Your starter for ten: why don't I hate Mondays?

My favourite TV programme is back on. In our house, University Challenge is unmissable.

My husband cooks our dinner to coincide with it, and the table is set not only with cutlery but a notebook and pen.

We keep score, as, I have learned, do many others.

Usually, it is just the two of us, but if my daughter is home from university she joins in too.

A bit of a boffin, she always disgusts me by correctly answering some very unpleasant mathematical questions.

I haven’t got a chance against my husband, who wipes the floor with his public-school knowledge of the classics and opera and all the other stuff that didn’t feature at my comprehensive.

Jeremy Paxman and a team of young hopefuls

Sometimes I make up a few points with things I do actually know about - I once got four points by identifying national parks - but not often.

The questions definitely become harder as the contest progresses.

The first episode of the series, I correctly answered 11 questions.

In the later rounds, this is unheard of, as the really scary stuff kicks in. It can lead to you believing that you are more intelligent than you actually are, my colleague said. Predictably, the second week, I scored four, and one was a lucky guess.

But it’s not all about the questions. The contestants are fascinating: who could forget Ted Loveday, from Gonville and Caius, Cambridge, in his cable-knit jumpers, who correctly answered the most obscure questions, including his party piece: ‘Meaning ‘said only once’, what two-word Greek term denotes a word or word-form that is recorded only once in a text, in the work of a particular author, or in a body of literature?’ The answer - for which he is best remembered - ‘Hapax legomenon’.

The facial expressions and gesticulations of Oscar Powell from Peterhouse, also Cambridge, attracted much attention on social media, as did the eyebrows of their team captain, which had two Twitter accounts set up in their honour.

And, of course, there’s Jeremy Paxman. We thought there was something strange about him when the series began.

“It’s his hair, it’s soft not wiry,” said my husband.

My colleague described it as “oddly soft.” I resisted taking to my laptop to add to the dozens of comments that resulted in this newspaper headline ‘People paid far too much attention to Jeremy Paxman’s hair on the return of University Challenge.’ Maybe he resents the attention lavished upon the contestants and is trying to grasp a little limelight for himself with a bouffant look.

Of the 45 series broadcast since the programme began in 1963, Oxbridge have dominated, having triumphed in 25 of them.

I always root for the underdog. York has never won - maybe 2016 will be its year.