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What’s wrong with being good?

A rather unnecessarily large number of people appear to have a problem with Corpus’ University Challenge winning captain Gail Trimble. But the prevailing opinion that she is rather ‘smug’ is not only a rather sad one to have, it’s just plain wrong.

You’d think that if anyone would find her to be so, it would be her teammates – but they are genuinely baffled by this response. One teammember, Lauren Schwartzman, sees in Trimble a strong and genuine leader, who encouraged the rest of the group and fostered a comfortable, successful atmosphere.
Yet still, most of us don’t know her personally, and the criticism remains bizarrely disproportionate. We must remember that UC is edited as much as any other programme, and that answering a question right is always going to raise a smile.
People watch University Challenge to see contestants answer questions and to try and have a go at them themselves. Criticism would be much better aimed at those which fail to get any right, who fail at succeeding in doing what the show is there for.

Trimble is good at answering questions. Bloody good. Yet her levels of success are hardly those that appear to have gone to her head. For all the articles written about her as far and wide as the national press, there isn’t an arrogant word of hers present in any of them. And she turned down Nuts.
Quite frankly if I was as good at something as Gail Trimble is at quizzes, I’d feel entitled to be rather smug. So lets shift focus away from her apparent persona and celebrate her success instead.

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