The Adventures of Henry: The Leamington Spartans

Disclaimer: I am uploading this photo in December, as part of an epic backblip endeavor.

A bit of background:
Only Connect is a gameshow broadcast on BBC 4, where the aim is to find the connection between 4 random clues. It is part of our Monday quizshow tradition; University Challenge at 8pm, and Only Connect at 8:30pm.
While watching Only Connect, since first year, we realised that we were a pretty good team; at least one of us had a strength in all the major categories: Tom - Geography and Sport; Myself - Science and Film; and Charlie - Pretty much everything. So we decided to try and get on for the next season.

It was exciting day.

Myself, Tom, and Charlie travelled to the BBC studios in Birmingham, as we were attending our Only Connect audition. Charlie was coming up from London, as he had been at a club night. He also decided to scare the crap out of us, as he said that he overslept and missed his train. A lie, and NOT FUNNY!

Anyway, we got to the studio with some time to spare. It was pretty surreal as we could see where they filmed the regional news.
We waited about 20 minutes until we were greeted by one of the producers.
The first thing we were told was that we got a 100% on the application form. I can say we were pretty happy at that.
We had a brief chat about ourselves, why we applied, how we became a team and the such, and then got into the actual audition. It was a structured just like the show, broken down into the 4 rounds, save for the lack of an opposing team. Unfortunately, we weren't on top form, as Charlie (team captain) was recovering from a hangover.

But we had fun. As Only Connect is a fairly small show, the audition was quite casual with some chat happening between the "rounds". The producers seemed to like us, which we thought would help our chances of getting on, in addition to our perfect application.

We left with high hopes. Alas, these would be dashed a couple of weeks later, when Charlie got the news that we did not get on the show. Apparently, there was a team of similar age, who did better in their audition. We were, however, picked to be the First Reserve; so if any team dropped out, we would be called upon first. They did encourage us to apply again next year, and that they will take our performance this year into account.

So until next year!