University Challenge: Three recent winners had ineligible team members

From The Times website this evening:

At least three other teams which have won University Challenge since 2000 have fielded ineligible players in the final, The Times has discovered. ...

Siegfried Hodgson, a member of the Imperial College team that won in 2001, admitted today that two members of his team were on one-year masters courses and had therefore graduated by the time the final was filmed.

He added: “We were completely upfront about this with the production team and there was never any suggestion we broke any rules.”

So now everyone will be saying that Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and The Human Google have been hard done by. I was one of those who rushed to judgement.

The BBC should listen to the wise words of Bamber Gascoigne, who has criticised the way they film each series across two academic years:

"It means that anyone in their last year at university cannot take part in University Challenge and that for most students is one third of their time ... For the BBC to have gone along with a rule that enshrines that, is extraordinary."