Shouting answers at the telly and swotting up on the Pre-Raphaelites: half of our fast-buzzing University Challenge team tell us how they prepared for the contest, explain why potential Caius applicants shouldn’t be daunted by their stellar performance – and debate the reasons behind the lack of women contestants

(…and read on to discover team captain Anthony Martinelli’s recipe for success)

University Challenge as a programme, and Jeremy Paxman as a presenter, seem pretty intimidating even as a viewer: what’s it like from your side?

TL: Incredible. You can’t beat the first time you buzz and you hear Roger Tilling announcing your own name and university.

I think Paxman does his best to put people at their ease when the cameras aren’t rolling – he knows you’re just students and doesn’t expect you to be as tough as the politicians he interviews. Having said that, he can be needlessly harsh in his put-downs to losing teams.

MT: I can’t remember much about sitting in the chair. The pressure under the lights and on camera is incredible - I promise you that University Challenge is much, much easier from the sofa. But Mr Paxman was nothing but civil to us all the way through. There's an obvious difference in the way he treats students who are trying very, very hard to answer questions, from the way he treats politicians who are trying very, very hard “not” to answer questions.

How do you prepare - and how do you cope with the quick-fire pressure of the competition?

MT: We looked at what subjects and topics come up regularly on the show, then set about learning as much as we could from Wikipedia and textbooks. We divided the subjects among us according to what we already knew: so, I took modern history and literature, Anthony took biology, and so on.

In terms of answering questions, a lot of our answers are educated guesses. For instance, I had no idea that Paul Gauguin really liked a certain sculpture he made in 1894, but given that the sculpture had a Tahitian name, it was probably him. We'll rarely recognize everything in the question - we're just looking for clues and prompts.

TL: We’d put aside regular times to sit down together in the college bar, watch past episodes on YouTube and try to shout the answers at the telly before any of the contestants buzzed. That was really helpful for improving our reaction speeds.

Sometimes question-setters really like a particular area and they’ll keep coming back to it. For instance, they’re a bit obsessed with Pre-Raphaelite paintings, so we binged on some Wikipedia articles to make sure we were familiar with them. It paid off because we had a whole picture round on the Pre-Raphaelites! University Challenge isn’t about deep understanding – it’s about very wide, superficial knowledge combined with quick recall.

How did you come together as a team and what is it about the combination that works?

MT: The producers send out the application forms to all universities and all Oxbridge and London University colleges as a matter of form. The universities and colleges pick their own teams, then they meet the producers for an interview and for a general knowledge test.

We went through two stages of objective tests: a general knowledge quiz, then a buzzer race. We picked the team on merit, nothing else.

I think we work well together because we cover almost all the bases and we trust each other to get the answers in our own fields. For example, I'm never going to buzz in on science or medicine - I switch off completely and I trust my teammates to get those questions right. In the same way, I'm responsible for answering a lot of questions on British history. That is the essence of teamwork: relying on your mates to do their jobs.

TL: Teamwork was definitely our strength. If you look at teams that have done well in the past, they’re usually dominated by one superstar who gets all the answers—Gail Trimble, Alex Guttenplan, and so on. But Caius is different because we’re really very much four team-mates who are equal and all of us have our chance to get some starters.

Everybody was really supportive of each other, and everybody played to each other’s strengths. We did a lot of practice together, which helped build a good dynamic between us.

There’s been some criticism for some years now over the lack of women contestants on University Challenge. What are your thoughts?

TL: Yeah, the lack of gender balance is really frustrating. I watched a Uni Challenge episode on YouTube from 1962 where half the contestants are female. It’s shocking that, in some ways, things have actually gone backwards in the past 50 years.

It’s hard to fix because the main issue is a confidence gap. Even in the earliest stages, colleges see a lack of women auditioning. I don’t think I can speak for any of them, but I suspect some of it can be blamed on objectification of women contestants in the media and on Twitter. I guess it’s also self-reinforcing if there are fewer and fewer female role models on the show.

Sadly I don’t think there are easy answers. There is certainly a case to be made for quotas and it would be interesting to see some debate on it. The BBC already does this for comedy panels, but diversity is even more important here than it is for comedy – after all, each team is supposed to be representing a whole university.

MT: A woman made our original team and she is probably the most knowledgeable of all of us, but she didn't have the time to appear on the show. I think the general lack of women on the show derives from women not applying to go on the show - it's nothing to do with team selection, and nothing to do with the producers. Quiz shows across the board tend to be populated with more men than women, so it might just be a cultural thing. But it certainly doesn't help that Twitter, the media, and the press tend to single out women contestants whenever they do appear.

Your performances are exceptionally impressive - do you think there’s a risk you could make your college and university seem rather daunting to young people considering where to apply?

MT: No, it shouldn't be off-putting. We don't just “know” this stuff - we learned it and we learned most of it while at Caius. With the exception of the questions on sport and cinema, and a few things I learned at school, I'd have known almost none of this at the age of 17 or 18.

Please don't get the impression that Caius students spend their time obsessing about Russian literature, or baroque music, or Nobel prize-winners. In fact for me the most exciting thing about filming was probably seeing Alan Hansen in the studio building as he prepared for Match of the Day.

TL: I’d emphasise that you don’t need to know any of this stuff to get into Cambridge! Most students here are pretty down-to-earth and have an average level of general knowledge. If you’re bright and passionate about the particular subject you want to study, that’s all you need and you should go ahead and apply – you don’t have anything to lose.

Like pretty much everybody, when I first started watching University Challenge I’d be thrilled if I got one answer right in a whole episode. I know some of the questions on the show can seem fairly intimidating and high-brow. But there’s no magic secret to it – all the answers will be out there on Wikipedia somewhere. If you find a question daunting, look it up online and read about the answer. Next time it comes up, it won’t be daunting any more.

How did you find the experience of becoming household names? You were trending on Twitter in the semi-final….

MT: Given that we chose to go on a TV show, this sounds ridiculous, but I don't think that any of us likes being on TV or likes watching the episodes when they're broadcast. We just wanted to compete in the hardest and most prestigious quiz in Britain. It just so happens that it's on TV.

Caius defeated worthy opponents Magdalen College, Oxford to become University Challenge champions 2015. Team captain Anthony Martinelli tells us it wasn’t all about winning

AM: Lifting the trophy was great, but, honestly, was not really the point of the whole experience for me. When we applied to be on the show, we genuinely had no expectation of getting as far as we did.

The main thing for me was giving it our best effort - I would have been equally proud had we gone out fighting in round one.

Doing well on University Challenge requires the same skill set as anything in life - practise hard and play as a team, which isn't beyond anyone. So please don't get put off applying.

Finally, I’d like to thank our reserve Roland Grant for accompanying us to Manchester for every show and all the production staff for being so good to us throughout the filming process.

I hope Caius will be on again soon!