, the ultimate repository of gorgeous men in the media. You can keep your Brad Pitts and your Tom Cruises - watching a bespectacled nerd answer obscure questions about 12th century monarchs gets me so hot.

This series, one particular gorgeous sexy geek caught my perverted eye. He had a big grin, a beautiful neck and a really nice lower back. And yes, I could tell that he had a nice lower back, even though I only saw him from the front - it was something about the way he leaned forward intently whilst discussing answers with his team. I was smitten. Thoughts of performing complex integration by parts with him dominated many a happy Monday night. As the tournament progressed, the programmes on which he was featured in all his nerdy glory became more frequent. Lustful thoughts about him began creeping into my everyday consciousness. By God, he was sexy. When his team - which, of course, I had been fervently supporting owing to their totty factor - eventually won the tournament, a thought occurred to me: Geeks don't often get told that they're sexy. Perhaps nobody has told him just how goddamn gorgeous he is. Perhaps he'd like to know. And this is why I sent him the following lovingly-handwritten letter:

Dear University Challenge Hottie,

I have been watching University Challenge for many years. I don't have an affiliation with any particular university, so as for supporting teams, I always simply root for the one with the the greatest number of attractive males. Throughout the last series, I have been consistently supporting your team because you are by far the yummiest specimen of gorgeousness ever to have appeared on the programme. I'd like to rip your underpants off with my teeth whilst you talk dirty to me in Ancient Greek.

I'm buggered if I'm telling you who I am - my propensity for embarrassing myself doesn't extend quite that far - but I just thought you might like to know that some random stranger has been wetting her knickers over you for the last few months. Thank you very much for making several of my Monday evenings much more entertaining.

Yours lustfully,
The Proverbial Secret Admirer

A few years later, I was toiling selling advertising space in a classical music magazine (a significant step up the sanity ladder). Bored in the office one day, trawling through the news websites, as you do, I found something that almost made me spit coffee on my monitor. He had actually quoted me in The Times:

If the cameras inspire vanity, the viewers' reaction tries to corrupt even your humblest of thoughts. One of my letters actually contained the phrase: "You are by far the yummiest specimen of gorgeousness ever to have appeared on the programme." I assure you, this is not true, even with my post-trendy Hoxton fin.

Have any other b3tans had their creepy fan mail quoted in a national broadsheet? I think not. You may click now.
(grandmasterfluffles Come to my Armageddon party on, Tue 21 Apr 2009, 22:52, 18 replies)

Your parents needed calculators to tot up their scores?
I'm guessing they weren't any good at the maths starter questions, then?

Kudos and a click for the broadsheet mention - can't match that, but I did once get my photo in the *cough* Daily Star in an article entitled A Day In The Life Of A Barstool.
(Capo, Tue 21 Apr 2009, 23:00, closed)

Yeah
It was a maths question that my mum was talking through...I'm still seething about it. She knew she wasn't going to get it, so she had to make sure I didn't!

But I think the calculator thing is just that it makes it that tiny bit easier to focus entirely on answering the questions. They did take it rather too seriously. There was an awful lot of shouting answers, and laughing when anyone got anything wrong. My nerves have improved considerably since I left home.
(grandmasterfluffles Come to my Armageddon party on, Tue 21 Apr 2009, 23:07, closed)

Heh!
I don't keep score but I can get a bit impatient like Paxman if I know something and the team is struggling.

We live in Oxford, quite weird sometimes - I used to see this guy on the bus and knew he was familiar from somewhere, then it clicked that he was on UC the previous year. Same with one girl I see cycling around sometimes, I recognised her from it too.
(Capo, Tue 21 Apr 2009, 23:41, closed)

So you lust after people who've been on Universally Challenged, eh?
Well, hello...

OH, yeah: I've been quoted in the Guardian and the New York Times once rang me for an interview. Will that do?
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 22 Apr 2009, 9:13, closed)

This for the win
*clicks*
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Wed 22 Apr 2009, 9:20, closed)

I suspect he would have been a lot less glib had he know how attractive his admirer is.
I would rather have a go at Paxman myself.

Edit - I've just googled him. Oh dear. *laughs*
( girlinthehole, Wed 22 Apr 2009, 9:24, closed)

Now this really should win
It really, really should, cheers.
( SpankyHanky, Wed 22 Apr 2009, 9:36, closed)

Mmmmm geeks
I am a geek lover (CSI:LV - Nick Stokes? No, Gill Grissom & Hodges. Criminal Minds - Derek Morgan? No, Dr. Spencer Reid) but have just googled your geek (yup, v sad).....gotta say, doesn't do it for me....although maybe if he spoke ancient greek he would ;)
(!sis, Wed 22 Apr 2009, 10:36, closed)

I've been quoted in the Times.
Twice, in fact. Sold them a couple of sleazy stories about events at my boarding school.
(The Empress it seems you CAN polish a turd!, Wed 22 Apr 2009, 10:42, closed)

click
Even funnier when you see he looks like Stephen Merchant.

images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.journalism.co.uk/assets/4/6//Josh_Spero.jpg_resized_x_300.jpeg&imgrefurl=http://www.journalism.co.uk/8/articles/531943.php&usg=__PwMvA1NwhdPqAwme_bx4O9gjiPY=&h=240&w=300&sz=24&hl=en&start=1&um=1&tbnid=nEwOci00zVBzWM:&tbnh=93&tbnw=116&prev=/images%3Fq%3DJOSH%2BSPERO%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Dactive%26sa%3DN%26um%3D1
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Wed 22 Apr 2009, 11:30, closed)

............
and if THAT gets you b3ta ladies hot under the collar, just check out his mates. toot! toot!

www.flickr.com/photos/42195426@N00/60383710/
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Wed 22 Apr 2009, 11:31, closed)

That
is NOT a good photo! He was way fit on the programme, honest!
(grandmasterfluffles Come to my Armageddon party on, Wed 22 Apr 2009, 18:44, closed)

IMO
Made of win. Epically so.
(Kitimariana, Wed 22 Apr 2009, 11:31, closed)

Yay for twelfth-century monarchs!
Question: who did Eleanor of Aquitaine marry in 1137?
(Land of Green Ginger It's dreamy weather, Wed 22 Apr 2009, 12:01, closed)

A classic
Nutter.
(cypherspace is not a toaster, Wed 22 Apr 2009, 13:20, closed)

*click*
*click* not just for the story, but for the sheer admission ;)
( SeasonTicketless is too often the statue, and rarely the pigeon., Wed 22 Apr 2009, 13:51, closed)

Purely brilliant...

and worthy of the highest clickage.
( Pooflake braces for an onslaught..., Wed 22 Apr 2009, 14:51, closed)

*clicks furiously*
This is brilliant!
( Devil_In_Tights the *real* DiT!, Wed 22 Apr 2009, 15:54, closed)